Ask three agencies for a website quote in the UK right now and you'll get three wildly different numbers. £500. £7,000. £30,000. None of them are lying. They are just selling three different things.
This is the honest breakdown, by tier, so you can put a price on what you actually need before the first sales call. No fluff, no bait-and-switch, no "starting from" pricing that doubles on the proposal.
The four real tiers
Every UK website quote you'll ever get sits in one of four tiers. The price difference isn't random, it maps to who's building it, how much of their time you're renting, and how much overhead sits between you and them.
1. DIY builders. Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, £10–£50/month
What you pay: £120 to £600 a year, forever. Add £10–£20 a year for the domain.
What you get: A site you click together yourself in an afternoon. Templates are mostly good now. SEO is acceptable but capped. Commerce works if you're under a few hundred SKUs.
Who it's right for: Brand-new businesses testing an idea. A month of Wix costs less than a single proper quote, and if the idea doesn't work you haven't lost much.
Who it's wrong for: Any business that relies on Google organic traffic. Wix sites can rank, but they hit a ceiling that custom-built sites don't, slower Core Web Vitals, template-bound URL structures, platform-level JS overhead you can't strip out. If traffic is the product, you will hit a wall.
The other hidden cost: you can't cleanly migrate out of Wix when the time comes. The export is html-only with none of the logic or design intent preserved. A "we'll just start with Wix and upgrade later" plan in 2026 is a rebuild from scratch in 2027.
2. Freelancer, £300–£1,500 typically
What you pay: A lump sum. Sometimes hourly at £25–£60/hr.
What you get: Varies wildly. A good freelancer will ship something a small agency would be proud of. A bad one will hand over a WordPress theme with 40 plugins and a bill.
Real risks to budget for:
- No team behind them. Freelancer is ill for a week, your launch slips a week.
- Slow on revisions. You're one of five clients they're juggling.
- Post-launch support is ambiguous. Many disappear after the final invoice. "Call me if something breaks" isn't a maintenance plan.
- Quality variance is enormous. Two £1,000 freelancer sites will not be the same £1,000.
Who it's right for: Projects with clear scope, a single decision-maker on your side, and a freelancer you've verified with references. If you're paying a friend-of-a-friend because they "do websites," the failure rate is high.
Red flag: any freelancer who quotes without asking what the site needs to do. A credible freelancer asks five questions before sending a number.
3. Small agency (like us), £3,500–£10,000
What you pay: Fixed price, fixed scope, written proposal. Milestone payments (typically 40% deposit, 30% on design approval, 30% on completion).
What you get at CenoDigital specifically:
- Figma designs first, you approve a fully interactive click-through prototype before a line of code is written
- Hand-coded in Astro or Next.js, not a page-builder, Lighthouse 95+ on Marketing tier and up
- Mobile, tablet, desktop, tested on real devices, not just Chrome DevTools
- Contact form + analytics + on-page SEO baked in
- Post-launch support window, 30 days on Landing, 60 on Marketing, scoped individually on Platform
- Written proposal before any commitment, no deposit until you sign
Our tiers, so you can price-check against other small agencies:
| Tier | UK price | Timeline | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Landing | £3,500 | 2–3 weeks | Product launches, paid-ad landing pages, single-service businesses |
| Marketing | £6,500 | 6–8 weeks | Full business sites, home, services, about, blog, contact |
| Platform | £12,000+ | 10+ weeks | E-commerce, custom apps, marketplaces, member portals |
For founders on tight budgets, there's also the MVP Web package, £1,800 for a focused homepage + contact page in 10–14 days. Same stack as the Marketing tier so upgrading later is an extension, not a rebuild.
When it makes sense: You need leads from the site, not just an online presence. Your business depends on how the site converts, not just how it looks.
Red flag: any small agency whose timeline slides more than a week without a written reason. Good small agencies run on fixed scope, not guesswork.
4. Large / London agency, £10,000–£50,000+
What you pay: A lot, mostly for things that aren't on the finished site.
What you're buying:
- Account manager, the person you actually speak to
- Project manager, the person who manages the account manager
- Office rent in Shoreditch or Covent Garden, built into your hourly rate
- Pitch decks and strategy documents, the pre-sale marketing layer
- Slower decision cycles, every change goes through three people
The work itself is often identical quality to a small agency. Sometimes worse (the actual builders may be junior; the seniors are on the pitch, not the production).
When it makes sense: Enterprise procurement that requires a vendor of a certain size. Complex multi-stakeholder integrations (SAP, Salesforce, legacy ERP). Sites with 50+ unique page templates. Brand-sensitive category leaders who need the "we hired [Agency]" story for their board.
Who should absolutely not use them: Small business owners paying £25,000 for a 5-page brochure site. You're paying for their office, not your website. The rent comes out of your budget either way.
The hidden costs nobody mentions on the quote
Whichever tier you pick, these sit on top:
- Hosting, £20–£60/month for managed hosting. DIY on Netlify/Cloudflare is often free.
- Domain renewal, £10–£30/year.
- Maintenance, £80–£450/month if you want someone else handling updates, backups, security, small changes. Our Care Plans run Basic £149/mo, Standard £249/mo, Priority £449/mo. Freelancers often charge hourly, which reads cheaper until month four.
- Content SEO, writing blog posts that rank. Separate from the build. Our SEO retainers start at £599/mo for 2 posts.
- Copywriting, if you want the page copy written professionally vs supplying your own. We charge £150 per page. Freelance copywriters charge £0.10–£0.50 per word.
- Photography / stock, budget £200–£800 depending on scope. Unsplash works but everyone else uses the same images.
Add roughly £1,000–£3,000 per year in ongoing cost for a serious business site, regardless of who built it.
What CenoDigital charges and why
Short version, we sit in tier 3 (small agency) and we price transparently. Web design starts at £3,500 for a focused landing page, £6,500 for a full marketing site, and £12,000+ for custom platforms. Full pricing for every service is on /services/web-design.
Longer version, we built the company specifically to serve small businesses that have outgrown DIY but can't justify a London agency budget. Six active projects maximum. Fixed scope, fixed price, written proposal. The senior designer and senior engineer on your account are the people you speak to on the call, no account manager, no junior pass-offs.
We're remote-first with a UK phone number, GDPR-compliant, serving UK businesses since 2018. The industry has moved on from "must be in the same office as you", what matters is quality of work and clarity of communication.
Quick ballpark by business type
To give you a working number before the first call:
- Tradesperson / local service (plumber, accountant, consultant): Landing or MVP Web, £1,800–£3,500
- Small product business (Shopify or WooCommerce store, <100 SKUs): Marketing tier with e-commerce add-on, £6,500 + £1,800–£2,200 for the shop
- Professional services firm (law, architecture, agency itself): Marketing tier, £6,500
- SaaS / tech startup (pre-revenue): MVP SaaS Landing, £2,200, or MVP Launch Bundle at £2,400
- Established company rebuild (10+ page site, CMS, blog, case studies): Marketing tier + extras, £7,500–£10,000
- Custom platform (marketplace, booking system, custom auth): Platform tier, £12,000+
If you're looking at quotes more than 40% higher than these ranges for equivalent scope, ask what you're paying for beyond the site itself. You'll usually find an office, an account manager, and a pitch deck in the answer.
How to price-check a quote
Five questions to ask any agency or freelancer before you sign:
- What's the fixed price vs what's billed hourly? If they can't tell you, walk.
- What's included in post-launch support? 30 days minimum is reasonable.
- Who owns the hosting account? You should. Lock-in is a red flag.
- Will I see Figma designs before code? If no, you're paying to find out whether the finished site looks right.
- Can I talk to two recent clients? A credible builder has references who'll take the call.
Want a plain-English estimate for your project?
Book a free 30-minute strategy call. We'll look at what you have, what you need, and what it would take to get there. No pitch, no obligation, no card on file. Reply within one business day.
Or message on WhatsApp, usually quicker.