Website maintenance costs
What hosting, domains, plugins and edits cost a practice each year, and whether a care plan is worth it. Read the running costs guide →
The short answer
Website design cost in the UK at a glance
These are the typical UK ranges for a small service business site, the kind most practices need. They are not quotes, and the spread inside each row is wide.
| Route | Typical upfront cost | Typical ongoing cost | Usually suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build it yourself on Wix or Squarespace | £0, plus your own time | About £9 to £29 a month for the plan most practices would use, billed annually | A new solo practice with a simple offer and some evenings to spare |
| Freelancer | £500 to £1,500 for a basic five page site, £1,000 to £3,000 for five to ten pages | Hosting and edits, often £20 to £60 a month | A practice that wants a person to build it but has a modest budget |
| Small or regional agency | £3,000 to £12,000 for a brochure site | Care plans from around £25 a month for basic updates to several hundred for more cover | A clinic with a team, several services and a clear brief |
| London or larger agency | £8,000 to £25,000 for a brochure site | Varies, usually a support contract | Multi-site groups with complex needs |
| Pay monthly website | Little or nothing | Around £49 to £150 a month, often with a minimum term | Anyone who would rather spread the cost and hand the work over |
Ranges come from UK pricing guides published by kwiboo (January 2026), Webpop Design and Whito, plus the providers' own pricing pages, all checked in October 2026. Nearly all of these figures come from businesses that sell websites, so treat them as a guide rather than a market survey.
The figure the ranges tend to hide is the writing. One UK guide estimates that copywriting, photography and SEO add 30 to 50% to a quoted price when they are not included. For a practice, the words do most of the work, so always ask who is writing them.
Why quotes vary
What drives website design prices up or down
Two quotes for "a five page website" can be thousands of pounds apart because they describe different jobs. These are the things that move the price.
Number of pages
More pages means more writing, more design and more checking. It also means more chances to be found: a physio with separate pages for back pain, sports injuries and post-surgical rehab can rank for each of those searches, where a single services page usually ranks for none of them. Cheap quotes often save money by keeping the page count low.
Who writes the copy
Some quotes assume you supply every word. Others include a writer who interviews you and drafts each page. Writing about health treatments takes extra care, because claims about what a treatment does need to be accurate and supportable. Expect the second kind of quote to cost more, and to be worth it.
Template or custom design
A good template adapted to your brand is quicker and cheaper than a design drawn from scratch. For most practices a well-chosen template is enough. Custom design starts to make sense when a clinic has a strong brand or several sites to keep consistent.
Booking and other integrations
Linking to an existing booking system is usually simple. Embedding it neatly, adding intake forms, payments or a members area takes longer. The booking software is often a separate subscription too: Cliniko, for example, lists plans from $45 a month for one practitioner on its own site.
SEO groundwork
Page titles, headings, local business markup, a Google Business Profile and fast load times are cheap to do during a build and fiddly to retrofit. Some quotes include them. Many leave them out without saying so.
Platform
Wix and Squarespace bundle hosting and security into the plan. WordPress is more flexible but needs separate hosting, updates and often paid plugins, which shows up later in your running costs rather than in the build price.
For health practices
What a health practice website needs that others don't
A practice website has a few jobs a café website doesn't. Make sure whoever builds yours knows about them, because fixing them later costs extra.
- Registration details. Your regulator, your registration number and your professional body, shown clearly. Patients check, and for some professions it is required. The GDC's guidance on advertising says a dental practice website must show its address, contact details, a link to the GDC, its complaints procedure and the date the site was last updated.
- CQC ratings, if you are registered. CQC-registered providers must show their latest rating on their website within 21 days of it being published, with a link to the full report. CQC provides a widget for this.
- Advertising rules. The ASA treats most of your website as advertising. Botox and other prescription-only medicines cannot be promoted to the public, testimonials need to be genuine and on file, and claims about what a treatment achieves need evidence. An aesthetics site written by someone who doesn't know this can create problems you then have to pay to fix.
- Booking that works on a phone. Most people look you up on their phone. A booking button that opens a fiddly page, or a contact form that never arrives, quietly costs you patients.
- Careful forms. If your form asks about symptoms or medical history, that is health data, which UK GDPR treats as special category data. It needs secure handling. Often the simpler answer is to keep the website form to name, contact details and a short message, and collect clinical details in your practice management system.
- A privacy notice and cookie banner. Every practice website collecting enquiries needs a privacy notice, and any tracking cookies need the right consent.
None of this is expensive if it is planned in from the start. It is one reason a builder who works with practices can be cheaper overall than one who doesn't, even when the headline price is higher.
Running costs
How much does a website cost per month?
Once a site is live, the running costs are the domain, hosting, any platform plan, email, paid plugins and someone to make changes. For a small practice site that typically means somewhere between £10 and £60 a month if you look after it yourself, and more if you pay someone to keep it updated and secure.
A .co.uk domain is usually around £10 to £15 a year after any introductory offer. Website builder plans run from about £9 to £29 a month on annual billing. WordPress hosting starts at around £7 a month with UK hosts such as Krystal, before any maintenance. Professional email through Google Workspace starts at £5.90 per user per month on an annual plan, excluding VAT.
We break these down line by line, with what a practice realistically spends in a year, in our guide to website maintenance and running costs.
A worked example
What our website tiers cost next to the alternatives
Upfront prices are hard to compare when one option charges monthly and another doesn't. Looking at three years usually makes the trade clearer.
Here is how our own done-for-you tiers compare with a do-it-yourself site and a typical freelancer build. The DIY and freelancer figures are illustrative, built from the ranges above, not quotes.
| Option | Upfront | Monthly | Three year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Squarespace Core, built yourself | £0 | £17 (annual billing) | About £612, plus your time and domain renewals |
| Freelancer, five pages, then hosting | £1,500 | £20 hosting | About £2,220, with edits charged extra |
| Evagrow Launch, five pages | £449 | £39 | £1,853 |
| Evagrow Grow, 10+ pages | £949 | £59 | £3,073 |
| Evagrow Scale, 20+ pages | £1,950 | £129 | £6,594 |
Our monthly fee covers hosting, security, updates and edits to existing pages, so it is doing a different job from a builder plan. The honest trade-off is that you can't edit the site yourself: you ask, and we change it. If you want to own and edit your site, we also do custom builds on Wix from £395, Squarespace from £495 and WordPress from £595 for a single page, with bigger sites quoted on a call.
The cheapest row is the right one for plenty of people. A new counsellor with one service and a referral network may be well served by a tidy Squarespace site built over a weekend. A clinic with four practitioners and a dozen treatments needs more pages than a weekend allows. Our tier details are on the healthcare website design page.
Before you sign
How to compare website quotes properly
Send every provider the same short brief: how many services you offer, how many practitioners and locations you have, which booking system you use and whether you have a site already. Then ask each one:
- Who writes the words, and how many rounds of changes are included?
- How many pages are included, and what does an extra page cost?
- Who owns the domain, the content and the design if I leave?
- Is there a minimum term, and what happens to the site if I cancel early?
- What does the monthly fee cover, and how quickly are edits made?
- Are page titles, local SEO and a Google Business Profile included?
- If I have a site already, will you redirect the old pages?
- Is VAT included in the price?
Pay monthly deals vary most on ownership. Some providers keep ownership of the design until a minimum term ends. That can be fair, but you should know before you sign, not when you try to leave.
If you already have a site and are wondering whether to replace it, read our guide to website redesign costs first. Sometimes the answer is a few new pages rather than a new website.
Honest answers
Common questions
How much does it cost to set up a website in the UK?
Anything from about £100 a year on a website builder plan if you do it yourself, to £1,000 to £3,000 with a freelancer, and £3,000 to £12,000 or more with an agency. A domain adds roughly £10 to £15 a year. For a small practice, the main variables are the number of pages and whether someone writes the copy for you.
Is Wix or Squarespace cheaper for a practice website?
They are close. On annual billing, Wix's UK plans start at about £9 a month and Squarespace's at £12, with the plans most practices would choose sitting between roughly £16 and £29. Check whether VAT is added at checkout and whether the booking feature you want needs a higher plan or a separate tool.
Why do website quotes vary so much?
Because they rarely describe the same job. One quote might include copywriting, ten pages and local SEO, another might be a template with your words pasted in. Ask each provider what is and isn't included, and compare like with like.
Should I pay monthly or upfront for a website?
Upfront usually costs less over several years if you are happy to maintain the site or pay for changes as you go. Monthly makes sense if you want someone else to keep it hosted, secure and updated. Either way, check who owns the site and domain if you stop paying.
Is £500 enough for a practice website?
It can be for a simple site with a few pages, especially if you write the copy yourself. It is rarely enough for a site with separate pages for each service and practitioner. Be wary of any low quote that doesn't say who writes the words.