What does a website cost in 2026?

Scott Burns, founder of Glo Business Solutions. Published 13 September 2026.

It is 2026, you have three quotes for a website, and the dearest is many times the cheapest. Nothing in any of them tells you why. This article is about what you are actually buying at each level, what is nearly always left out, and which of the ongoing costs are real. It ends with this site's own prices, stated once and clearly marked as ours, because an article about what things cost that hides its own would be a strange thing to trust.

What you are paying for at each level

Web quotes look like they are for the same thing because the thing has the same name. They are not. Strip the jargon away and there are three different products being sold under the one word, and the price difference is mostly the difference between them.

The cheap end: a template, filled in

At the bottom of the range you are paying for somebody's time to pick a template, drop your logo and a few paragraphs into it, and press publish. The design work was done once, by the template's maker, for everybody who buys it. The words are usually yours, or a light rewrite of what you sent. Nothing has been built; something has been configured.

There is nothing wrong with that for a business whose whole offer fits on one screen and who needs to exist online by Friday. The trouble is what is often attached to it, which the next section covers.

The middle: pages that are written to be found

The middle of the range is where the words start to matter. A site here has a page for each thing you sell, and each page is written for the phrase a customer types rather than for the name of the service as you say it in the office. Somebody has thought about what the site has to rank for, set it up so that search engines can read every page, and built the enquiry form to ask what you would ask on the phone.

What you are paying for is thinking and writing, not just layout. That is why two middle-range quotes can differ a lot: one includes the words and one assumes you will supply them, and the words are most of the work.

The top: something behind the site

Above that, the price stops being about pages and starts being about what sits behind them. A login. A customer account area. Bookings that go into a real diary. Payments. A database of products, properties or cases. A connection to software you already run, so nothing is typed twice. Each of those is a piece of software in its own right, and it is priced by what it has to do, which is why the top of the range has no natural ceiling and why a serious quote at this level is written after a scoping conversation rather than pulled from a list.

Why the cheap end is usually rented

The most important thing to understand about a low headline price is that it is very often not a purchase. It is a subscription with a setup fee. The site lives on the provider's platform, on the provider's terms, and the monthly payment is what keeps it there. Stop paying and it goes dark. You do not own the design, you cannot take the code anywhere, and in some cases you cannot even export the words without retyping them.

That can still be the right choice. A market stall does not need to own the market. But it should be a choice you make knowingly, and the question that reveals it is simple: if I stop paying you next year, what do I have? If the honest answer is "nothing", then the price you were quoted is the first instalment, not the cost.

What is nearly always excluded, and should be asked about

The gap between quotes is often not in what they include but in what they quietly leave out. These are the ones to ask about before you compare a single figure.

• ·The words. If the quote assumes you will write every page, the price is for a container, and the container is the cheap part.
• ·Photography. Stock images are included; your actual premises, people and work usually are not, and they are what makes the site yours.
• ·Indexing. Being live is not being found. Ask whether the site will be set up so search engines can read every page, and whether anyone will check that they have.
• ·The Google Business Profile. For a local business it is where the map searches land, and setting it up properly is separate work that many quotes do not mention.
• ·Ownership. Who owns the design, the words, the code and the domain when the final invoice is paid, in writing.

Which ongoing costs are real

Every site has some running cost, and it is worth knowing which are unavoidable and which are a subscription wearing a disguise. Three are real. A domain name has to be renewed, with whoever registered it, and you should be the one who registered it. Hosting is a real cost, because the files have to live on a server somewhere, and it should be billed at what it costs rather than marked up into a "care plan". And any service that does work for you month by month, such as sending messages or running an AI on your enquiries, costs what that service charges.

The ones to question are the ones that bundle the real costs into a single monthly figure without saying what is inside it. "Maintenance" that does not specify what is maintained. "Support" that is really the rent on a platform you do not own. "SEO" as a standing charge with no stated work attached. None of those is necessarily dishonest, but each should be able to answer the question "what would I lose if I stopped paying this?" with something more specific than "your website".

What this site charges

For the record, and clearly as our own prices rather than a market figure: Glo Business Solutions publishes three website grades. Essentials is £795, fixed, for a café, salon or florist whose whole offer fits one scroll. Standard is £1,950, fixed, for several services or locations, where each one has to be found on its own. Advanced is from £3,500, priced after a scoping call, because what the site has to do decides the cost. Each is built once and owned outright on the final payment, with hosting and any AI usage billed at cost. Those are the figures to hold this article against.

What each grade includes is set out on the pricing page, with the three grades side by side, and the pages describing how a site is built for a particular trade are under websites by sector.

How to compare the three quotes on your desk

Put them side by side and ask each one the same questions. Which of the three products is this? Am I buying it or renting it? Are the words included? Is the Google Business Profile included? Who owns the code on the day I pay the last invoice? What do I pay every month, itemised, and what would I lose by stopping each item? Once each quote has answered those, the gap between the figures will usually explain itself, and the one that cannot answer them has told you what you needed to know.