How Much Does a Small Business Website Cost?
Ask around and you will get answers from fifty pounds a month to five figures for a single build. Everyone sounds sure they are right. They usually are, about their own situation. The honest answer to what a small business website costs is not one number. It is three different products wearing the same word, and only one of them has a price you can look up.
How much does a small business website actually cost?
It depends entirely on which of three routes you take, and only one of them has a fixed, published price. A DIY builder like Wix or Squarespace charges a monthly subscription you can check today, before you commit to anything. A freelancer or a studio charges for their own time against a scope you agree together, which is why nobody can quote you a single figure without knowing what you want built. Neither of those is a dodge. It is the real shape of the market.
What does a DIY website builder cost?
This is the one part of the market with a real, checkable answer. Wix's own pricing page, checked today, lists a handful of paid tiers on annual billing running from around £9 a month for a basic personal-style plan up to the mid-twenties for the plan most small businesses would pick, before a much pricier top tier aimed at larger sellers. Squarespace's own pricing page follows a similar shape, from around £12 a month up to nearer £30 for the plan with online selling built in. Paying monthly instead of annually costs more on both, and promotional rates shown at signup usually apply only to the first term, so budget the headline price rather than the offer.
Wix's pricing page and Squarespace's pricing page are worth opening yourself before you decide anything, since plans and prices change and the one that matters is the one showing today.
What does a freelancer or a studio charge?
Here is the honest bit. There is no independent, published figure for this. Treat anyone who states one flatly as guessing. A freelancer or a studio is quoting for their own time against a scope that varies hugely from one business to the next, so the number that comes back reflects the job, not a market rate sitting on a chart somewhere. Asking around gets you wildly different answers partly because people are describing different things when they say "a website": a subscription, a one-off build, a project that also covered a rebrand.
What moves the price: how many pages, who writes the words and takes the photos, whether ongoing edits are bundled in or billed separately, and how quickly you need it done. What a proper website quote should actually spell out covers this in detail, and it applies to a freelancer and a studio alike.
Why won't anyone give you one number?
Because a fair one does not exist until the scope does. A three-page site for a mobile hairdresser and a booking-enabled site for a busy clinic are both "a small business website", and quoting them the same would be dishonest in one direction or the other. The DIY route avoids this by selling you a fixed tool rather than a finished result, which is exactly why it is the only one with a sticker price. Freelancer or studio also comes down to what you can check about each before you commit, not just what they charge.
What are you paying for at each price point?
| Route | What you're paying for | Starting point |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder | A monthly subscription. You build and edit it yourself. | Published, fixed monthly price |
| Freelancer | One person's time: design, build and usually the copy. | No published range, agreed by scope |
| Studio | A small team, plus whatever keeps the business running. | No published range, agreed by scope |
ByRender sits in the studio row: setup here starts from £495, with hosting, security, backups and edits from £69 a month, one data point among the others in that row rather than the answer to the whole question. The site is rendered from a short form first and sent as a private preview link before anything is owed, so you are seeing the actual result before you decide whether the price was worth it.
What should you do next?
Work out which row you are in before you ask anyone for a number. Comfortable doing your own edits and want something live quickly? Price up Wix and Squarespace directly and compare the tier you would use, not the cheapest one on the page. Want someone else doing the work? Take the same itemised checklist to a freelancer and a studio and compare what each quote includes, not just the number at the bottom of it. Either way, this sits inside the wider set of choices covered in what a website actually costs and who to trust with it, and if you want to see what a finished studio render looks like before you commit to anything, that is worth a look too.
Frequently asked questions
Is a DIY website builder always cheaper than hiring someone?
In cash terms, yes, almost always. What it costs instead is your own time: writing the words, choosing the layout, keeping it updated. Hiring someone is paying for that time to be someone else's job rather than yours.
Does a more expensive website rank better on Google?
No. Google's own ranking systems care about the site's content, structure and how it actually loads, not what you paid for it. A £300 site built properly can outrank a £3,000 one built carelessly.
Why did three website quotes come back with three different numbers?
Usually because they were not quoting for the same thing. Page count, who writes the copy, whether photography is included and how many rounds of edits are bundled in all move the price, and a quote that does not spell those out is easy to misread as more expensive or cheaper than it actually is.
Should I pay for a website upfront, or after I have seen it?
Whichever you agree to, ask the question before you sign rather than after. Some studios build first and bill once you have approved what they have made. Others take a deposit against a promise. Neither is automatically wrong, but you should know which one you are getting into.