How Much Should You Spend on a Website?

It is one of the hardest questions to answer because website prices are all over the place.

You can spend £500. You can spend £5,000. You can spend £20,000 or £30,000. And the uncomfortable truth is that the most expensive website is not automatically the best one.

Generally, you do get what you pay for. But I have also seen businesses pay far too much and get very little in return.

For me, the better question is not simply, 'How much should a website cost?' It is, 'What does my business actually need this website to do, and what is a sensible investment to achieve that?'

Start with what you need the website to achieve

A small local business that mainly gets work through referrals may need something very different from a company expecting its website to generate a steady flow of enquiries.

The size of the website matters. The functionality matters. Ecommerce, booking systems, integrations and bespoke development can all increase the amount of work involved.

There can also be costs around the website itself. Professional photography, video, branding or a specialist copywriter can sometimes add far more value than simply spending another few thousand pounds on the build.

So before you start comparing prices, work out what you actually need.

If you only have £500 or £1,000

If somebody came to me with a £500 budget, the first thing I would probably ask is whether there is any way they could stretch it.

That is not because everybody needs an expensive website. It is because trying to buy too much website for too little money can become a false economy.

We had a business come to us years ago with a very limited budget. They went elsewhere and spent around £500. It did not work. They then spent another £500 trying again. That did not work either. Eventually they came back to us and paid for the website they actually needed.

They ended up spending more than if they had done it properly at the beginning.

But if £500 really is all you have, my advice is not to pretend it is £5,000. Keep things simple.

A clean, professional holding page that explains who you are, what you do and how to contact you is better than spending the same money on a larger website that looks poor and damages confidence in the business.

Get something professional online that does no harm, keep building the business, save some money and invest in the fuller website when you are ready.

Do not try to buy a £5,000 website for £500

This is probably the simplest way I can explain the lower end of the market.

If you only have a few hundred pounds, build the best small website you can afford. Do not try to squeeze strategy, bespoke design, ten service pages, SEO, copywriting and advanced functionality into a budget that cannot realistically cover the work.

Something has to give, and normally it is quality, time or both.

A freelancer or a simple platform may be perfectly sensible at that stage. The important thing is being realistic about what the website is expected to achieve.

What about a £15,000 or £20,000 website?

At the other end of the scale, expensive websites can absolutely be justified.

We have worked on websites with more than 1,000 pages. Large ecommerce projects, complex integrations, bespoke development, custom plugins and unusual functionality can involve a huge amount of work.

A £20,000 website is not automatically overpriced.

But if somebody is quoting £15,000 or £20,000 for a fairly standard website with fewer than 20 pages and no significant functionality, I would want a very clear explanation of what I was getting for the money.

Look at the agency's previous work. Read the testimonials. Speak to previous clients if appropriate. And if the website is being sold to you as a business-growth or lead-generation investment, put the agency under a bit of pressure.

At SMK, our lead-generating websites are built around a commercial outcome. If the goal is more enquiries, the structure, content, SEO and calls to action all need to support that.

If you are being asked to make a large investment, ask questions such as:

What results have similar websites achieved?

How is this website designed to generate enquiries?

What are you doing that justifies the difference in price?

What is included in the strategy, content and SEO?

What functionality or bespoke development is involved?

Nobody can responsibly guarantee that a new website will generate an exact number of enquiries. There are too many variables. But if lead generation is the reason you are being asked to spend £20,000, the agency should be able to explain its approach and show evidence that it has worked before.

I have been asked why SMK is so much cheaper

I have had this exact conversation in a potential client meeting.

Our quote was around £3,500 to £4,000. The client had another quote in front of him for roughly £13,000. He quite reasonably asked me, 'Stephen, what is the difference?'

Part of the answer was simply our business model.

We have an experienced team based overseas, particularly in the Philippines, which gives us a different cost base from an agency carrying a large UK office and all the overheads that come with it.

There is nothing wrong with the other agency having those costs. But ultimately, a business has to price in a way that supports its overheads.

We tend to price our websites around the work involved in delivering them rather than asking what the maximum possible value of the website might be to the client.

If we priced purely on potential return on investment, you could argue that some websites should cost £20,000, £30,000 or £40,000 because of the business they can generate. That is not how we have chosen to price our work.

Our pricing reflects the work involved and our cost base, not the maximum price we think we can persuade somebody to pay.

You can see our current starting points on our web design Belfast and lead-generation pages. At the moment, our published ranges start around £2,000 for a smaller foundation website, with more substantial lead-generation projects typically falling around £3,000 to £5,000, and larger strategic sites priced individually.

When you have three quotes, compare what you are actually getting

This is where website quotes become difficult.

A £2,000 quote, a £5,000 quote and a £12,000 quote may not be three prices for the same product.

You need to get underneath the headline figure and make the comparison as close to like-for-like as possible.

I would look at:

How many pages are included?

Is the design bespoke or based heavily on an existing theme?

How is the website being built?

Who writes or improves the content?

Is SEO planned from the beginning or added at the end?

Who owns and controls the website after launch?

How easy is the site for your team to update?

What training is included?

What integrations or bespoke functionality are included?

What happens after launch?

I would also separate the build from hosting and ongoing support when comparing proposals. They are connected, but they are different services. Understand what happens if the website is hacked, needs restored, needs software updated or simply needs help six months after launch.

Theme-based versus bespoke websites

This is another area worth understanding when you compare quotes.

There is nothing automatically wrong with using a WordPress theme. For the right budget and project, it can be a perfectly sensible solution.

But you should know what you are buying.

Ask whether the agency is starting from an off-the-shelf theme such as Divi, Salient or another pre-built system, or whether the design and build are being created specifically around your business.

A bespoke approach normally involves more planning and design work. Whether that additional investment is worthwhile depends on what the website needs to achieve.

Content and SEO can change the value of the quote

Two websites with the same number of pages can still involve very different amounts of work.

One agency might ask you to supply every word. Another may research the business, plan the structure and help create the first draft of the content.

The same applies to SEO. There is a big difference between adding a few keywords and meta descriptions at the end and actually planning the site architecture, service pages, search intent and internal linking before the design begins.

Those things take time, but they can also make the website much more useful as a business asset.

We have written separately about who should write your website content, because content is one of the areas that can make two apparently similar website quotes very different.

Google's people-first content guidance is also a useful reminder that SEO content should genuinely help the visitor. Paying for more pages has little value if those pages exist only to target keywords.

Should you think of a website as a cost or an investment?

I tend to think of a good website as an investment rather than simply a cost.

That does not mean everybody should spend as much as possible. It means the amount you invest should make sense against what you expect the website to do.

If the website is mainly there so people who already know your business can check that you are legitimate, you may not need a huge project.

If you expect it to attract new customers, rank for commercially valuable searches and generate enquiries for years, it makes sense to invest more in getting the structure, content, design and SEO right.

Spending more does not automatically mean getting more back. But if you choose the right team and invest in the things that matter, a good website should support the business for years rather than simply sit online.

My advice before choosing a quote

Do not automatically choose the cheapest quote.

Do not automatically choose the most expensive quote either.

Work out what you need. Compare the proposals properly. Look at the agency's work and results. Ask awkward questions. Make sure you understand what happens after launch.

Then choose the team you trust to build the website your business actually needs.

Frequently asked questions

The main thing

There is no magic number that tells you what a website should cost.

If your budget is tiny, keep the website tiny and do it properly. If somebody is asking you for £20,000, make sure there is a real reason for the price.

Most importantly, stop comparing quotes by the number at the bottom of the page. Compare what is actually being built, who is building it, how it supports your goals and what evidence you have that the team can deliver.

A website is only good value if it does the job you bought it to do.

If you have received a website quote and you are not sure whether it represents good value, send it to SMK for a chat. We will tell you what we think you actually need, even if that means recommending something smaller.