How Much Does a WordPress Website Cost in the UK?
Price bands, what drives them, and the recurring costs most quotes leave out until after you have signed.
Short answer
Small WordPress builds in the UK typically start around £399. Most business websites land between £1,299 and £3,499. Custom functionality pushes past that. The single biggest cost driver is not page count — it is how much of the site needs building rather than configuring.
The honest answer is that it depends, but that is useless on its own. What follows is the structure underneath the number, so you can work out roughly where your project sits and why.
Realistic UK price bands
These are the bands used on the WordPress development service, and they are broadly representative of what an experienced UK freelancer charges. Agencies typically sit above these; offshore marketplaces below.
| Band | Typical price | What it usually covers |
|---|---|---|
| Small business site | From £399 | Theme customisation, up to ~8 pages, standard plugins, contact form |
| Standard business site | £1,299 – £3,499 | Custom theme or heavily customised build, proper content model, WooCommerce or custom fields, speed work |
| Custom build | £3,500+ | Bespoke functionality, integrations, complex content types, multisite |
| Ongoing care | From £99/month | Updates, security monitoring, backups, uptime checks, priority support |
If you have been quoted well below the bottom of that range for something described as a custom build, the word "custom" is doing work it has not earned.
What actually drives the price
Not page count. Page count is what clients ask about because it is countable, but twenty pages built from one well-designed template cost less than five pages each designed individually.
The real drivers, roughly in order of impact:
1. How much is built versus configured. Configuring a commercial theme is a day or two. Building custom templates against a content model is a week or more. This is the single largest fork in the price.
2. Functionality beyond content. A booking system, a quote calculator, a members area, a product configurator, an integration with your CRM — each of these is a small software project inside the website project.
3. eCommerce. A WooCommerce store adds product structure, payment and shipping configuration, tax rules, checkout testing, and an entirely separate set of performance problems. Budget four to six weeks rather than two to four.
4. Content. If you supply final copy and images, the project runs on schedule. If the developer is writing copy or sourcing imagery, that is a separate cost and usually the reason projects overrun.
5. Migration and redirects. Rebuilding an existing site means mapping old URLs to new ones and preserving what already ranks. Skipping this is how a redesign loses traffic — see website migration and SEO preservation for what the process involves.
6. Performance targets. A site built to hit Core Web Vitals thresholds on mobile takes longer than one built to look right on a desktop. It is worth the difference, but it is a real difference.
The costs quotes leave out
Ask specifically about these before signing:
- Hosting — £5 to £30 a month for most business sites; more for WooCommerce
- Domain — £10 to £20 a year
- Paid plugin licences — commonly £50 to £300 a year in total, and they renew
- Premium theme licence — if a commercial theme is used
- SSL — usually free via the host, but confirm it
- Email hosting — separate from web hosting, and frequently forgotten
- Maintenance — updates, backups, security. From £99/month on the maintenance service, and skipping it is a false economy covered in WordPress maintenance: what should be checked every month
- Content updates after launch — if you cannot edit the site yourself, every change is billable
A quote that covers only build cost is not wrong, but it is not your total cost of ownership either.
Fixed price or day rate
Both are legitimate. Fixed price transfers risk to the developer, which means they will price in a buffer and will push back on scope changes. Day rate transfers risk to you and works better when the scope genuinely cannot be pinned down up front.
For a standard business website, fixed price is almost always the right structure — the scope is knowable, and an open-ended arrangement on a knowable scope mostly benefits whoever is billing.
What matters more than the model is that the scope is written down. "A website" is not a scope. "Nine templates, four content types, WooCommerce with two shipping zones, migration of 40 existing URLs" is.
Why the cheapest quote is often the most expensive
A £400 site that has to be rebuilt in eighteen months cost £400 plus the rebuild plus the disruption plus whatever the underperforming site cost you in lost enquiries. That is a genuinely worse outcome than spending £1,500 once.
The reverse is also true: paying agency rates for a five-page brochure site is money spent on account management you do not need.
The question is not "what is the cheapest" or "what is the best". It is whether the build matches what the business actually needs for the next three years.
Working out your own band
Answer these, honestly:
- How many genuinely different page layouts do you need? *(Not pages — layouts.)*
- Does the site need to do anything beyond showing content and taking enquiries?
- Are you selling online?
- Do you have final copy and images, or does someone need to produce them?
- Do you have an existing site with rankings worth preserving?
- Who will edit the site after launch?
Two or three "yes" answers to 2, 3 and 5 puts you in the middle band. Heavy requirements on 2 push you above it.
If you want a number for your specific situation rather than a band, the contact page takes project details and returns a written quote — usually within one working day.
Worked examples
Related services
Related reading
WordPress
WordPress Website Development: What Businesses Actually Need
The decisions that determine whether a WordPress site earns its keep are made in the first week, not the last. Here is what they are.
WordPress
WordPress Design vs Development: What's the Difference?
Two different jobs, frequently sold as one. Knowing which you are buying explains most of the price gap between quotes.
WordPress
How to Choose a WordPress Developer for Your Business
The questions that separate a developer who will still be useful in two years from one who is cheap this month.
WordPress
WooCommerce Store Development: A Complete Guide for UK Businesses
A WooCommerce store is a shop bolted onto a website. Most of the trouble comes from treating it as the other way round. Here is how the build should run.