How much does a website cost for a small business in 2026?

Ask five agencies what a website costs and you’ll get five versions of “it depends” - followed by a discovery call, a proposal, and a number that seems to have been picked after seeing your car. Here are actual numbers instead.

The short answer

For a UK small business in 2026, a professionally built website typically lands in one of three brackets:

• £300-£800 - a focused one-page site or small starter site, built properly
• £1,500-£4,000 - a full multi-page site designed around search and conversion
• £5,000+ - larger sites: many locations, bespoke functionality, content programmes

Anything dramatically cheaper is usually a template with your logo dropped in. Anything dramatically more expensive should come with a very persuasive explanation.

At INKON the equivalent numbers are on the pricing page: a five-page Starter Site is £500 to own outright - or from £99 a month with the build included, right up to the full Growth multi-page build on the £249 plan.

What actually drives the price

Pages. Every genuinely useful page is researched, written, designed and built. A ten-page site isn’t twice a five-page site, but it’s not far off.

Copywriting. Words sell the job. If the quote doesn’t include writing, you’ll either pay extra later or end up writing it yourself at 11pm.

Search work. “We’ll make it SEO-friendly” can mean anything. A site built to rank involves keyword mapping, page structure, schema markup and location pages - real work, properly priced.

Functionality. Booking systems, calculators, member areas - each is its own small project. Most local businesses need none of them.

Who answers your enquiries. The newest line on the quote, and the one we’d argue matters most: a website that replies to every enquiry in seconds - nights and weekends included - wins jobs a prettier site loses. That’s standard on our plans.

The hidden costs to ask about

1. Hosting - £10-£40 a month at most agencies. Free on every INKON plan.
2. “Maintenance” - often £30-£100 a month for software updates you can’t see. Ask exactly what’s included.
3. Changes - the killer. If every tweak is billable, the cheap build gets expensive fast. Small changes are included in our plans.
4. Your domain - £10-£15 a year. Always register it yourself, in your name. Any decent agency will help you do that and never hold it hostage.

Monthly plans vs paying upfront

Paying upfront suits businesses with the cash who want to own everything from day one. Monthly plans suit businesses that would rather keep the cash and treat the website like the utility it is - included build, hosting, support and updates as one predictable bill.

The honest test of any monthly plan is the exit: what happens if you leave? With ours, you can buy the site out at any time, and your domain and content are always yours. If an agency can’t answer that question crisply, that’s your answer.

So what should you pay?

A trades or local service business that needs to look credible and capture enquiries: a five-page starter site around £500 does the job, and you can grow it later. A business that lives off local search - where ranking one town higher pays for the site in a month: a search-led multi-page build on a monthly plan that includes the ongoing search work (that’s exactly what our Grow plan is - the build itself is included).

Every INKON price, including the add-ons most agencies bury, is published on the pricing page. If the website you’re being quoted elsewhere costs more, it should do more - make them show you what.