Short answer: an accountant's website should cost less than one new retainer client's first month. If it costs more than that every month, or ties you in for three years, someone's having you.
The trouble is nobody quotes it straight. Ask five companies what a website costs and you get five shrugs, a "well, it depends," and a monthly figure with the contract length buried in clause 14.3. So here's the honest map: what the real options cost an accountant in 2026, and the bit they leave out of the sales call.
A good site pays for itself the moment it turns one more worried enquiry into a retained client.The options, honestly priced
Build it yourself
Cheapest on paper. Dearest in the hours you're not billing.
DIY website builder
Wix, Squarespace or a generic template. Pick a look, write the words yourself, publish. No build fee.
Your time, and your ranking. A proper site is 30 to 60 hours of work, and even then it won't show up for "accountant near me" because nobody told you about service pages, schema, or getting your AML supervision and professional body membership where Google can read it.
The "free website" subscription
Practice website subscription providers
"Free website, just £99 a month." The word free is doing a lot of lifting.
Three years at £99 a month is £3,564, and you usually don't own the site or the domain. Stop paying and it vanishes, along with anything you've built up in search.
A traditional agency
Traditional web agency
One-off fee, you own it. Nothing wrong with that in principle.
Every change after launch is on the clock. Updating your fee page: £75. A new client-type page: £200 to £400. So nothing gets updated, the site goes stale, and Google quietly drops you.
It has to rank for the searches that convert
A pretty website nobody finds is a business card that charges rent. What earns is a site that shows up when someone in your patch searches "accountant near me", "self-assessment help" or "small business accountant UK". That means a page for every service, self-assessment, VAT, payroll, bookkeeping, your AML supervision and ACCA, AAT, ICAEW or CIMA membership written into the schema, and the AI-search plumbing so ChatGPT and Perplexity recommend you too. Referrals alone don't do any of that. Neither does a cheap template.
The one-client mathsDo the sum that counts
A self-assessment return typically brings in £150–£300 a year per client. A monthly bookkeeping and accounts retainer for a small limited company typically runs £100–£300 a month. Now put the website next to that. A Starter build is £500 and £49 a month. One new retainer client at £150 a month covers the whole build inside four months, and every client after that is straight profit on the site.
Three tiers, all transparent
A one-off build fee plus a small monthly. No long tie-in. You own the site. Cancel any time after the 3-month minimum.
Three years at the Professional tier is £3,844 all in: about the cost of one agency build, but with 36 months of new content, updates, hosting and ongoing SEO bundled in. Stop any time and you keep the site.
Three questions before you sign
Do you own it? If the answer mentions "platform" or "as long as you're a customer", you don't. Walk.
What's the three-year total? Monthly times 36, plus any build fee. That's your real number, and the cheap monthly with a long contract usually wins the wooden spoon.
What does the monthly actually buy? Hosting is £5 to £15. The rest should be real content, updates and SEO. If you can't list what next month's fee delivers, you're paying for nothing.
The right question isn't "what does it cost?" It's "what does it win me, and do I own it at the end?"
Want to see what a done-for-you site actually looks like for a practice, not a mock-up? DF Accounting is a live, 35-page build for a solo practice, remote across the UK. And the version built specifically for accountants is the accountant websites page.
