How much does a website cost for a small business in Sussex and Surrey?

Ask three web companies for a price and you will get three answers with nothing in common. Here is how the prices break down for a small local business, what is behind them, and how to compare like with like.

The four ways people get a website

A website builder subscription. Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy and the like. Usually £15 to £40 a month for the plan you actually need. You build it yourself, evenings and weekends, and you keep building it, because it is never quite finished.

A freelancer. Anywhere from a few hundred pounds to a few thousand, depending on who you find. Quality varies wildly. The site is handed over and then it is yours to look after, which usually means nobody looks after it.

An agency. Typically £3,000 to £10,000 for a small business site, sometimes more, and often two to three months from first meeting to launch. You get a project manager, a designer and a developer. You also pay for all three.

A productised build like ours. A fixed fee for a set scope, built the same way every time, with a monthly plan that keeps it running. Faster and cheaper than an agency because nothing is invented from scratch. See our pricing for the specifics.

What the cheap option actually costs

The builder subscription looks like the obvious winner at £20 a month. Count the rest.

Your time. Most owners spend twenty to forty hours getting a builder site to a state they are not embarrassed by. At whatever your hourly rate is, that is the most expensive website on this list.

The work you did not get. Builder sites are rarely set up for local search. A plumber in Horsham with a template site does not show up for “plumber Horsham” without a lot of extra work that the builder does not explain. One missed boiler job a month is more than the difference in price.

The ownership. You do not own a builder site. If you stop paying, it disappears. If you want to move it, you cannot. The domain is often registered by them, in their name.

What you should get for a proper price

Whatever you pay, these are the things that turn a website into enquiries. If a quote does not include them, ask why.

• A page for each service you offer and each town you cover, written properly. This is what makes you show up on Google.
• Loads in about a second on a phone. Most of your customers are on a phone.
• Your number and a message button at the top of every page, and a form that reaches your phone in seconds.
• Your real Google reviews shown on the site.
• Your own domain, registered in your name.
• Somebody who will make changes when you ask, without an invoice for every one.

What we charge

A fixed build fee, quoted after a free demo so you know exactly what you are paying for before you commit. Then one monthly plan covering hosting, security, unlimited small changes, local SEO upkeep, Google Business Profile management, review requests and a monthly report. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.

The honest comparison

Doing nothing costs nothing and brings in nothing. A builder site costs a little and, for most local businesses, brings in a little. A proper site costs more up front and pays for itself the first month it brings in a job you would not otherwise have had. In Surrey and Sussex, where a single boiler replacement or a patio is worth a four-figure sum, that is not a high bar.