"How much does a website cost?" is the question we get asked more than any other. And the honest answer — the one most agencies won't give you — is: it depends. Not because we're being evasive. Because the range genuinely spans from a few hundred pounds to tens of thousands, and both extremes can be the right answer depending on what you need.
What we can do is break down exactly what drives that price, what you're actually paying for at each level, and how to tell when you're getting value versus getting fleeced. No vague hand-waving. Real numbers, real trade-offs.
Why Quotes Vary So Wildly
You send the same brief to five agencies. You get quotes of £800, £3,000, £8,000, £15,000, and £35,000. All for "a website." How is that possible?
Because "a website" means completely different things to different providers. The £800 quote is almost certainly a template with your content dropped in. The £35,000 quote probably includes brand strategy, user research, custom design, hand-coded development, content creation, SEO setup, testing, and six months of post-launch support. They're not quoting for the same thing. They're quoting for different levels of service.
The confusion comes from the fact that the end product — a website — looks roughly similar at every price point. It has pages. It has images. It has a contact form. But the difference between a £800 site and a £15,000 site is the difference between a flat-pack desk and a hand-built one. They both hold your laptop. One will last six months. The other will last fifteen years.
What You're Actually Paying For
Here's what goes into a properly built website, and where the time (and money) actually goes:
- Strategy and discovery. Understanding your business, your audience, your competitors, and your goals. This shapes every decision that follows. It typically takes 10-15% of the total project time.
- Content strategy. Deciding what to say, where to say it, and how to structure it for both users and search engines. Most clients underestimate how much time this takes.
- Design. Not just making it look nice — designing the user experience, the information hierarchy, the conversion pathways, and the visual language. Multiple rounds of concepts, feedback, and refinement.
- Development. Turning designs into a real, working website. Writing clean, semantic code. Building responsive layouts. Integrating forms, analytics, and any third-party tools. Optimising performance.
- Testing. Browser testing, device testing, accessibility testing, performance testing. Fixing the hundred small things that only appear when real people use the site on real devices.
- Launch and support. DNS configuration, hosting setup, SSL certificates, redirects from the old site, post-launch monitoring, and ongoing maintenance.
Cheap quotes skip most of these steps. That's how they're cheap.
Template vs Custom: The Honest Comparison
Templates aren't inherently bad. If you're a freelancer who needs a simple online presence and you don't have the budget for custom work, a well-chosen template on Squarespace or a similar platform can serve you perfectly well. No shame in that.
But here's what a template can't do:
- Differentiate you visually from competitors using the same template
- Be optimised for your specific conversion goals
- Load as fast as a hand-coded site (templates carry enormous amounts of unused code)
- Rank as well for SEO (bloated code, poor semantic structure, shared hosting limitations)
- Scale with your business without eventually needing to be rebuilt entirely
If your website is the primary way customers find you, evaluate you, and decide to contact you, the difference between a template and a custom site isn't cosmetic. It's commercial.
Red Flags in Quotes
After seeing hundreds of quotes from other agencies (clients love showing us what others have proposed), here are the warning signs we'd look out for:
- No discovery phase. If an agency is quoting you a final price without understanding your business, they're guessing. Or worse, they're planning to give you the same thing they give everyone.
- Per-page pricing. "£200 per page" sounds transparent, but it incentivises more pages rather than better pages. Good web design is about reducing friction, not adding pages. You want fewer, harder-working pages — not a 30-page brochure nobody reads.
- Suspiciously cheap. If the quote is dramatically lower than everyone else's, something is being cut. Usually it's strategy, testing, or post-launch support — the things you won't notice are missing until it's too late.
- No mention of SEO or performance. If the proposal doesn't address how your site will rank or how fast it will load, those things aren't being planned for. And if they're not planned for, they won't happen.
- Locked into their platform. Some agencies build on proprietary systems where you can't take your site elsewhere. If you can't export your site and walk away, you don't own it. You're renting it.
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Run free auditThink Investment, Not Cost
We understand that a £10,000 website feels like a lot of money. For many small businesses, it is a lot of money. But reframe the question: if that website generates even three additional enquiries per month, and your average project is worth £2,000, it's paid for itself in under two months.
The real cost isn't what you spend on the website. It's what you lose by having a bad one. Every visitor who bounces because your site is slow. Every potential customer who goes to a competitor because your site doesn't build trust. Every month you don't rank on Google because your code is bloated and your content is thin.
A good website isn't an expense. It's a revenue-generating asset. Evaluate it like one.
When to Spend More vs Less
Spend more when:
- Your website is the primary driver of leads or sales
- You're in a competitive market where differentiation matters
- You need custom functionality (booking systems, e-commerce, client portals)
- You're building a brand that needs to feel premium
- You plan to invest in SEO and content marketing (you need a solid foundation)
Spend less when:
- You just need a simple online presence, not a conversion tool
- Most of your business comes through referrals, not search
- You're validating a business idea and might pivot
- You have a very small, well-defined audience who already knows you
There's no universal right answer. The right budget is the one that matches your commercial reality.
How We Handle Pricing at Jaunt
We believe in transparency. Before we quote, we have a proper conversation about what you actually need. Not what sounds impressive — what will move the needle for your business. Sometimes that means talking people down from what they think they need.
We offer fixed-price proposals so you know exactly what you're paying before we start. No hourly billing that spirals. No surprise invoices. Every proposal breaks down exactly what's included, what the timeline looks like, and what happens after launch.
Key Takeaway
The cost of a website depends entirely on what you need it to do. Don't chase the cheapest quote — chase the best value. Ask what's included in the discovery phase, how performance and SEO are handled, and what post-launch support looks like. A website that costs more but generates real returns is always cheaper than a bargain site that does nothing.
The Bottom Line
If you're comparing quotes, don't compare prices. Compare scopes. The cheapest option is almost never the best value. The most expensive option isn't automatically the best either. The right choice is the agency that understands your business, proposes a solution that matches your goals, and can clearly explain where every pound is going.
Ask hard questions. Demand clear answers. And if someone can't explain why their website costs what it costs, that should tell you everything you need to know.
