Website prices run from free to many thousands of pounds, and the quote rarely tells you what you will pay over three years. Here is what actually drives the cost, the running costs most quotes leave out, and what we charge.
Website builders let you make a site yourself for a monthly subscription. The money is low, but the time is yours: writing the words, choosing photos, checking it works on phones and setting it up so Google can read it. If you are happy doing that, it is a reasonable choice.
Someone builds it for you, usually for a fixed fee. Quality varies more here than anywhere else, so the questions further down matter most with this option.
A team with a designer, a developer and a project manager. Agencies are the right answer for large sites, online shops and custom systems, and they are priced to match. Most small businesses do not need that much website.
The build is a one-off. These are not:
| Cost | What it is | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | Your web address, such as yourbusiness.co.uk | Yearly |
| Hosting | The server the site lives on | Monthly or yearly |
| SSL certificate | The padlock in the browser. It should come with the hosting | Ongoing |
| Backups and updates | Keeping a copy of the site and keeping its software up to date | Monthly |
| Changes | New prices, a new page, different photos | As needed |
| Business email | Email on your own domain. Separate from the website | Monthly, per person |
A cheap build with expensive hosting, or a free builder with paid add-ons, can cost more over three years than a fixed-price build with a sensible care plan. Compare the three-year total, not the headline price.
Ask these before you pay anyone:
The same ownership question applies to social media. Our guide on whether you need a website if you have a Facebook page covers what happens when a business loses access to a page it never owned.
| What | Price | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| One-page business website | £350 | one-off, fixed |
| Extra pages | quoted | fixed price, agreed before work starts |
| Hosting Only | £5 a month | hosting and SSL only. No backups, monitoring or changes |
| Essentials care plan | £15 a month | adds backups, security updates, monitoring every 5 minutes and a monthly report |
| Standard care plan | £30 a month | adds a content management system and 30 minutes of changes a month |
| Growth care plan | £50 a month | adds an hour of changes a month, a quarterly check-up and AI Search Optimisation |
| Domain management | from £20 a year | annual |
Over three years, a one-page site on the Essentials plan comes to £890, plus the domain. Care plans are monthly, with 30 days' notice to cancel.
We write the words, build the site and put it live on your own domain, usually within a week. The domain is registered in your name, and releasing it to you is free if you ever leave. One round of changes is included, and the site only goes live once you have signed it off in writing. Klariq is not VAT registered, so no VAT is added.
It depends on the number of pages, who writes the words, and whether you need an online shop or bookings. A one-page website from Klariq is a fixed £350, with care plans from £15 a month for hosting, backups, security updates and monitoring.
A domain name each year, hosting, backups and software updates, and any changes you need. Business email on your own domain is a separate cost. Compare the total over three years, not just the build price.
Yes. The domain should be registered to you or your business, not to the person who built the site. Otherwise you do not fully control your own web address.
With Klariq, a content management system that lets you edit the site yourself is included from the £30 a month Standard care plan upwards. On the £5 and £15 plans there is no editor, and changes are quoted before we make them.
Tell us what you do and where you work. You get a fixed quote in writing before anything starts.
See Business Websites →More in this series: all Klariq guides.