Ask three web designers how much a website costs and you can quite easily get three very different answers.
One might quote £1,000. Another £3,000. Another £10,000. All three could be proposing a WordPress website with roughly the same number of pages.
That makes buying a website surprisingly difficult. If two companies are apparently offering the same thing, why does one cost several times more than the other? And, more importantly, how do you know what your business actually needs?
For an established UK business, a professionally built website can cost anything from the low thousands to well into five figures. That range isn’t particularly helpful on its own because the word website describes the finished thing, not everything that went into creating it.
The price starts making much more sense once you stop counting pages and start counting decisions.
Why can one website cost £1,000 and another £10,000?
Imagine two accountancy firms each want a new eight-page website.
For the first, the client provides a logo, brand colours, photographs and all the written content. The designer chooses an existing layout, adapts it to the brand, adds the supplied content, builds a contact form and gets everything working on mobile.
For the second, the project starts by understanding the firm. Which clients does it want more of? Which services matter most? Why do existing clients choose it? How has the firm changed since the previous website was built?
From there, somebody works out the structure of the website, decides what needs to be communicated on each page, writes the copy, designs the site around that content, builds it, handles the SEO foundations, tests everything and manages the move from the old website to the new one.
Both invoices could contain the words “8-page WordPress website”.
They aren’t the same product.
The first project is primarily about producing a website from decisions that have already been made. The second includes making many of those decisions in the first place.
Neither approach is automatically better. If you already have strong positioning, excellent copy, a clear website structure and everything else ready to go, paying someone to rediscover all of it would be unnecessary. But if those things aren’t clear, somebody needs to work them out.
That’s often where a large part of the difference in price comes from.
You’re not really paying for pages
Page count is one of the easiest ways to describe the size of a website, which is why it appears in so many website packages. It’s useful for controlling scope, but it’s a poor way to judge value.
A homepage might require understanding several parts of a business, deciding what deserves prominence, establishing the order in which information should appear, writing the copy and designing a series of different sections around it.
A privacy policy is also a page.
Treating those as two identical units doesn’t tell you very much.
The same is true across a whole website. Ten pages created from supplied content and an existing template can be a much smaller project than six pages that require strategy, copywriting and individual design decisions.
So when you see a package advertising a particular number of pages, treat that number for what it is: a useful description of scope. It doesn’t tell you how much thought is going into those pages.
What are you actually paying for?
A lot of the work involved in creating a good website happens before there’s much to look at.
Someone needs to understand the business and what the website is supposed to achieve. That sounds obvious, but it can involve making decisions the business itself hasn’t previously had to articulate. Who exactly are we trying to attract? Which services should lead? What makes us meaningfully different? What does a prospective customer need to understand before they’re comfortable making contact?
Then there’s structure. A business might offer eight services, work across four sectors and have several different types of customer. Putting all of that into a navigation menu isn’t a strategy. Someone has to decide what matters, what can be grouped together and how a visitor should move through the information.
Copy is another substantial part of the job when it’s included. Extracting useful information from people who know their business extremely well and turning it into clear, persuasive website copy takes time. It isn’t simply filling the empty boxes after the design has been approved.
Only then do you get to what most people think of as web design: typography, layouts, imagery, spacing, interaction and the overall visual character of the site. After that comes the build itself, making those designs work across different screen sizes and turning them into a website the client can actually use.
Finally, there is the less glamorous work around launch: forms, redirects where required, SEO fundamentals, analytics, performance, testing and making sure the new site actually works once it replaces the old one.
Not every website project includes all of those things. That’s precisely why comparing two quotes based only on the final number can be misleading.
The expensive part can happen before anything is designed
It’s easy to judge web design by what you can see. A beautifully designed site looks as though a lot of work has gone into it, while strategy, structure and copy are largely invisible once the project is finished.
Yet those early decisions often determine whether the design has anything useful to work with.
If the website is aimed at the wrong customer, giving it a more sophisticated visual identity doesn’t solve the problem. If the most commercially important service is buried three levels into the navigation, better typography doesn’t make it easier to find. If the copy doesn’t explain why someone should choose the business, adding animation isn’t going to provide the missing argument.
A beautiful website that makes the wrong business look better is still the wrong website.
This doesn’t mean every small business needs weeks of workshops and an enormous strategy document before anybody is allowed to open a design programme. That can become wasteful in the other direction. The amount of thinking should be proportionate to the project.
But there is a difference between avoiding unnecessary process and avoiding the important decisions altogether.
When a £500–£1,000 website might be exactly what you need
There are plenty of situations where spending several thousand pounds on a website would be unnecessary.
If you’re testing a business idea, starting a side project or simply need a credible place online where people can find your contact details and understand what you do, keeping the investment low makes sense. A good template, website builder or capable freelancer may give you everything you need.
The same applies when the website isn’t particularly important to how customers choose you. There is little value in buying strategy, bespoke design and substantial copywriting simply because those things are available.
A cheaper website isn’t automatically a bad website. It’s a problem when you’re buying a cheaper type of project while expecting the outcome of a much more involved one.
If your budget buys design and build but nobody is responsible for positioning, structure or copy, those jobs don’t disappear. They simply become your responsibility.
For some businesses, that’s absolutely fine.
When spending more starts to make sense
The calculation changes as a business becomes more established.
An established company may have several services, different types of customer, a reputation to protect and a clearer idea of the work it wants more of. Its website might be visited after referrals, during recruitment, while suppliers or partners are carrying out checks, or by prospects comparing several credible businesses.
There is simply more for the website to understand.
That’s why spending more can start to make sense. Not because an established company deserves a fancier website, but because getting the message, structure and positioning wrong has greater consequences.
A business doing good work can live with a mediocre website for a surprisingly long time, particularly when referrals keep enquiries coming in. The problem becomes more noticeable when the company wants to move upmarket, attract a different type of customer, communicate a growing range of services or make the website contribute more actively to growth.
At that point, the value isn’t in having more design. It’s in getting more of the decisions right.
What pushes the price of a website up?
Some websites genuinely require considerably more work to build.
Ecommerce is an obvious example. Products, payments, delivery rules, customer accounts and order management introduce requirements that don’t exist on a straightforward marketing website. Booking systems, membership areas, directories, customer portals, multiple languages and integrations with other business systems can all increase complexity.
Content can have a big impact too. Moving hundreds or thousands of pages from an existing site is very different from rebuilding a ten-page company website. Bespoke photography, video production, complex animation and substantial custom development all add specialist work.
Then there’s the way the project itself is delivered. A larger agency may involve strategists, account managers, copywriters, designers, developers and project managers. That model can make complete sense for a large or complicated organisation that needs those resources, but it inevitably costs more to operate.
A smaller studio or freelancer has less overhead and fewer layers, which can make the same budget go further on the right type of project. The trade-off is capacity: a lean team may not be the right choice for a technically complex website involving several departments and extensive integrations.
More expensive doesn’t automatically mean better. Cheaper doesn’t automatically mean better value either. The useful question is whether the delivery model fits the problem you’re trying to solve.
Don’t forget what happens after launch
The build price isn’t necessarily the full cost of owning a website.
You’ll need a domain and somewhere to host the site. Depending on how it’s built, there may also be software or plugin licences. Somebody needs to keep the website updated, backed up and secure, and there may be costs for future content changes or development.
These aren’t reasons to avoid having a website. They’re simply worth understanding before comparing prices.
Ask what happens after launch. Is hosting included? For how long? Who handles updates? Are backups taken? What happens if the site goes down? Can you make changes yourself? Are there software licences you’ll need to renew? What happens if you decide to leave the provider?
A cheap build followed by expensive ongoing charges can become a very different proposition over several years. Equally, paying monthly for proper management can be worthwhile if you’d rather somebody else remained responsible for keeping the website healthy.
The important thing is knowing which arrangement you’re agreeing to.
How to compare two website quotes properly
If you’re looking at two quotes with significantly different prices, don’t start by asking which one has more pages. Look at who is responsible for the decisions that need to be made.
Does the project include understanding your customers and positioning, or are you expected to provide the brief? Who decides the structure of the website? Who writes the copy? Is the design created specifically for the business or adapted from an existing template? Who supplies and prepares the imagery?
Then look at the build and launch. What SEO work is actually included? If you’re replacing an existing website, who is responsible for redirects and protecting important URLs? Are forms and analytics set up? Is the site tested across devices? Who manages the actual launch?
It’s also worth understanding the working relationship. Who will you deal with during the project? How many rounds of revisions are included? Who owns the finished website? What happens if the project expands? What will you continue paying after it goes live?
Once you’ve answered those questions, two quotes that initially looked like different prices for the same website may turn out to be proposals for completely different pieces of work.
So, what should you spend on a website?
There isn’t a number that makes sense for every business. There is, however, a sensible level of investment for the job you need the website to do.
If you simply need to get online, keep things simple. A template, DIY platform or relatively inexpensive freelance build may be exactly the right decision. Don’t buy a large strategic project to solve a small problem.
If you have an established business and the website needs to represent it properly, the job is different. Understanding the business, planning the structure, writing the content and creating an appropriate design start becoming part of what you’re buying. This is where professional SME website projects often sit.
If the website is itself a substantial piece of business infrastructure — perhaps an ecommerce operation, customer portal or platform with bespoke integrations — you’re no longer buying a straightforward company website. You’re commissioning a software and digital project, and the budget should reflect that.
The mistake is deciding what you should spend based on what somebody else’s website cost without first asking whether you’re buying the same thing.
Where Rook° sits
Rook° websites cost £2,495.
That isn’t what we think every website should cost. It’s the price we’ve set for a deliberately defined type of project: established businesses that have outgrown their current website and need the strategy, copy, design and WordPress build handled together.
The scope is deliberately clear. We handle the thinking, structure, copy, design and build, with up to 12 core pages and a target of going from brief to live in 30 days. Keeping the business lean means you work directly with the person responsible for the project rather than paying for layers of account management.
There are businesses for which £2,495 would be more than they need to spend. There are also website projects we wouldn’t attempt to squeeze into that price because the technical requirements genuinely call for a larger team, longer timeline or more substantial budget.
The point of a fixed price isn’t to suggest that all websites are worth the same amount. It’s to make it clear what this particular type of website project costs before we start talking.
After launch, Rook° Care is available at £99 per month for businesses that want us to continue looking after the WordPress website, including managed hosting, backups, updates, monitoring and ongoing support. It’s separate from the cost of creating the website because building something and looking after it are two different jobs.
What are you actually buying?
When you’re comparing website prices, the final number matters. Of course it does. But it makes much more sense when you understand what’s sitting behind it.
A £1,000 website can be excellent value when the brief is clear, the content is ready and what you need is someone good to turn those ingredients into a professional site. A £10,000 website can also be excellent value when the business problem genuinely requires deeper strategy, specialist expertise and a more involved project.
Neither price tells you whether the website will be any good.
Before choosing between them, work out which decisions have already been made, which decisions still need making and who is responsible for getting those decisions right.
Because ultimately, you’re not buying eight pages or twelve pages.
You’re buying the thinking and work that determines what goes on them.