Guides
How to choose a web development agency in the UK: 12 questions to ask
Twelve questions that separate a good UK web agency from an expensive mistake, what a straight answer should sound like, and the red flags…
· 8 min read
A website in the UK in 2026 typically costs £500 to £5,000 for a small business brochure site, £3,000 to £15,000 for an online shop, and £15,000 upwards for custom web software, all before VAT. Our own fixed-price packages run from £350 + VAT for a five-page site to £2,650 + VAT for a full business or e-commerce build, and hourly work costs £45 to £70 an hour with discounts of up to 25 % on bigger blocks. Running costs (domain, hosting, maintenance) add a few hundred pounds a year for most small sites.
Those are the honest short answers. The rest of this guide shows where the numbers come from, works through real budgets for four typical UK businesses, and lists the costs that most quotes quietly leave out. We have been pricing websites for years, and the question we hear most is not “how much?” but “why is this quote three times that one?”. By the end you should be able to answer that yourself.
UK website prices at a glance
The table shows typical UK market ranges. They are drawn from the quotes we see when clients bring us other suppliers’ proposals and from published UK price guides, so treat them as ranges, not survey data. A large London agency can sit well above the top of each band; a solo freelancer using a template can come in below the bottom.
| Type of website | Typical UK range (excl. VAT) | Typical timescale |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace) you build yourself | £0 upfront, roughly £150–£400 a year in plan fees | Days to weeks of your own time |
| Template site from a freelancer, 3–5 pages | £300–£1,500 | 1–3 weeks |
| Small business site, 5–15 pages, custom design | £1,000–£5,000 | 2–6 weeks |
| Larger marketing site with bookings, forms, integrations | £4,000–£12,000 | 6–12 weeks |
| Online shop (WooCommerce, Shopify, PrestaShop) | £3,000–£15,000 | 4–12 weeks |
| Large or bespoke e-commerce (Magento / Adobe Commerce, custom) | £15,000–£60,000+ | 3–9 months |
| Custom web application, portal or SaaS product | £15,000–£100,000+ | 3–12 months |
A quote outside these bands is not automatically wrong, but ask why. Very cheap quotes usually leave out content, testing or aftercare. Very expensive ones often bundle strategy workshops, copywriting, photography and a support retainer that a ten-page site for a dental practice in Cardiff simply does not need.
Our fixed-price website packages
Most small businesses that come to us fit one of four packages. These are current offer prices, excluding VAT, with the regular price in brackets. We show the VAT-inclusive figure too, because if you are not VAT-registered that is the number that actually leaves your account.
| Package | Price excl. VAT | Price incl. VAT | What you get | Timescale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Startup Website | £350 (regular £600) | £420 | 5 pages, 3 custom banners, 5 stock photos, slider banner, Google-friendly sitemap, W3C-valid HTML, Facebook page design | About 2 weeks |
| Pro Website | £750 (regular £1,200) | £900 | 10 pages with admin panel/CMS, 5 custom banners, 8 stock images, slider, sitemap, Facebook and YouTube page design, dedicated project manager, full deployment | 2–3 weeks |
| Elite Website | £999 (regular £1,990) | £1,198.80 | Up to 15 unique responsive pages, bookings, payments, custom and lead-generation forms, newsletter, newsfeed, interactions, search engine registration, 100 % unique design, money-back guarantee (terms apply) | 3–6 weeks |
| Business / E-commerce | £2,650 (regular £5,200) | £3,180 | Custom WordPress or PHP site or shop, payments, booking and ordering, multi-language, search, CMS, premium design with unlimited revisions, 15-second 2D explainer video, SEO meta tags, free domain for 5 years, personal account manager | Agreed per project |
Which package we would actually recommend
We would rather you bought the right package than the cheapest one, so here is our own advice:
- Startup Website: fine for a sole trader who needs a credible presence and will rarely change it. Be aware that the CMS is an add-on at +£149 and a mobile-responsive layout is +£99. We recommend both for almost everyone, which takes it to £598 + VAT (£717.60 including VAT).
- Pro Website: the sensible default for most small service businesses. At £750 + VAT you get ten pages, a CMS so you can edit text yourself, and a project manager. If you were going to add both Startup add-ons anyway, the extra £152 buys five more pages and proper project management.
- Elite Website: for businesses where the site has to do work: take bookings, collect deposits, capture leads into a newsletter. Clinics, salons, trades with a callout booking form, training providers.
- Business / E-commerce: for an online shop or a site that takes orders, needs more than one language, or has to look premium against well-funded competitors. Unlimited design revisions and a personal account manager are included because these projects have more moving parts.
Full inclusions are on our packages page.
Our hourly rates, with volume discounts
Plenty of work does not fit a package: adding a booking system to an existing site, connecting a CRM, fixing a slow WooCommerce shop, building a customer portal. For that we sell hours. You pay online, the hours never expire, and you can pay in full or with a 50 % deposit.
| Service | Rate (excl. VAT) |
|---|---|
| Website Design | £45/h |
| WordPress Development | £50/h |
| Brand Identity Design | £50/h |
| UI/UX Design | £55/h |
| Custom Web Development | £60/h |
| E-commerce Development | £65/h |
| Mobile Application | £70/h |
Discounts apply automatically: 5 % off 10 hours, 10 % off 15, 15 % off 20, 20 % off 50 and 25 % off 100 hours. Here is how that works out in practice, with VAT at 20 % applied to the discounted price.
| Example | Calculation | Total incl. VAT |
|---|---|---|
| 10 h Website Design | £450 − 5 % = £427.50 + VAT £85.50 | £513.00 |
| 15 h UI/UX Design | £825 − 10 % = £742.50 + VAT £148.50 | £891.00 |
| 20 h WordPress Development | £1,000 − 15 % = £850 + VAT £170 | £1,020.00 |
| 50 h E-commerce Development | £3,250 − 20 % = £2,600 + VAT £520 | £3,120.00 |
| 100 h Custom Web Development | £6,000 − 25 % = £4,500 + VAT £900 | £5,400.00 |
On the 20-hour WordPress block, a 50 % deposit would be £510 including VAT, with the other £510 due later. For comparison, UK freelance developers commonly charge somewhere around £30–£80 an hour (often as day rates of roughly £250–£600), and established agencies, especially in central London, often charge £80–£150 an hour or more. Again, these are typical ranges from the market rather than precise data. You can buy hours on our hire us page.
Package or hours?
If the scope is a standard brochure site or shop, a package is nearly always cheaper because we have priced the repeatable parts tightly. If the scope is unclear, likely to change, or is mostly integration work, hours are fairer to both sides: you pay for what gets built, and nobody pads a fixed quote to cover the unknowns.
Four worked budgets
Abstract ranges only go so far. Here are four typical projects, priced with our real figures. Running costs are rounded estimates for third-party services, not our prices.
1. A new plumbing business in Leeds
Needs to look established, list services and areas covered, and get phone calls. Rarely changes content.
- Startup Website £350 + CMS £149 + mobile-responsive £99 = £598 + VAT £119.60 = £717.60
- Domain around £12 a year, basic hosting around £8–£15 a month
- Year one total: roughly £830–£920 including VAT on the build
2. A physiotherapy clinic in Bristol
Wants online bookings with a deposit to cut no-shows, plus a newsletter sign-up. Also needs the booking form to email the right practitioner, which is a small piece of custom work.
- Elite Website £999 + 10 h WordPress Development (£500 − 5 % = £475) = £1,474 + VAT £294.80 = £1,768.80
- Hosting around £15–£25 a month, Stripe fees on deposits
- Year one total: roughly £1,950–£2,070 plus card fees
3. An independent homeware shop in Manchester
Around 300 products with variations, Stripe and PayPal, a product feed for Google Shopping, and an import from a supplier spreadsheet.
- Business / E-commerce £2,650 + 20 h E-commerce Development (£1,300 − 15 % = £1,105) = £3,755 + VAT £751 = £4,506
- Domain free for five years, shop-grade hosting around £25–£50 a month, payment fees per order
- Year one total: roughly £4,800–£5,100 plus payment fees
4. A B2B firm in Birmingham improving an existing site
Already has a WordPress site that works. Wants a client login area, a quote calculator and a CRM integration over the next year.
- 50 h Custom Web Development: £3,000 − 20 % = £2,400 + VAT £480 = £2,880, used as needed
- No rebuild, so no package; the hours never expire, so unused time carries over
Notice how different these look. The plumber and the B2B firm might both describe their need as “a website”, yet one is a £600 job and the other is closer to a small software project.
What actually drives the price
Two sites with the same page count can differ in price by a factor of ten. These are the things that move the number, roughly in order of impact.
Functionality
Pages of text are cheap. Every feature that does something costs time: bookings, payments, memberships, multi-language, product filters, quote calculators, integrations. A contact form takes minutes. A booking system that takes deposits through Stripe and syncs with a staff calendar takes days, and the testing takes almost as long as the build. If bookings are on your list, read our guide to booking systems, deposits and Stripe.
Integrations
Connecting your site to a CRM, accounting package, stock system or ERP is where budgets drift. Each connection has to be built, tested against the other system’s quirks and kept working when that system updates its API. For this kind of work we usually quote hours under our API development and integration service.
Custom design versus a template
A template is someone else’s design with your logo on it. It is quick and can be perfectly adequate. A custom design starts from your brand and your customers and takes more designer time. We hand-build WordPress themes without page builders, which keeps pages light and easier to maintain; that design time is already in our package prices.
Products and content
For a shop, variety matters more than volume. Fifty simple products are quick; fifty products with sizes, colours and mixed VAT treatment need more set-up and testing. Someone also has to load them, write descriptions and prepare photos. If that someone is your supplier, it belongs on the quote.
Content is the most underestimated cost of all. Businesses plan to write their own copy, and the launch slips by six weeks while they do. Professional copywriting typically adds a few hundred pounds for a small site. Original photography adds more, but is often the single biggest visual upgrade you can buy.
Speed, accessibility and SEO set-up
We aim for Lighthouse 95+ and WCAG 2.2 AA on every template. That takes care, and cheaper quotes often skip it. You pay for the shortcut later, in slow pages, lost enquiries or a rebuild. Our guide to Core Web Vitals explains why speed shows up in both rankings and sales.
DIY, freelancer, small agency or large agency?
The supplier you choose changes the price as much as the specification does. This comparison is for a typical ten-page small business site; figures are rounded, illustrative ranges.
| Item | DIY builder | Freelancer | Small agency (e.g. WE-DEV) | Large / London agency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Build cost (excl. VAT) | £0 | £500–£2,500 | £750–£3,000 | £5,000–£20,000+ |
| Yearly running cost | £150–£400 plan fees | £150–£600 | £150–£600 | Often a retainer |
| Your time | 40+ hours | 10–20 hours | 8–15 hours | 10–20 hours (more meetings) |
| Who fixes it when it breaks | You | One person, if available | A team, with cover | A team, at higher rates |
| Do you own the site? | No, you rent it | Usually, check | Yes, code and domain | Usually, check |
| Best for | Testing an idea | Simple, well-defined sites | Sites that must win work | Large brands, complex programmes |
DIY builders are fine for testing an idea, but you rent rather than own the site, and over three years the total is closer to an agency build than most people expect. We add it up in Wix vs a web agency.
A good freelancer can be excellent value. The risk is continuity: illness, a full diary or a career change can leave you unable to get changes made. Ask who else has access to the code and hosting.
Larger agencies bring strategy, research and big teams, which is worth paying for on a national brand’s site and wasted on a ten-page site for a solicitor in Edinburgh. Smaller agencies sit in between: fixed packages for simple sites, hourly hire for the rest, and a founder who answers the phone.
Running costs: what to budget every year
| Item | Typical UK cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Domain (.co.uk / .uk) | £10–£20 a year | Free for 5 years with our Business / E-commerce package |
| Hosting | £60–£600 a year | Brochure sites at the low end, busy WooCommerce shops at the top or above |
| SSL certificate | Usually free | Via your host or Cloudflare |
| Business email | Per user per month | Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 |
| Premium plugins / licences | £0–£300 a year | Depends on the build; we avoid unnecessary ones |
| Maintenance and support | £30–£200 a month | Updates, backups, monitoring, small changes |
| Payment fees | Per transaction | See our Stripe vs PayPal vs GoCardless comparison |
For a small WordPress brochure site, a few hundred pounds a year is realistic if you look after it properly. A shop costs more, mostly in hosting and payment fees. What a good maintenance plan should cover is in our WordPress maintenance guide.
Costs that catch people out
- Changes after launch. Some suppliers bill for every comma. Check the rate for changes before you sign, and make sure you have a CMS for simple edits.
- Migrating an old site. Moving content and setting up 301 redirects so you keep your Google rankings takes real time. It is easy to leave out of a quote and painful to skip.
- Cookie consent and legal pages. A banner that actually meets UK GDPR and PECR, plus a privacy notice that matches what the site does. Our cookie banner guide covers the rules.
- Accessibility retrofits. Fixing accessibility on a finished site costs far more than building it in. Under the Equality Act 2010, service providers are expected to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people, and that includes your website.
- Locked-in hosting. Some cheap packages only run on the supplier’s own hosting at the supplier’s price. Make sure you can take the site elsewhere.
- VAT surprise. Most agencies quote excluding VAT. If you are not VAT-registered, add 20 % to every figure before you compare.
What you can realistically get for your budget
| Budget (excl. VAT) | What it realistically buys |
|---|---|
| Under £500 | A simple, well-built five-page site (our Startup Website), or a DIY builder with your own time |
| £500–£1,000 | A ten to fifteen page site with a CMS, and at the top end bookings and payments (Pro or Elite) |
| £1,000–£3,000 | A premium custom site or a starter online shop, or a standard site plus some custom integration hours |
| £3,000–£10,000 | A properly specified shop with imports and feeds, or a site with a client area and CRM connection |
| £10,000+ | Custom web applications, portals, larger e-commerce on Magento or bespoke code, mobile apps |
If an app is part of the plan, our separate guide to app development costs in the UK breaks those numbers down.
Does location still affect price?
Less than it used to, but yes. Central London agencies carry central London overheads, and their day rates show it. Agencies in Manchester, Leeds, Bristol or the Home Counties are often noticeably cheaper for comparable work. Most projects now run remotely anyway: we work with clients across the UK over video calls and shared project boards. Our team is based in St Albans, about 20 minutes from King’s Cross on Thameslink, so we can meet in person in London and the Home Counties when that helps. It is a nice option, not a requirement.
How to compare website quotes: a checklist
Put your quotes side by side and check each one against this list:
- Is the price including or excluding VAT?
- Who owns the code, the content and the domain? It should be you.
- Is the design custom or a template? Ask to see live examples, not mock-ups.
- Is mobile layout included explicitly, or an add-on?
- Who writes the content and supplies the photos?
- What SEO set-up is included: titles, meta descriptions, sitemap, Search Console submission, redirects from the old site?
- Is accessibility tested, and to what standard? WCAG 2.2 AA is the benchmark.
- How many design revisions are included?
- What does aftercare cost: hosting, updates, backups, small changes?
- What are the payment terms, and what happens if the project stalls?
A quote that answers all ten clearly is usually worth more than a cheaper one that leaves half of them open.
Our recommendation
If you are a new or small service business, start with the Pro Website and spend the difference on good photos. If your site must take bookings or payments, go to Elite or add hours for the integration. If you sell online, budget at least £3,000 for the build plus realistic running costs, and do not cut corners on checkout testing. If your needs are more like software than a website, buy hours and build in stages so you are never committed to more than you can see.
If you want a firm number, tell us what you need and we will come back with a fixed quote or an estimate in hours, with VAT shown. For larger builds, our web development service page explains how we scope and price them.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a basic small business website cost in the UK?
A basic brochure site of five to ten pages typically costs £500–£3,000 from a freelancer or small agency, excluding VAT. Our Startup Website is £350 + VAT for five pages (£598 + VAT with CMS and mobile layout), and our Pro Website is £750 + VAT for ten pages with a CMS.
Are website prices quoted with or without VAT?
Most UK agencies quote business prices excluding VAT. If your supplier is VAT-registered and you cannot reclaim VAT, add 20 % to every figure. All WE-DEV prices exclude VAT; for example, the Pro Website is £750 + VAT, or £900 in total.
What are the yearly running costs of a website?
Budget for a domain (around £10–£20 a year for a .co.uk), hosting (roughly £60–£600 a year), any paid plugins, business email and maintenance. For a small WordPress site, a few hundred pounds a year is realistic; online shops cost more because of hosting and payment fees.
Is it cheaper to pay by the hour or for a fixed-price package?
For a standard brochure site or shop, a package is usually cheaper. Hourly hire suits unclear or changing scope, integrations and ongoing improvements. Our hours never expire and get cheaper in bulk, from 5 % off at 10 hours to 25 % off at 100 hours.
Why do website quotes vary so much?
Suppliers include different things: custom design or a template, copywriting, SEO set-up, accessibility testing, integrations, project management and aftercare. London overheads also push some agency rates up. Compare quotes line by line rather than on the headline price.
Do you work with businesses outside Hertfordshire and London?
Yes. We work with clients across the UK, mostly remotely over video calls. Our office is in St Albans, so we can also meet in person in London and the Home Counties.
Photo: Jakub Żerdzicki via Unsplash
