Ask ten agencies what a website costs and nine of them will say "it depends" and try to book you a call.
It does depend. But that's not a reason to dodge the question, so here's our honest answer.
The short version
For a UK agency doing considered, custom work in 2026:
| What you're buying | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Small brochure site, template-led | £3k to £8k |
| Custom-designed marketing site | £8k to £25k |
| Ecommerce | £15k to £60k |
| Custom software or a web app | £30k+ |
If someone quotes you £900, they're selling you a theme with your logo dropped in. That's a real option and sometimes the right one. Just know that's what it is.
What actually moves the number
Four things, in roughly this order.
How much of it is bespoke. A template is cheap because someone else already paid for the design and build. Every custom page type, every considered interaction, every bit of it that looks like you rather than a theme, is time.
How many unique page types there are. Not how many pages. Fifty blog posts using one template is cheap. Eight pages that all behave differently is not.
What it has to talk to. A site that stands alone is straightforward. A site that syncs with your CRM, your stock system and a payment provider is a software project wearing a website's clothes.
Whether the content exists. Copy and photography are the two things that quietly add months. If we're writing it, that's part of the cost.
The cheapest site is the one you don't have to replace in eighteen months. We've rebuilt enough two-year-old websites to be sure of that.
Where the custom route earns its money
We build custom because most businesses aren't shaped like a template.
Take TableCloud, a restaurant booking platform we designed and built from the ground up. Floor plans, live bookings, multiple restaurants, working on an iPad behind the bar mid-service. There is no plugin for that. There's a version of it you could bodge together from three off-the-shelf tools, and it would be slower, uglier and more expensive to run every month for the rest of its life.
That's the trade. Off-the-shelf is cheaper to start and more expensive to live with. Custom is the other way round.
What we'd ask before quoting
- What has to be true for this to have been worth it?
- What are you using now, and what's broken about it?
- Who needs to use it internally, and how technical are they?
- What does it need to connect to?
- When does it need to be live, and why that date?
Five questions. We can usually give you a range on the first call.
The honest bit
We're not the cheapest, and we'd be wasting your time pretending otherwise. We're two founders and a small team who build things properly: 55+ years of combined experience, 34+ projects launched, and 88% of clients still with us long after launch.
If your budget is under £3k, we'll tell you and point you somewhere sensible. If it isn't, tell us what you're trying to do and we'll give you a real number.
