How Much Does a Website Cost

Did you know that 88% of website users are less likely to return to a website after a bad experience?

Often, due to poor design, slow loading speed, confusing colour scheme, or complicated navigation, ruining the customer experience.

At CreateTheWeb, we have first-hand experience building high-performing websites. We transform a business from high bounce rates into conversion machines.

Look at the list below to discover how much a website costs, and why the return on investment (ROI) could level up your business!

Building a website can vary in cost. If you’re getting your website designed professionally, then we recommend having at least a £1,000 budget. Anything less than this isn’t worthwhile, and there are very few reputable website design agencies that are going to design your website for anything less.

Firstly, you must consider what you’re trying to achieve from your new website: a rebrand, easy navigation, premium design, improved SEO or a better user experience (UX). Depending on why you’re rebuilding your website, you may need something more advanced than you think.

If your budget is extremely limited (less than the advised minimum of £1,000), then your only option is to do it yourself with a DIY website builder. The cost of a DIY website builder like Wix or Squarespace can be from £10 per month.

There are some important things to consider about DIY drag and drop website builders. Firstly, it’s the tale as old as time: “You get what you pay for.” This is especially true for a DIY website builder. You can expect it to deliver little to no return on investment, and it will not improve your brand image or appearance.

Secondly, you have to do it yourself. The whole idea of using Wix or Squarespace is that you do it yourself. This means that you’re going to be taking valuable time away from your business to work on your website, which is generally a bad idea when it’s not going to deliver any return on investment.

Generally, we never recommend a DIY website builder. Having a team of web developers build something worthwhile is a smarter choice in the long run for you and your business.

If all of the below sound like you, then these are the only occasions where we would recommend this option.

A low-end website features a basic design, fewer pages, pre-made templates, simple functionality, and basic SEO. However, our websites for the lower end of the spectrum deliver on every asset.

While this is considered a “low-end website,” it does not translate to “low quality,” and it’s still a far superior solution compared to a DIY website builder, as we have explained in the point above.

At CreateTheWeb, no website is too small and it’s an excellent way to establish an online presence and start selling to your customers or clients. But, who does this website suit?

Now, a mid-tier website offers significant benefits. Investing in this range features a custom design, advanced functionality, and improved SEO.

CreateTheWeb will deliver a tailored UX, eye-catching visuals, and greater scalability features. A mid-range website is essential to scale your business.

At this level, you could also consider an ecommerce website. Generally, you can’t get an ecommerce website for anything less than £2,000.

For most businesses, £2,000 – £5,000 is what you should expect to pay for your new website. Unless you know that you only have one or two pages, or specifically ask for a low-end website, this is the price range where you can expect your quote to land. This level of website is often chosen by plumbers, consultants, restaurants, recruitment agencies and more.

Who does the budget suit?

Although a high-end website requires a greater investment, it will boost your UX, SEO performance, and conversion rates massively.

After this investment, your exceptional website will feature a complete bespoke design, maximum functionality, advanced SEO, and ongoing maintenance. We can tailor your package to suit your needs.

You can expect your quote to be in this £5,000 – £20,000 price range if your website is extremely large, important or high quality.

Your business will reap the rewards of maximum ROI, flawless performance, and a competitive edge over your competitors. Who needs a high-end website?

Unfortunately, you must also consider the monthly costs associated with a website. While they’re not often a lot, they can creep up the higher-end website you have.

You will have to pay for a number of services every year. Again, this largely depends on the type of website you have and how important your website is to you.

The first cost, which thankfully is cheap, is your domain name. A domain name is a unique name that identifies a website or email address on the internet. For example, “createtheweb.co.uk.” Your domain name will carry a yearly cost of between £15 and £100 depending on where you get it, what TLD you use, and if you get a hosting company to look after it for you (strongly recommended).

Your domain could be your only yearly cost, but, here are a few other things that you might have to pay for on a yearly basis if not;

Premium WordPress Plugins – Sometimes these are a necessity for higher quality websites.

Stock Images – If you don’t have your own images, you may have to pay yearly to use stock ones.

Other Addons – If you use other tools within the business, they may have a cost associated with connecting them to your website (like a CRM, POS system, and more).

If you manage to get away with just a domain name for your yearly costs, then that’s a win, but it’s a guarantee that you’re going to need to pay for monthly services too.

You will need to pay for your website to be hosted on a server. This is called “web hosting” and it comes with a monthly cost. Website hosting is where your website data sits on a server somewhere in the world and allows people to access it. Without hosting, your website will not go online.

Monthly web hosting costs can vary massively. If you have a small to medium-sized website, you can use standard “shared hosting” as it’s cheap and easy to set up, but it is certainly not the fastest solution. This generally costs around £10 per month.

A better option is to host your website on a virtual private server (VPS). This allows your website to utilise the entire hardware that you have paid for, rather than shared hosting where the hardware is shared amongst other websites as well. Often, you can expect your website to be x2 – x5 faster when it’s hosted on a powerful VPS. VPS web hosting can range from £30 per month to £200 per month depending on the hardware you choose.

In this article, we’ve listed various costs that you can expect to pay and a quality associated with that cost – but this isn’t always the case.

There are many web design agencies out there that charge premium costs, but deliver inferior solutions. For example, if your web designer is quoting you more than £500, and they are building the website in a DIY website builder… run away, fast.

Another area to be careful with is at the other end of the spectrum. Lots of companies are charging more than £5,000 for websites that are worth no more than £1,000. You may look at the price and think “Great! A high-quality website” but in reality, they’ve just ramped the price up as high as they can and the cost does not relate to time and resources.

There are a few ways to double check you’re getting a good value for money, you can find them below.

An easy way to double-check that you’re getting a good value is by finding out what platform your web designers are using to develop your website.

If they respond with Wix, Spacespace, Weebly, or any other DIY website builder, don’t accept the quote unless it’s less than £500.

On the other hand, if they are building your website in WordPress, Webflow, Drupal, using React, etc., then it’s a lot more likely to be of high quality.

Ask if your web designers are using a templated theme to build your website. This is a really important step, as it gives you a much clearer view of the amount of time they are spending building your website. If they’re using a template, they spent little to no time designing the core features of your website.

If they tell you that yes, they are going to be using a template – it’s not always a bad thing. If their quoted price reflects this, then it’s okay. For a templated WordPress website, you should expect to pay no more than £1,200.

There are a few important things to consider if your web designers are using a template. Templates can cause issues for you later down the line. They often do not come with updates or security patches very quickly, and even when they do, it’s very unlikely that your web designers are going to update all the software and plugins for you without slapping you with a hefty bill.

Templated websites serve a purpose, and can be a cost-effective solution when building a website. But, do not overpay for a website that’s been built using a template.

This is always an overlooked part of the equation. You have to remember that you need to get visitors to your website once it has been published live.

There is no use investing in a gorgeous website if no one is going to see it. It’s like investing in a brand-new showroom but not telling people where it is and how to get there.

There are many ways to market your website. One of them is through search engine optimisation, which you may have already had some work done for if you’ve invested heavily in the design of your website.

Another way is by using Pay Per Click (PPC) and paying Google to push your website to the top of search engines instantly. While this can be costly, it allows you to skip the wait that you’ll have when investing in an SEO campaign. We answered the “How Much Does SEO Cost?” question in our other article

Social media is another great way to get visitors to your website. If you already have a following, then you can let them know about your website, or you can run a bespoke social media advertising campaign that drives people directly to your website.

Advertising a website can vary massively in cost, and it depends on how many visitors you want to get to your website and how targeted they are.

When advertising your website with SEO, PPC, or social media, you’re free to pick a budget that works best for you.

Generally, we would recommend having a budget of between £500 per month and £5,000 per month to give your website the boost it needs when it first launches. You could even spread this budget across all of our suggestions (PPC, SEO, and social media).

Paying for a quality website can reach an ROI of 9,900%. But how? At CreateTheWeb, our expert web designers reveal the benefits of purchasing a website.

SEO is the number one organic traffic channel to your business’s website. Without strong SEO, your online presence is minimal, meaning fewer customers or clients.

An SEO-optimised website offers technical structure, faster loading speed, mobile-friendliness, improved visibility, increased traffic, and as a result, a boost in revenue.

SEO is your organic vehicle for success. While it’s a long-term investment, it’s essential and poor SEO is damaging.

Think of your website as the modern-day version of a shop. Would you stay in a run-down restaurant with long wait times and spend your hard-earned cash there? No.

You would immediately walk out and find the nearest quality restaurant. This is also true with websites. Therefore, quality UX equals increased revenue.

A smooth, coherent, navigational design gives an exceptional experience for your customers and clients. In return, you reduce your bounce rates and increase leads.

Not only does this boost your overall SEO efforts, but it also increases the time a customer spends on your website. You can’t ignore UX if you want to scale your business in 2025.

Investing in a quality website guarantees you can scale your business, increase revenue, and boost the longevity of your company.

Cutting corners with cheap websites is harmful. Understand that every penny spent on a high-performance website is a smart, long-term strategy for success.

A website is not an inconvenient expense; it’s the foundation of your online success.

But how do you choose the right web designers? At CreateTheWeb, our expert web designers have a proven track record of successfully creating websites that deliver results.

Don’t let your website underperform in 2025. Get a free quote today, and let us design the perfect website to match your budget and goals.