For a trade business, it depends on who builds it. A website builder you set up yourself costs from about £9 to £35 a month, plus your own time. Published UK price guides put a small website from a freelancer at roughly £500 to £4,000. From an agency, they put it at roughly £1,500 to £12,000. On top of that you’ll pay for a domain name, hosting and upkeep every year.
Websites don’t have a set price. The figures below come from the builders’ own pricing pages and UK web firms’ published price guides, so use them as a guide, not a quote.
Building it yourself
Website builders charge a monthly fee that includes hosting. You do the words, photos and set-up yourself.
| Builder | Plans (per month, paid yearly) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Squarespace | Basic £12. Core £17. Plus £29. With VAT that’s £14.40, £20.40 and £34.80. Paying monthly costs more | Squarespace’s UK pricing page |
| Wix | Light about £9. Core about £16. Business about £25 | UK review site Startups.co.uk (VAT not stated). Wix’s own pricing page shows US dollars |
The monthly fee is the smallest part of the cost. The bigger cost is your time: writing a page for each job you do, taking photos and setting it up properly for Google. If you’re weighing up the two names people ask about most, here’s Wix vs WordPress for a trade business.
Paying a freelancer or an agency
UK web firms publish their own price guides. They’re sellers, not neutral surveys, but they broadly agree:
| Published guide | Freelancer | Agency, small business site |
|---|---|---|
| ProfileTree (October 2026, prices exclude VAT) | £700 to £4,000 | £3,500 to £12,000 |
| Kwiboo (January 2026) | £500 to £1,500 for about five pages | £3,000 to £12,000 for a brochure site |
| Lilo (March 2026) | Not given | £1,500 to £5,000 for a small business site |
Sites that take payments or bookings cost more. Kwiboo puts ecommerce sites at £5,000 to £15,000 and Lilo at £8,000 to £30,000 or more.
The running costs people forget
Whoever builds it, a website costs money every year:
- Domain name. Krystal, a UK host, lists a .co.uk at £7.99 for the first year before VAT. Renewal prices vary by company.
- Hosting. Krystal’s own plans start at £7 a month on monthly billing (its page doesn’t say whether that includes VAT). Website builders include hosting in their monthly fee.
- Upkeep. Updates, security and changes. ProfileTree puts yearly running costs at £150 to £400 for a DIY site, £250 to £800 with a freelancer and £600 to £3,000 with an agency.
What makes a website cost more
The published guides point to the same things:
- A design made for you rather than a template.
- More pages and page types. A page for each job and each town takes longer to plan and write.
- Someone writing the words and taking proper photos.
- Bookings, payments or links to other systems.
- Ongoing changes and support after it goes live.
For a trade, the pages are where the money goes. A site with a page for each job you want more of, and each town you cover, gives Google and your customers more to find. That’s what we plan into websites for trades.
Make sure you own it
Whoever builds your site, the domain name should be registered to your business. For .uk domains, Nominet’s terms say the registrant is the person “who the domain name will be registered for”, and that’s who Nominet’s contract is with. If a web firm registers it in its own name, the contract with Nominet is theirs, not yours. Ask who the registrant is.
Ask for the domain, hosting and site logins to be in your name before you pay.
Questions about website costs
Is a cheap website worth it?
It can be, if it’s fast, works on a phone and has a page for each job you want. What matters is what’s on it, not what it cost. A cheap site with one page and no way to tap to call won’t do much for you. Here are trade website examples and what the good ones do.
Can I build my own website?
Yes. Website builders are made for it. The cost is your time, and the work that brings in jobs is the content: a page per job, your towns, your reviews and real photos. If you’re just starting out, here’s how to get your first customers before you build one.
Do I pay VAT on top?
Check every quote. Some builders and web firms show prices before VAT and some after. If a price excludes VAT, add 20%.
Do I need to pay for SEO as well?
Not always. A well-built site gives Google a page for each job and town. Getting found in busy towns often takes ongoing work on top, which is local SEO for trades. Here’s what local SEO costs.
What does SearchHawk charge for a website?
It depends on what your website needs to do. Start with a free website review. We look at your current site and the jobs and towns you want work from. Then we give you a clear, fixed quote in writing. If your site is fine as it is, we’ll tell you.