Cheap website design: what £399 buys, and what it does not
Short answer: £399 buys a complete, professional 5-page website that you own, with the words written with you, local SEO set up for your trade and town, and your Google Business Profile done. It does not buy an online shop, a booking system, a 20-page site or ongoing SEO work. Those are extras, and we price them in the open. This post is the full list, so you can compare any cheap website quote against it.
Why cheap is not the problem
“Cheap website design” worries people, and it should. There are £99 sites that are a template with your logo dropped in, and £30 a month sites that you never own. Cheap is only a problem when the scope is hidden. A £399 site with a written scope is a fair purchase. A £2,000 site with a vague scope is the one to worry about.
The fair comparison in Cheshire: agencies quote £1,500 to £8,000 for a small business site. Blue Whale Media publishes £495 and DotGO £499 for their entry sites. Pay monthly providers start at £30 a month and you rent the result. Our £399 sits in the same band as the published entry prices, and the difference is in what is included.
What £399 includes
| Item | What you get |
|---|---|
| 5 pages | Home, services, about, areas or reviews, contact. Designed for a phone first. |
| Copy written with you | We ask the questions, you give the answers, we write the pages. 2 rounds of changes. |
| Local SEO setup | Page titles and headings for your trade and town, meta descriptions, schema, a sitemap submitted to Google. |
| Google Business Profile | Set up or tidied, categories chosen, services and photos added, verification started. |
| Contact form | Goes to your email, with spam protection. Email first, phone optional. |
| Domain | Registered in your name. The site files are yours, hosted by us on the care plan or anywhere you choose. |
| Ownership | The domain, the site and the content are yours from day one. |
| Live in 7 working days | Counted from the day we have your answers and photos. |
What it does not include
Honest list, with prices.
| Extra | Price | When you need it |
|---|---|---|
| Online shop | £350 | You sell products online with a basket and card payments. |
| Booking system | £120 | Customers book appointments or slots on the site. |
| More pages | £60 per page | A 20-page site, a page per service or a page per town. |
| Ongoing SEO | £150 a month care plan | You want to keep climbing for more towns and services, not just launch. |
So a 10-page site with booking is £399 plus 5 pages at £60 plus £120, which is £819. A 5-page site with a shop is £749. A 20-page site is £399 plus 15 pages at £60, which is £1,299. You can add any of them later. You do not have to decide on day one.
What ongoing SEO means and why it is monthly
Launch SEO gets the site set up correctly. It does not get you to the top of Google for 6 towns. That takes new pages, reviews, posts and fixes month after month, which is work, and work is paid for monthly. The care plan at £150 a month covers hosting, security updates, content edits, one new page or article a month and a rank report. If you only want hosting, you do not need the care plan, and the site still belongs to you.
What a cheap quote should never leave out
Wherever you buy, the following should be inside a £400 to £600 price. If they are not, the price is not the real price.
- Domain in your name
- Copy written for you, not a page of placeholder text to fill in
- A site that works on a phone
- Page titles that say what you do and where
- A working form that lands in your inbox
- Your Google Business Profile at least set up
Where cheap sites go wrong
The failures we see most often are not about design. They are about words and ownership. A site with 5 beautiful pages and 2 lines of text on each will not rank, because Google has nothing to read. A site built on a provider’s platform cannot move when you fall out with them. A site with no town named anywhere on it ranks for your business name and nothing else. None of these cost more to get right. They just have to be in the scope.
Questions to ask about any cheap website
- What exactly are the 5 pages, and who writes them?
- What costs extra, and is there a price list I can keep?
- Do I own the domain, the files and the words?
- Is the local SEO done at launch, or is that the monthly fee?
- What happens if I stop paying the monthly fee?
- Can I see 3 sites you built at this price, and where they rank?
A good answer to all 6 takes 5 minutes and fits on one page. If it does not, keep looking.