What a Tradesman Website Really Costs in the UK

Search for a website for your trade business and you will be quoted five quite different things, all going by the same word. Same word, five different products, and that is the whole explanation for the gap in your inbox.

The bands below are what the UK market charges, not what I think any of it is worth.

The top band is the one people misread. For a national brand that machinery is money well spent. For a roofer covering three towns it is more machinery than the job needs.

The honest answer is: a lot more than it did ten years ago, and less than the advert implies.

At the cheap end of the managed market you get a template, a small number of pages populated with fairly generic copy about your trade, a contact form, your logo dropped in, and hosting. It will load, it will look tidy enough on a phone, and it will have an SSL certificate. For a business with nothing at all, that is a genuine step forward. I am not going to pretend otherwise.

What is missing at the cheap end#

What you are not buying is the thinking. The copy is written to fit any plumber in any town, which means it says nothing that would make a homeowner in your town ring you rather than the next result down. There is usually no page per service and no page per area you cover, so there is very little for Google to match against the way people actually search.

The layout is the one the provider has given to hundreds of other trades. That matters more than people expect, because homeowners compare three or four sites in a single sitting.

Why you cannot move it later#

The other thing you are not buying is control. Most low-cost managed sites sit inside a proprietary system. You cannot open the files, you cannot move the site, and a change means raising a ticket and waiting. Some providers are quick. Some take a fortnight to change a phone number.

None of that makes the £19 tier a scam. It is a rental, priced like a rental, and it behaves like one. The problem is that it is usually sold as though it were a purchase.

This is the part almost nobody checks at the point of signing, and the only part that really bites. There are four separate things to own and they can each sit with a different party.

Ask about all four by name. A quote that is clear on price and vague on ownership is telling you which of the two the provider has thought harder about.

The domain#

Whoever is listed as the registrant owns it, and it is often the provider rather than you, because they registered it on your behalf during setup. If it is not in your name, in an account you can log into, you do not control the address customers know you by. Ask to be made the registrant. A provider who hesitates over that question has told you everything.

The code and the design#

On a proprietary platform there is nothing to hand over. The site is a configuration inside their system, not a set of files, so leaving means rebuilding from scratch. That is true of most subscription builds, and of some agency builds too, so ask at every price point.

The content#

The words and the photos. If a provider wrote your copy under a licence that ends when the contract ends, you cannot take it with you. Photographs are worse, because good ones cost real money to get.

The data#

Your Google Business Profile, your analytics, your Search Console, your call tracking numbers and your form submissions. If these live in the provider's account, you lose your entire history the day you leave, and with call tracking you can lose the number itself, which may be printed on your van.

The day it matters is the day you want to go. If you rent, leaving means starting again: new site, new copy, new photos, possibly a new address, definitely a fresh set of zero data.

Here is the arithmetic in the open, because most comparisons in this market quietly rig it. On pure outgoings over three years, a £49 a month subscription is cheaper than my build, and it is not close.

What follows is arithmetic on round illustrative figures, not a claim about any particular provider's pricing.

Where the subscription overtakes the one-off build#

I would rather you saw those two numbers than a sales page that hides them.

Two things the arithmetic does not capture#

The first is what you hold at the end. After 36 months on a subscription you have paid £1,764 and own nothing; stop paying and the site goes dark. After 36 months on a bought site you have paid more and still have the site, the files, the copy and the data, and month 37 costs you hosting only.

The second is enquiries. A site that produces nothing is wasted at any price, and for most trades one won job covers a year of either option. That is the number to weigh, and the one nobody can promise in advance.

Price is only meaningful next to scope. Here is fair value at each tier, so you can judge a quote instead of guessing.

Under £30 a month, DIY#

If it does not load quickly on a phone on 4G, it is not doing the minimum, whatever it costs.

Around £49 to £95 a month, managed#

£500 to £1,500, freelancer#

Ask what happens after launch, because at this price support often ends the day it goes live.

£1,500 to £4,000, specialist#

£5,000 and up, agency#

Custom design, a formal discovery process, a team, and capacity for things a small studio cannot easily do. Genuinely useful with several branches or complex integrations. If you are a two-van operation, ask hard what the extra buys that the tier below cannot.

Take these to every quote, including mine. The answers separate providers far better than the price does.

On ownership#

On the contract#

On the work itself#

On life after launch#

And one more, which I would ask above all the others: what will you not do for me? Any provider worth paying can say clearly where their service ends. One who says yes to everything has not thought about their own business, and will not think much about yours.

I sell websites at £1,995, so you should discount what I say here accordingly. I will still say it, because it is true and because you will work it out anyway.

If you went out on your own three months ago, have no reviews, no photographs of finished work and no reliable monthly income yet, do not spend £1,995 with me. Spend £19 a month, get something honest online with your number on it, and put the money into a van, tools, insurance and getting the first fifty jobs done.

A cheap site that exists beats an expensive site you cannot afford, and it beats no site by a distance.

The same applies if your work comes almost entirely from a source you control and trust, and the website is only there so people can check you are real before they ring. In that case a website is a business card, and you should pay business-card prices for it.

When the arithmetic changes#

It changes when the site is meant to bring the work in rather than confirm you exist. In my experience that shows up as one of three specific frustrations:

That is when a template stops being thrift and starts being the thing holding you back, and there is more on that shift on the web design for tradesmen page.

Starting on a subscription and moving up later is a sensible path. Just start with the domain in your own name, so moving is a decision rather than a rebuild.

My price is £1,995, fixed. The site is yours either way, and there is no monthly fee holding it hostage.

That price covers a defined scope:

Hosting and small updates afterwards are an optional care plan at £79 a month. The build is done by one person: I do the strategy, the writing, the design and the SEO groundwork myself, which is why the timeline is three to four weeks and why there is nobody to pass you between.

That is also the honest reason I am not right for everyone. If you need a national rollout or a complex integration, an agency at five figures is a better fit and I will say so.

You own it outright. The domain is in your name, the files are yours, the copy and photographs are yours, and the analytics sit in your own Google account. If you decide in a year to work with somebody else, you take the lot with you. I would rather keep clients because the work is good than because leaving is painful.

I am not the cheapest option on the page you found this on, and the sum above shows where a £49 a month plan beats me on cash. What I offer is a different thing: an asset you own, built once, aimed at turning searches into enquiries, at a price fixed before we start. The web design for tradesmen page sets out what is included.

If you want a straight answer about your current site before you spend anything, ask for the free audit. I review it personally and send it back within three working days. No sales call, no obligation, and if the honest answer is that your site is fine and the problem is somewhere else, that is what the audit will tell you. Get My Free Website Audit.