What Does a Website Actually Cost in 2025? (Honest Answer)

Ask a web designer how much a website costs and you'll usually get one of two answers.

"It depends."

Or a number so vague it's essentially useless.

So here's an actual honest breakdown. No waffle. No 'it depends on your requirements.' Just straight information.

The DIY Option. £10-30/month.

Wix. Squarespace. These are fine.

Fine for a hobby. Fine for testing an idea. Fine if you genuinely don't need your website to do any heavy lifting for your business.

Not fine if you're trying to win clients against competitors who have proper custom websites.

The problem isn't that they look bad. Some of them look decent.

The problem is that so does your competitor's. And the business next to them. They're all using the same template with the serial numbers barely filed off.

When every website in your industry looks the same, clients pick whoever is cheapest.

Is that the conversation you want to be having?

The Freelancer Option. £1,500-£5,000.

This is where it gets interesting.

A good freelance web designer who handles both design and development gives you something genuinely custom, built for your specific audience, delivered in weeks rather than months.

You get one person who understands the full picture. No handoff between a designer and a developer where things get lost in translation. No account manager adding their 20% on top just for forwarding your emails.

For most small businesses this is the sweet spot. Agency quality without the agency overhead.

The Agency Option. £5,000-£50,000+.

Agencies are great.

They're also charging you for their office, their account manager, their project manager, three rounds of internal review, and somebody's oat milk flat white habit.

Is the output better? Sometimes. For large, complex projects with multiple stakeholders an agency makes sense.

For a small business that needs a great website? You're massively overpaying for things you don't need.

So What Should You Actually Spend?

Just starting out. DIY is fine. Get something live.

Growing and taking things seriously. A freelancer is almost always the right call.

Enterprise level with complex requirements. Agency territory.

Most people reading this fall into the middle category.

You know where to find me.