How much does a tradesperson website cost in the UK in 2026?
Most UK trades businesses pay between £500 and £3,000 for a website built for them, with agency prices going well beyond that. Where you sit in that range depends on who builds it, how many pages you need, and whether the words and photos are done for you.
UK pricing guides for 2026 put a freelancer-built 5-page brochure site at around £500 to £1,500, and a 5 to 10 page small business site at £1,000 to £3,000. Agencies typically quote £3,000 to £12,000 for a brochure site, and London agencies often quote £8,000 to £25,000.
Alongside those, there is a busy market of pay-monthly websites aimed at trades, usually £30 to £100 a month with little or nothing to pay upfront.
What do the different options cost?
Here is a plain comparison in pounds. Watch out for VAT: many website builders and agencies show prices before VAT, so add 20% if you are not VAT registered.
- DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy): about £10 to £25 a month, or £120 to £300 a year, plus 20 hours or more of your time.
- Freelancer: about £500 to £1,500 for a 5-page site. Day rates run about £240 to £550, higher in London.
- Small business WordPress site from a freelancer: about £2,000 to £5,000 with a custom theme.
- Agency: about £3,000 to £12,000 for a brochure site outside London, £8,000 to £25,000 in London.
- Pay-monthly trade website: about £30 to £100 a month, often with a 12 or 24 month minimum.
- Mago Labs (my offer): £599 one-off for up to 6 pages, no monthly fee.
Is a pay-monthly website worth it for a tradesperson?
A pay-monthly website is worth it if you want to spread the cost and you are happy to rent rather than own. For a sole trader planning to be around for years, buying a site outright normally works out cheaper.
Trade-focused providers in the UK advertise plans from around £30 a month, and many sit between £49 and £100 a month once hosting, edits and some SEO are bundled in. That feels affordable, and for a new business with no cash it can be the right call.
The trade-off is ownership. On most pay-monthly deals the design and content belong to the provider, and the site comes down when you stop paying. Some also register your domain in their own name, which makes moving away painful. Ask for the contract and read the bit about cancellation before you hand over card details.
What hidden and ongoing costs should tradespeople budget for?
These are the costs that tend to appear after the invoice for the build is paid.
- Domain name: a .co.uk costs about £10 to £15 a year once the first-year discount ends.
- Hosting: about £7 to £12 a month for shared hosting, £9 to £18 a month for managed WordPress.
- Maintenance: £25 to £50 a month for basic updates and backups, £100 or more for security monitoring and content updates.
- Changes after launch: freelancers and agencies often charge by the hour or day, so even adding a new service page can cost £50 to £150.
- Business email: about £5 a month per mailbox.
- VAT: 20% on top of many quotes and builder plans, which adds up if you are not VAT registered.
What does a trades website cost over three years?
Comparing three-year totals takes the sting out of headline prices. Here are rough figures, before VAT.
- Pay-monthly at £30 a month: £1,080 over three years.
- Pay-monthly at £49 a month: £1,764 over three years.
- Pay-monthly at £100 a month: £3,600 over three years.
- Agency build at £2,500 plus £30 a month hosting: about £3,580 over three years.
- DIY on a £20 a month builder plan: about £720 over three years, plus your time.
- Mago Labs at £599 plus a .co.uk domain: about £630 to £645 over three years, plus any changes you pay for after year one.
Do I still need a website if I am on Checkatrade?
Yes, most tradespeople benefit from having their own website even if they are on Checkatrade, MyBuilder or Rated People. Directory profiles sit on someone else's platform, alongside your competitors, and you pay to stay listed.
Your own site is the one place that is entirely yours. It can rank for searches like "emergency plumber in Leeds" or "boiler installation Bristol", it carries your own phone number, and customers who find you through a directory often check your website before they ring. Link your Checkatrade or TrustMark profile from the site so people can see the reviews, but do not rely on the directory as your only home online.
What should a tradesperson website include?
A good trades website lets someone on their phone work out what you do, where you cover and how to book you within a few seconds.
Include a page for each main service (a heating engineer's boiler installs and boiler servicing are separate searches), the towns and postcodes you cover, photos of real jobs, a tap-to-call button and a simple quote form. Show the accreditations that matter in your trade, such as Gas Safe registration for gas work, NICEIC or NAPIT for electricians, or FENSA for windows, but only the ones you genuinely hold.
On the technical side, ask for proper page titles, local business schema, a sitemap submitted to Google Search Console, and a Google Business Profile that links back to the site. These are cheap to do at the start and fiddly to add later.
How does Mago Labs price a trades website?
I charge £599 once for a custom site of up to 6 pages, with no monthly fee. That includes the design, all the written copy, tap-to-call and a quote form, the Google basics (titles, schema, sitemap, Search Console), Google Business Profile setup, and a year of edits and support.
You get a free working preview within 48 hours, and the site is usually live in about 14 days. You own the domain, the code and the content, and the only extra cost is your domain name, paid to your own registrar.
After the first year, leave it running at no cost, pay £19 an hour for changes, or update it yourself with a light CMS. I work remotely from India on UK hours, so I am not a local firm you can pop into. If you would rather have someone round the corner, a local freelancer is a perfectly good choice.