What a small business website actually costs, and what changes the price

The first thing anyone asks me is what a website costs. The second thing, usually, is why nobody will give them a straight answer.

Fair enough. Most quotes turn up after a meeting, a discovery call and a week of waiting, by which point you've lost interest.

So here's what the price is actually made of: pages, the jobs the site has to do, and what it costs to keep running. Read through it and you'll know roughly where you'd land before you ring anyone.

Why the price never comes as one number

A website isn't one thing you buy. It's a stack of decisions, and each one has a price attached.

Take two jobs I might quote in the same week. A landscaper wants five pages: who he is, the work he does, a gallery, the areas he covers, a contact form. A clinic wants people to book and pay online, and see the slot confirmed. Same word, website, but they're not the same build. One is pages and photos. The other is pages, photos and a system that has to work at nine o'clock on a Sunday night.

So the honest answer is that it depends. What it depends on is pages, what the site has to do, and what you want after it goes live.

All three are priced on my services page, in writing. No ringing required.

Pages: the thing that moves the number most

Pages are the biggest lever, and the easiest one to work out yourself.

A one-page site scrolls through the lot: who you are, what you do, prices, contact. Everything on one screen, one thumb swipe from top to bottom. That suits a tight offer, a clinic with a set list of treatments, or a craft trade that does one thing properly. The Okus Dental demo, a fictional Old Town clinic I built to show the format, puts treatment prices and a booking form on that single page.

A multi-page site gives each service its own page, which matters when people search for the individual job rather than your trade. A builder with five services and four towns needs that. The Big Builds demo, a fictional Swindon builder, is laid out that way.

Tier prices are listed on the services page.

Add-ons: what the site has to do

A page of text is a page of text. Anything that has to do something takes longer, because it has to work every time and keep working.

• Booking or enquiry forms beyond a basic contact box. A form that asks the right questions and lands straight on your phone saves you the back and forth of three messages to pin down a date. That's why it's worth the extra.
• Taking payments. Deposits or full payment online, which means a payment provider, receipts and something to handle the times it fails.
• Logins and customer accounts. Now you've got data, permissions and people forgetting passwords.
• Galleries of finished work. Fine to build, but the photos need sizing so the page still loads quickly.
• Video on the homepage. Same again, hosted properly so it doesn't slow everything down.
• Multiple locations or service areas. A page each, written so they don't read as copies.

Each is priced in the add-ons section of my services page. If what you're describing runs more like software than a website, that's a different conversation: JobFast is my own build at that end.

What happens after launch: care plans, hosting and editing

The build price and the running cost are two different bills. People get caught out by that, so I say it early.

Once the site is live it needs somewhere to sit, a domain renewed every year, updates applied and backups taken. Then there are the small changes: new price, new photo, a service you've dropped.

That last one is where people split. Some owners are happy going in and editing their own text. Others would rather never touch it and just send me the change. Both are fine, and that choice moves the monthly figure, not the build.

The care plan options are set out on my services page. Who owns the site, what happens if something breaks and what's covered after launch are all answered on my FAQ page.

The bits that don't change the price much

Most of the things owners apologise for on the phone don't change the number. You've only got a handful of photos, or none yet. You haven't written the words (I'll help shape them either way). You want a different colour. You'd like a page added next year. You already own the domain. None of that shifts the quote much.

What does add cost is scale and plumbing: a shop with dozens of products, anything with logins, anything that has to talk to another system you already use.

On the money side, it's a deposit up front and the balance on launch. The payment terms are written out on my FAQ page. Whether VAT applies depends on registration, and GOV.UK sets out when a business has to register. Anything beyond that, ask your accountant.

How to work out your own rough number before you ring

Five minutes with a pen will get you close.

1. Count the services you'd want people to find on their own. One page each, plus the usual home, about and contact.
2. Decide whether you need people to book or pay online, or whether a form landing on your phone is enough.
3. Decide who edits it. You, or me.
4. Add those lines up on my services page: the page tier, any add-ons, then the care plan as a monthly figure.

That number is within spitting distance of what I'd quote you. The only reason it moves is something unusual, and by unusual I mean a system you already use that the site has to talk to, or a stock list long enough to need managing properly.

If nothing on your list is unusual, the number you've just written down is the number.

The whole price list is on the services page, figures and all, so you can work it out without speaking to me first. If your job doesn't fit any of the boxes on it, that's common enough. Tell me what you've got and I'll give you a straight answer rather than a default one.