How much is it going to cost? It’s a perfectly reasonable question—and most of the time it is one we will answer before starting any work. We usually price on a per-project basis and as long as the specification doesn’t change half way through then the price we quoted is the price we charge.
Every project is different, so we don’t have a stock pricelist. However we’ve built enough websites to know what is typically required and the scenarios outlined below provide a good indication of the sort of budget you’re likely to need. But don’t forget to add in a little extra for contingency—you’d be surprised how many people change their mind once they see things coming together.
Starter website for a small business
A starter website for a small business will cost from £2450 plus VAT. This covers the design, build and launch of your website and gets you your first five or six pages with the usual bells and whistles—like an enquiry form so your customers can easily contact you and an interactive Google map to help your customers find the physical location of your business.
We will help you to make sure that your site is GDPR compliant and meets the UK’s legal requirements for business websites. You’ll get access to WordPress—the content management system behind your website—so that you can easily make updates whenever you like.
Prior to launch we will carry out on-page optimisation of your content to make it easy for Google to recommend your website to new visitors. We will also provide you with a copy of our Website Owner’s Manual—a handy reference document containing technical information, troubleshooting tips and a maintenance schedule for you to implement. A typical timeframe from receipt of your order to public launch is four to six weeks.
A cheaper option
Not everyone can justify that level of investment. Some customers have very simple requirements and—let’s face it—they want something cheaper. In these cases a more utilitarian and less design-focussed approach is more appropriate. For £1250 plus VAT you’ll get a basic website with a home page and four or five secondary pages that follow a common layout. You still get the benefits of using WordPress—so you can easily update your site yourself—but the templates that determine the design and layout of your pages will be off-the-shelf. As such your site will have a less bespoke and more generic appearance, with customisation limited to your company logo and colours. However this can be a very cost-effective route to having a smart, professional website. A typical timeframe from receipt of your order to public launch is two to four weeks.
Online shop
Setting up an e-commerce site is a bit more involved. Introducing the complexity of a shopping cart, inventory and order management system requires a deeper understanding of your business, more indepth configuration and a greater number of pages and templates. Ultimatley the cost will depend on the complexity of your products and their variants, how you plan to handle payments, and any website integration with third party systems. The basic cost for an e-commerce site is £3950 plus VAT but realistically could end up being more than this—particularly if you need it to talk to your online accounts, CRM or back office systems. You should also budget for the ongoing time, support and marketing overheads associated with an online shop—it won’t just look after itself.
Overhauling an existing website
Rennovating an existing website needs a little more care and consideration. Not only will some or all of your content need migrating to your new site, but established pages may be ranking well on search engines or have several backlinks from other websites. The resulting traffic could literally disappear overnight if these pages are moved without redirecting to suitable replacements. In short, before making any drastic changes to the structure and content of an established site it is wise to carry out a comprehensve content and traffic audit to determine which pages, if any, have value—and to plan how best to retain that traffic and search engine equity. The cost for this will depend on the volume and condition of your content, but it is something that will need to be factored in.
It is important to note…
The prices outlined above do not include the creation and provision of any content. If you require assistance with copywriting, photography, illustration, video or any other aspect of content creation then we are happy to discuss requirements and provide appropriate quotations or referrals.
Following the launch of your website we provide close support for the first 30 days, during which time we’ll deal with any issues that may come to light (due to bugs in the code, inaccuracies in content, etc.). After this we’ll continue to provide support and maintenance of your site on an ad hoc basis as requested and any work we carry out will be charged at our prevailing hourly rate. Alternatively you may wish to subscribe to one of our website care plans which will protect your investment while giving you peace of mind at a predictable, fixed cost.
Web hosting
Your website will require hosting—which is essentially rented space on a publicly available server. As a reseller for various service providers we can set this up and manage it on your behalf. Our basic hosting packages are outlined below. If you prefer to source your own hosting then of course we can work with a service provider of your choice. Please ask if you need to check the technical requirements for your website before committing to a third party hosting package.
Web Hosting Packages
Holding Plan
Sufficient for a one page site
£75
per year (plus VAT)
100MB disk space
1GB per month data transfer
Daily backups
DNS management included
Standard Plan
A solid foundation for your website
£200*
per year (plus VAT)
2GB disk space
15GB per month data transfer
Database hosting
Daily backups
DNS management included
Enterprise Plan
Bespoke managed hosting
£600+
per year (plus VAT)
Dedicated VPS
High capacity
Additionally secure
Custom configuration
*A 25% discount is available on our Standard Plan for solo businesses and non-profits/charities.