Cost guide · 19 Jul 2026 · 6 min read

How much does a website cost for a tradesperson in the UK? (2026 guide)

Here's the straight answer, before the waffle other guides make you scroll through: a professionally built website for a tradesperson in the UK costs £500–£1,500 as a one-off, plus a modest monthly fee for hosting and upkeep. Do it yourself with a website builder and you'll pay £15–£40 a month forever. Go to a traditional agency and you're looking at £2,000–£5,000 or more.

I build websites for tradespeople for a living, so I'm not a neutral party — I'll tell you exactly what I charge further down. But the ranges above are honest, and the rest of this guide explains where the money actually goes so you can't be caught out, whoever you buy from.

The three routes and what they really cost

1. DIY website builders (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy)

On paper this is the cheap option: £15–£40 a month and no upfront cost. In practice you're paying with your evenings. Expect to lose several weekends fighting templates, and the result usually looks like what it is — a template filled in by someone whose actual trade is plumbing, not web design. The monthly fee also never ends, so over three or four years you've often spent more than a professional build would have cost.

2. A freelancer or trade-specialist studio

This is the sweet spot for most sole traders and small firms: £500–£1,500 upfront for a professionally designed and written site, plus something like £10–£40 a month for hosting and maintenance. You get a site built around your trade and your area, done by someone who does this every week. This is the bracket I work in with plumber websites, electrician websites and the other trades.

3. A traditional agency

Agencies typically start at £2,000–£5,000 and go up from there. You're paying for account managers, meetings and office overheads as much as the website itself. For a national firm with complex needs, fair enough. For a tradesperson who needs five fast pages and a phone number that gets tapped, it's usually overkill.

The hidden costs nobody mentions

Whatever route you pick, watch for the extras that appear after you've said yes:

• Domain name — around £10–£15 a year for a .co.uk. Cheap, but make sure it's registered in your name, not your designer's.
• Hosting — £5–£30 a month depending on quality. Cheap hosting means slow loading, and slow loading loses jobs.
• SSL certificate — should be free and included. If someone's charging you separately for the padlock, walk away.
• Professional email — an address like joe@yourbusiness.co.uk typically adds a few pounds a month, and looks far better on a quote than a Gmail address.
• Maintenance and edits — the one that stings. Some firms charge £50+ an hour to change a phone number. Ask about this before you sign anything.
• Stock photos and copywriting — decent images and words that sell are sometimes quoted as extras worth hundreds.

A decent package bundles most of this in: hosting, domain, SSL, email and small edits should be part of one predictable monthly fee, not a series of surprise invoices.

What you should get for your money

Price means nothing without knowing what's included. Whoever builds your site, a professional trade website in 2026 should give you:

• Mobile-first design — most of your customers will find you on a phone, often mid-emergency.
• Speed — the site should load in under two seconds. Every extra second sends people back to Google.
• Local SEO foundations — proper page titles, structured data and pages written around the searches locals make. I've covered what that means in my local SEO guide for tradesmen.
• A contact and quote form — so the site captures leads while you're on the tools.
• The ability to get things changed — new photos, new services, updated prices, without a fight or a fee every time.

What it's worth

Forget the cost for a second and look at the other side of the ledger. One bathroom refit, one full rewire, one decent roofing job — the profit on a single job of that size typically covers the entire build cost of a professional website. Everything after that is return.

That's the sum that matters. A website isn't a trophy; it's a tool that either brings in work or it doesn't. If it lands you one extra job a month you wouldn't otherwise have had, it out-earns almost anything else you could spend the money on — including, in the long run, paid directories, which I've compared honestly in Checkatrade vs your own website.

What we charge

So I'm not hiding my own numbers behind a "get a quote" button: I charge £599 for the build and £29 a month after that. The monthly covers your .co.uk domain, hosting, SSL, and unlimited small edits — change your prices, swap photos, add a service, it's included. No contracts, so you can leave whenever you like.

Before any money changes hands, I build you a free homepage mockup within 48 hours. You see the actual design for your actual business first, then decide. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.

The bottom line

Budget £500–£1,500 for a proper build, be suspicious of anything with vague monthly fees, and make sure the domain is yours. Then judge the site the way you'd judge a new van: not by what it costs, but by what it earns. If you want a real number for your own business, tell me about it and I'll show you what you'd get before you spend a penny.

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