How Much Should a Small Business Website Actually Cost?

This is usually the first question, and the honest answer is: it depends what you're actually buying. "A website" can mean a £200 template with your logo dropped in, or a £5,000 custom build with copywriting, SEO, and ongoing support — and the gap between them is a lot more than just design polish.

£0–£300: DIY builders (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy)

Fine as a starting point if budget is genuinely the only constraint. You're trading money for your own time — expect to spend real hours in the builder yourself, and to end up with something that looks recognisably like a template, because it is one. Fine for a hobby or side project; usually not enough for a business depending on it to bring in work.

£300–£800: Freelance template customisation

A freelancer takes an existing template and tailors it to your business — your colours, your content, your logo. Faster and cheaper than a custom build, and can look genuinely good if the freelancer has a decent eye, but you're still constrained by what the template's structure allows.

£500–£1,500: Custom freelance build

Built from scratch around your actual business rather than fitted into someone else's template — this is where Jo Builds sits, with fixed pricing from £499. You get a site designed for how your customers actually find and use it, not a generic layout with your name swapped in.

£2,000–£5,000+: Small agency

More hands involved — a designer, a developer, sometimes a project manager — usually means more process, more revisions, and more polish, but also a longer timeline and a much higher bill. Makes sense for a larger business with a bigger, more complex site; often overkill for a single-location small business that mainly needs to look credible and convert enquiries.

£5,000+: Larger agency or bespoke development

Custom functionality, complex integrations, multiple stakeholders signing off on every decision — this tier is built for businesses with genuinely complex needs, not a typical small business site. If someone's quoting you this for a five-page site, it's worth asking exactly what's driving the number.

So what should you actually pay?

For most small businesses — a handful of pages, clear info about what you do, a way for people to get in touch — somewhere in the £500–£1,500 range gets you a genuinely good, custom-built site without agency overhead. Below that, you're usually trading away either quality or your own time. Above it, you're often paying for scale or process you don't need yet.