Ask ten website companies what a tradesperson's website costs and you'll get ten answers. Most of them deliberately vague.
That vagueness is doing a lot of work. It's hiding lock-in contracts. It's hiding hidden fees. It's hiding the fact that the £49/month "deal" turns into £1,800 over three years if you can't escape it. And it's hiding the fact that the £4,000 agency build is going to charge you £150 every time you want to update a phone number.
So here's the version no agency will write. Every option you've actually got, what it really costs, and the bit they don't tell you in the sales pitch. All prices accurate at the time of writing — May 2026. If you're reading this in 2027 or later, the rough shape will still hold but the numbers may have shifted.
The price on the brochure is rarely the price you pay.Option 1 — Build it yourself
DIY with Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress
The cheapest option on paper. The most expensive in time.
DIY website builder
Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress. Pick a template, drag stuff around, write the words yourself, hit publish. Hosting and the platform are bundled into the monthly fee. No build cost.
If you've got the patience, the time, and a bit of an eye for design, this works. Plenty of tradespeople have built decent sites this way.
Your time. A proper site takes 30–60 hours to build well — picking a template, writing every page, sorting the photos, working out SEO basics, fixing the bits that break. At a tradesperson's hourly rate, that's £1,500–£3,000 of unpaid time. And that's before you discover the site doesn't rank because nobody told you about service area pages or schema markup.
Best for: tradespeople who genuinely enjoy fiddling with tech, have evenings and weekends to spare, and don't mind a long learning curve. Worst for: anyone whose evenings are already spoken for.
Option 2 — Subscription website companiesThe "free website" trap
You've seen the ads. "Free website for tradespeople — just £79 a month." Or £99. Or £149. The word "free" is doing a lot of work in those headlines.
Monthly subscription companies
Companies that offer "no upfront cost" sites in exchange for a long contract. The build is real — you get a working site, usually within a week or two. The monthly fee covers hosting, support, and the cost of the build amortised over the contract term.
Sounds reasonable until you do the maths.
Three years at £99/month is £3,564. Three years at £149/month is £5,364. And the worst part: you usually don't own the site. Stop paying, the site disappears. Want to move to another provider? Often you can't — the site is locked to their platform. You've spent four-figures and own nothing.
Some of these companies are decent. Most aren't. The ones that are decent will tell you upfront about the contract length and what happens if you leave. The ones that aren't will bury that in clause 14.3 of the agreement.
The question to ask before signing anything: "If I cancel after 12 months, do I keep my website?" If the answer is anything other than a clear yes, walk.
"If I leave, do I keep my website?" If the answer is unclear, walk.Option 3 — Traditional agencies
The £4,000 build
Hire a local web agency or freelancer to build you a custom site. They quote upfront, you pay, you own it.
Traditional web agency
You pay a one-off build fee. You usually own the site. Hosting is either bundled, cheap, or organised separately. This is the traditional way of doing it and there's nothing wrong with it in principle.
The catch is what happens after launch.
Every change after launch is billed by the hour. Updating a phone number: £75. Adding a new service page: £200–£400. A new blog post: £150. The site goes stale because every refresh costs money. A year in, it looks the same as it did at launch — and Google notices. Most agency-built tradesperson sites are obviously dated within two years because the owner has stopped paying for changes.
Best for: businesses that need something genuinely custom and have the budget to keep it fresh. Worst for: tradespeople who want a working site that quietly improves over time without phoning the agency every month.
Option 4 — Done-for-you with a sensible monthlyThe Zenlio model — which I'd argue makes most sense
Full disclosure: this is what we do. So obviously I'm biased. But here's the model honestly described — including its weaknesses — and you can judge.
Modest one-off build fee to cover the actual work of building the site. Modest ongoing monthly to cover hosting, content updates, blog posts, and continuous SEO/AI search optimisation. No long contract. You own the site. If you leave, we hand you the files.
Three tiers, all transparent
A one-off build fee plus a small monthly. No long-term tie-in. You own the site. Cancel any time after the 3-month minimum.
Three years at the Professional tier comes to £3,844 total — comparable to a single agency build, but you've had 36 months of new blog posts, content updates, hosting, and ongoing SEO work bundled in. If you stop, you keep the site.
The honest weakness: it's not the cheapest option in month one. A DIY Wix site is cheaper. A "free" subscription deal looks cheaper. The strength is that the price you see is the price you pay, and the value compounds over time rather than the site going stale.
The other honest weakness: this model only works if the monthly is doing real work. Hosting alone is worth maybe £15/month. The rest of the fee needs to be earning its keep through actual content, actual updates, actual results. If a monthly fee isn't producing anything visible after 90 days, ask why.
So what's actually fair?How to spot a fair price
Three simple tests. Apply them to any quote you're considering — including ours.
Test 1: Do you own it? If the answer involves "platform," "licence," or "as long as you remain a customer," you don't. Walk.
Test 2: What's the total cost over three years? Multiply the monthly by 36. Add any build fee. That's your real number. Compare it across options. The "cheap" monthly with a long contract often comes out the most expensive.
Test 3: What does the monthly actually buy? Hosting is £5–£15. Anything more should come with deliverables — content updates, blog posts, a performance report, real SEO work. If you can't list what you'll get next month for your fee, you're paying for nothing.
The right question isn't "what does it cost?" It's "what do I actually own at the end?"
A fair price is one you can explain to your accountant and one that produces something you'd still own if the company building it disappeared tomorrow. Anything else is rented at a markup.