THE SHORT VERSION
The price of a website depends on what yours needs: page quantity, custom configurations, ecommerce and bespoke features all move the number. Every project is quoted individually and fixed before work starts. Here’s what actually drives the cost, and how to get a real number for yours.
Where prices start, and why there’s no menu
| Type | Timescale | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Brochure website (5–10 pages) | 3–4 weeks | Trades, professional services, local businesses |
| Ecommerce store | 6–8 weeks | Retailers, makers, D2C brands |
| Web app / bespoke software | 8–12 weeks | Booking systems, portals, internal tools |
We don’t publish a price list, because a fixed menu answers the wrong question. A five-page site for a plumber and a five-page site for a clinic with online booking are different jobs wearing the same description, and pricing off a menu means one of you overpays. Every project we quote is priced bespoke on what it actually needs, fixed in writing before we start, and honoured at that number.
What actually moves the price
1. Number of pages, but less than you’d think
Doubling the page count doesn’t double the price. The expensive parts are design decisions and engineering foundations; extra pages using the same components are cheap. A 6-page and a 10-page site are often closer in price than you’d expect.
2. Copywriting
Who writes the words? “We’ll send you the text” is where projects go to die, and why we include copywriting in our quotes. If an agency’s price seems low, check whether writing is in it.
3. Ecommerce complexity
Fifty products with simple options is one job; three thousand products with variants, wholesale pricing and a stock feed from your EPOS is another. The catalogue drives ecommerce cost more than the design does.
4. Custom functionality
Booking, quoting calculators, member areas, integrations with your existing software, each is real engineering. This is where a brochure site quietly becomes an app project, and where fixed scoping up front saves you from invoice roulette.
5. SEO done properly vs “SEO-friendly”
Every agency claims SEO. The difference between a checkbox and keyword-targeted page structure, schema markup and Core Web Vitals engineering is real, honest work, and it’s the part of any quote that decides whether anyone ever finds the site.
The red flags
- “£299 all-in.” That’s a template, a licence fee in disguise, or bait. Usually all three.
- Monthly “rental” with no ownership. £40/month forever and the site was never yours. Walk away and you keep nothing.
- No fixed quote. Day rates on an undefined scope means the budget is a wish, not a number.
- Nothing measurable promised. If a proposal never mentions speed, rankings or conversion, the deliverable is “a website exists”.
Where cheap gets expensive
The £500 site that never ranks costs you every enquiry it didn’t generate, invisible money, but real. A trades business invisible on Google is handing its reputation’s enquiries to whoever ranks first; the gap between a cheap site and a properly engineered one is the most expensive thing most owners never pay for. See what a trades site built properly looks like in our KG Glazing case study.
Ongoing costs to budget for
- Hosting: a modest monthly cost, quoted with your build, see what proper hosting includes
- Maintenance: a rolling monthly plan for updates, security and small changes. plan details here
- Domain: a small annual renewal
Get a real number for your project
A fixed quote beats a guess every time. Tell us what you need through the form and you’ll have yours within 48 hours, and if you want to see the standard before spending anything, start with a free homepage mockup. Our Manchester web design team builds for businesses across the city, Stockport, Bolton and the wider North West.
