What are the costs associated with a website?
There are two costs to having a website which are unavoidable.
1. Domain
The first is the cost of your domain. That’s your website address. In my case it is beyondthekitchentable.co.uk. Strictly speaking you don’t need a domain – you can sometimes “build” a free website on someone else’s domain but I do not recommend that. To me that isn’t having your own website – you just have a listing on someone else’s.
Sometimes a domain might be “free” because it is bundled with other services. Domains are usually inexpensive in any event – less than £20/year unless you want to buy a highly sought after domain in which case you can pay thousands or even millions.
The most expensive domain, according to Names.com, was Cars.com which was valued at $872 million when the business was sold in 2014. The buyer bought the whole business, not just the domain, and they’re now the number one car trading business in the US.
But for most of us, £10 – 20/year will get us our domain.
I do advise you to buy both the .com and .co.uk versions of the name if you can. It stops someone else using them. You can then use one of them as the “main domain” and build your website on that one. Then redirect the other one to the main domain. So my main domain is the .co.uk version but if you type beyondthekitchentable.com into your browser it will redirect you to beyondthekitchentable.co.uk immediately. Like magic!
Yes, there are other versions of the domain, there’s .org, .net, .design and all sorts. You’re not going to be able to or want to buy all of them. .co.uk and .com are usually enough (especially if you trademark the name of your business).
While on the subject of domains, your domain is a hugely important part of your business. Just think what would happen if you lost it? I always recommend clients buy their own domain. Some website professionals will buy them for clients. But if you ever want to move on from them you then need to transfer the domain too. It’s fiddly. But worse, what if something were to happen to that website professional? You could lose your domain. And I have come across a couple of situations where a website professional has refused to transfer a domain because they bought it and claim to own it. Which means if you want to keep using that domain you’re stuck with that web professional or you have to start again with a different domain. So, my strong advice is to buy your own and then no-one can take it away from you.
2. Web Hosting
Your website has to be hosted somewhere. Your website is basically just a bunch of code. That code needs to sit on a connected computer somewhere so it can be found when someone types your domain into a web browser – that’s what we call web hosting.
Sometimes the cost of hosting is bundled in with other things (eg if you have a SquareSpace or Wix website it is part of the monthly fee to them). But you’re still effectively paying for it.
In theory you could host your own website but you really need to know what you’re doing to do that. And I don’t recommend it. Good hosting makes a difference to your website performance and is not that expensive.
That’s because not all web hosting is the same. There are differences in website speed, uptime, security and features. Some cheaper web hosts make you pay for additional things like an SSL certificate or redirecting a domain. Others include them in the price of the hosting.
I personally use a large hosting provider called Siteground for my own website and all my clients. It is not the cheapest option, but, in my opinion, it is the best value for what small businesses need.
It’s also one of a very few hosting companies that is carbon-neutral. Data centres use huge amount of electricity. Siteground uses Google’s data centres which are powered by renewable sources.
My clients get web hosting as part of their website maintenance package but if you want to host yourself Siteground costs £2/month + VAT initially and then £14/month on renewal (prices correct at the time of recording/writing).
3. Other Ongoing Costs
The only other “must have”, in my opinion is an SSL certificate. That gives you the padlock and shows your website as secure. Without it a warning will come up that your website might not be secure which isn’t what you want potential clients to see.
Many web hosts include an SSL certificate in the price of their hosting (Siteground does). They often use a system called Let’s Encrypt and that is enough. But some do charge extra for this.
4. “Premium” themes, website builders and tools
There are lots of other things that you can pay for but may not need to. So let’s talk about what they are.
If you use a website builder like SquareSpace, Shopify or Wix there are ongoing costs to use their website builder. These prices do include web hosting so you don’t need to pay for both, but the costs of these have a big range depending on things like the size of the website and the features you need (eg shop functionality isn’t usually available on the cheaper plans). As I write this:
- Wix have plans from £9 to £119/month
- SquareSpace from £16 to £43/month
- Shopify from £25 to £344/month
Plus you need to pay VAT. They are not the cheapest options!
And of course they have control over price increases – unless you move and rebuild your website somewhere else (you can’t transfer a Wix website say to SquareSpace or WordPress – it has to be rebuilt) you have to pay what they say. One of the reasons I’m a big fan of WordPress is that your website is portable. If your host puts its pricing up you can always move your website to another hosting provider.
What about the cost of a WordPress website?
WordPress itself is free (always go for the self hosted version with a host like Siteground – don’t use their hosted version). There are also lots of free themes with WordPress and add-ons called plugins which give you more functionality. So you can get a WordPress website completely for free (just paying for the domain and hosting). WooCommerce which is WordPress’s native shop function is even free. You can get a good, fully functional WordPress website for free without any ongoing cost other than the domain and hosting.
That said, there are lots of “premium” themes and plugins which aren’t free and make for a “better” WordPress website. Some of these have a one-off cost, but many have annual subscriptions.
The websites I build use Divi which is a premium theme. It costs $89/year if you buy the licence yourself. I also use premium plugins on some websites, depending on what is needed. These can add up (I pay a few thousand pounds each year for premium plugins although of course I use these on lots of websites – clients on my maintenance plan don’t need to pay separately for these).
5. Maintenance/Support
A website can’t quite just be built and left.
If you have a WordPress website you need to do technical updates. WordPress, the theme you use and plugins get updated and you need to run the updates. Some of those updates give more functionality, some are to work with other updates (eg a plugin might get updated to work with the latest version of WordPress) and some are security updates. These shouldn’t be ignored.
You can outsource running updates. I highly recommend you do this so you don’t have to worry about it and can focus on running your business.
I offer a maintenance plan for clients whose websites I have built. This covers the updates, as well as hosting, backing up your website, all the premium plugins and theme licences and me in your corner. I charge just £25/month for this which is really cheap considering it includes hosting worth £16/month, the Divi theme worth $89/year and access to thousands of pounds worth of premium plugins.
6. Design/Build Cost
Those are the ongoing cost of a website.
But what about building the website in the first place?
You can, of course, do that yourself. Then it is “free” in the sense it doesn’t cost any money. But it does take your time, which is valuable.
I do want to stress that you don’t need to use a web designer and/or a developer – even for a WordPress website.
If you do want to use a designer and/or developer then costs can vary quite substantially.
There are two reasons I recommend you use a professional. Firstly the amount of time it will save you. I can build a website a lot quicker than you can and it is rare it takes me less than 30 hours. I am of course a perfectionist! And I will try a few different ideas to see what works best. That means you get a better result. It’s not just thrown together.
Why does it take so long?
- There’s understanding your business – we need to understand what you do, who your clients are and put ourselves in their shoes so we can understand the buying journey they take. It’s a bit like building a house. You don’t just start building walls – you think about how many people are going to live there, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms you’ll need, where your shoes and coats are going to go etc. We don’t start building a website. We start with your business need and translate that into a website brief.
- We take this brief with the words, images, colours, fonts and what you tell us about your style to come up with a couple of designs.
- We ask you for your thoughts on the designs (and revise the design as needed) before we build out the other pages.
- As we’re building the website we’re paying close attention to things like image sizing, spacings and how your website looks on both a desktop and mobile. This takes more time than you might expect and requires a real attention to detail.
- Then we’re adding in functionality as appropriate and testing links.
The other reason for using a professional is that you get a better result. We’ve built almost 100 websites. We know what we’re doing. Not just from a technical perspective, but I have studied what works from a marketing perspective – the things you need to do to persuade people to buy or book that appointment.
Our prices start at £2200 to design and build a website. You can get a website built for less. You can also pay a lot lot more – tens of thousands of pounds.
7. Photography, Graphics and Copywriting
I also want to mention getting photography (or sourcing stock photos), graphics, copywriting and SEO as these form part of your website.
I’ve written blog posts before about the value of good photography. I seriously think it is one of the best investments you can make in your business. Professional photography costs from about £200 to about £2000 depending on the photographer, number of images and the location. If you are keeping costs down then you can have fewer photos taken and use more stock photos. There are free sources of stock photos or others that cost just a few pounds per image.
Most web designers have access to a library of free basic graphics. These are usually enough. If you need others then Canva is a good, inexpensive, source as is Creative Market. If you need bespoke graphics then the cost will depend on the number you need and how complex they are.
Writing copy for your website is hard and you may want to involve a copywriter. Again, the cost of a copywriter can vary enormously. You can get help for a few hundred pounds or you can pay thousands. It depends on the amount of copy and the experience of the copywriter. To some extent you get what you pay for, but for many small business owners it can be difficult to justify paying a lot for a copywriter. It is something you can do yourself – if budget is an issue and you are a reasonably competent writer then I suggest you do that.
Your website should be built following good SEO principles – that should be included in the cost of your website build (another reason you may want to get a professional to build your website). But if you are relying upon people searching on Google as one of the main drivers of traffic to your website you will need to go further than that. You’ll want to invest in keyword research (so you know what people are searching for when they’re looking for the kind of thing you offer) as well as SEO copywriting and full SEO optimisation. The price of this work depends on the size of your website. Most SEO agencies charge a lot for this.
How can you reduce the cost?
Websites can cost millions, they can cost a few pounds. Of course most are somewhere in between.
If you really are bootstrapping, then you can do it yourself. The cheapest way is to build your own website on wordpress, with a free theme, using free plugins and hosting it with Siteground (I seriously wouldn’t compromise on web hosting). That allows you to have a web presence and test your business is viable, before investing in something better. You can do that for about £20 plus £2/month initially.
You don’t need to know any code with WordPress and you can find videos online to walk you through how to do it. I’m not saying it is easy (you’ll probably want to throw your computer out of the window at some point – I often do) or that you will get the most amazing website – but it is enough to get you going.
Once you know your business is viable I would recommend investing in professional help with your website.
You can keep costs down with a professional by being really clear upfront about what you need and keeping it simple.
The best websites are actually very simple. You don’t need hundreds of pages. The fewer pages you have and the less functionality on a website the cheaper it will be. Sketching out what you need your website to do should be the first step.
Don’t choose your web designer purely on price (see my blog posts How to find a website designer for your business and 12 Questions to ask your web designer before you hire them). Choose someone who is going to provide the best value for your business (and make the process as easy as possible).
Check the cost of their maintenance and ongoing help. Our maintenance programme is one of the cheapest out there for what is offered. And also check that they will teach you how to edit text and change images. This is something we do so clients don’t have to pay us when they want to make simple changes.
In fact, if you have a shop with lots of products, then ask the web designer to add a few and to show you how to add the rest. The same with a blog. We always show our clients how to add their own blog posts. You want to be able to do this yourself.
Think about what you need in terms of SEO? Do you just need your web designer to follow “good practice” when they’re building your website or do you want them to research keywords and write copy that works for SEO? SEO can be expensive because it takes a lot of time.
I don’t suggest you scrimp on a photographer as good photography can make a huge difference on your website. But if you’re trying to keep costs down do think about whether you need bespoke graphics or whether you can use “standard” ones. Similarly, if your logo and branding is only going to be used on your website then you can potentially get away without using a graphic designer to do branding. If you’re going to use a logo on a van, premises and/or clothing then I would get a professional logo and branding. You want these to look professional and certainly don’t want to be redoing them in a year or so.
Is it worth the cost of a new website?
What’s the benefit of a new website?
A new website should bring you more clients and should allow you to raise your rates. It can also save you time by automating things like bookings and answering simple questions.
What is that worth?
Let’s say you have revenue of £30,000. A new website might allow you to increase pricing by 10% (because you are perceived as higher value), that’s £3,000/year. Let’s say you get another 10% of clients (because some people who may have been put off working with you are now convinced you are the right person to help them), so that is worth a further £3,300/year. That’s an increase in revenue of £6,300/year. Plus the time you might save in automation.
A new website costing £2,200 plus photography and perhaps graphics and/or copywriting might cost you a total of £3,000 or so (say £4,000 including SEO). This means your new website has paid for itself within 6 – 12 months.
With a higher revenue to begin with and/or a greater uplift the payback might be even quicker.
What are you waiting for?
Conclusion
A website can cost just £20 for a domain plus £2/month for web hosting if you build your own with WordPress and utilise the free tools. Be prepared to spend at least 30 hours building it (plus the time to write the content and source images) and some banging your head against a brick wall. But it is doable for that.
Be prepared to pay at least about £3,000 if you decide to outsource the design and building of a website with photography – more if you add in copywriting, graphics and full SEO. Then at least £25/month for ongoing maintenance. But a good website should easily pay for itself within the first year.
Thinking about what you are looking for it to do for your business is the first step in ensuring you get what you need and don’t pay for things you don’t need. I’d advise keeping it simple when it comes to pages and functionality. Talk to your web designer about how to keep costs low and make sure they teach you how to add products, blog posts and make other simple edits so you can do those yourself in future and don’t need to pay someone else.
Finally choose the right designer for you. Someone who is experienced in building websites for a business like yours.
And if you are looking for a new website please do talk to us if you are a service based business (we don’t build e-commerce websites, that is websites whose primary function is selling products). We’d love to chat and help you.
You can check out what we offer on our web design page or get in contact to book a call
