This is the exact choice my brother faced. £150 from a bloke who'd disappear after the build, or £3,000 from an agency for something that still wouldn't rank. Neither is a real answer. Zenlio is the third option, and here's how all three stack up.
One option vanishes. One over-charges. Both often forget the bit that wins you work.
The cheap web designer gets you live for a couple of hundred quid, then goes quiet the moment you need a change. The agency gets you a lovely site for a few grand, wrapped in account managers and a monthly retainer, and it still might not rank.
The thing both tend to skip is the part that actually matters: building the site so customers find you. A pretty page nobody sees and a cheap page nobody sees are the same page, priced differently.
Zenlio is the option in the middle. Senior work, a fixed price you can see, built to be found, and looked after once it's live. Here's the full picture, including when the other two are the smarter buy.
This page has grown into the longer version of the conversation Dan has with owners on the phone most weeks. It covers all three options properly, a quick tool below to work out which one actually fits your situation, and a calculator further down that adds up what each option really costs once you look past the first invoice.
If you've got five minutes, read it properly. If you've only got one, use the tool below, check the numbers in the calculator, and skip straight to the FAQ for whatever's still nagging at you.
Answer the four questions below. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is saved, it's just an honest steer based on what you tell us.
Answer all four to see your result.
This is the exact choice most owner-operators get offered. Two options, both with a catch. Where each of them is genuinely the better call, we say so further down.
| Cheap web designer | £3k+ agency | Zenlio LocalThe third option | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical price | £150 to £500 one-off. | £3,000 to £10,000+. | £500 to £1,500 build, then from £49 a month. |
| What you get | A few pages, then quiet. | A polished site, often more than you need. | 15 to 40+ pages built to be found and to win work. |
| Built for SEO and AI search | Rarely, despite the promise. | Sometimes, if you pay for it. | Always. Included, not an upsell. |
| Who does the work | One freelancer juggling ten jobs. | A team, with account managers between you and the build. | One senior operator, twenty years in, on every project. |
| Timeline | A few days, then handed over. | Weeks to months, kick-off decks first. | Under a week. |
| After it's live | They tend to go quiet. | Change requests, tickets and invoices. | A direct line to the person who built it. |
| What you own | Sometimes unclear. | Sometimes locked to their CMS. | Everything. Yours to take anywhere. |
Use the tabs above to jump straight to the row that matters to you right now, or read the whole table if you've got a minute. Every row on this page reflects a genuine trade-off, not a comparison stacked to make one column look bad.
Competitor pricing reflects publicly reported UK figures at the time of writing and varies by trade, plan and location.
A one-off price only tells you what today costs.
It doesn't tell you what a site costs across three years, once you count what happens if it needs rebuilding, what a monthly retainer adds up to, or what you're paying every month for a plan. Move the sliders below, using the ranges already quoted on this page, and see how the three-year totals actually compare.
One-off build, £150 to £500.
One-off build, £3,000 to £10,000+.
Fixed build, then a monthly plan.
Figures use the price ranges quoted higher up this page. The agency retainer field defaults to zero, since not every agency charges one; fill it in from your own quote to see the real total. The Zenlio Local total is the one-off build plus 36 months at the plan's monthly rate, with no extra assumptions either side. This is a planning tool, not a quote.
Neither option is bad. They're built for different jobs. Here's when to pick them over us.
If you know exactly what you want, it's small, and you'll never need it touched again, a good local designer can do a tidy job for a little money. The risk is you can't always tell the good ones from the ones who vanish until it's too late, which is why it's worth checking a few things before you hand over a deposit.
If you're a larger business that needs brand strategy, big multi-channel campaigns and a team on retainer, an agency earns its fee. That's real work, and it's work we don't do. If you need a partner to run marketing across several channels at once, hire one, and expect to pay for the process as well as the output.
Between the two. Built for owner-operators who want agency-grade work without the agency price or the layers, and who want the person who scoped it to be the person who builds it, and who's still there once it's live.
The table above gives you the headline. This is what the process actually feels like once you've said yes.
You send a few details over WhatsApp or email. A day or two later a draft appears, sometimes built from a template with your logo dropped in. You ask for a couple of tweaks, they get made quickly because there's no process to go through, and the site goes live within the week. Then, unless you're lucky, that's the last you hear from them until you need something changed and the replies slow down.
First comes a discovery call, then a proposal, then a kick-off meeting with a deck covering goals, audience and competitors, most of which you already knew when you first got in touch. Design mockups follow a couple of weeks later, then a round or two of feedback through a project management tool. Build and testing add more weeks. By the time it's live, you're eight to twelve weeks in, and every stage has involved someone other than the person actually doing the work.
A short call to understand your business, what you offer, and where your work comes from. Dan builds the site directly, service pages, area pages and all, and sends it over for a look. You ask for changes, they get made by the same person who built it, and the site is usually live inside a week. After that, it's a plan, not a one-off, so nothing goes quiet.
Twenty years across Joblogic, Dropbox, Oracle and ServiceNow, on your project directly. No junior handoff, no learning on your budget, no one on the project who's never done this before.
You see the number before you commit. No "starts from", no scope creep, no padded retainer arriving every month for work you can't see, and no surprise line items after the fact.
No account manager relaying your changes. You talk to the one who does the work. That's the whole point, and it's why changes tend to happen in days, not weeks.
Service pages, area pages, schema, AI search. The £3k agency site that "looks lovely" but never ranks is the exact thing we exist to avoid, and it's built in from the first page, not bolted on after launch.
Unlike the £150 job, the site is looked after. Changes, updates and monitoring are part of the plan, not a favour you have to chase, and not an invoice you have to argue about first.
Fixed scope, fixed price, and the site is yours. No CMS lock-in, no holding your domain to ransom, no nasty surprise if you ever leave, whenever that is and whatever the reason.
Most local web designers are decent, ordinary people trying to make a living. A few aren't. Here's how to tell which one you're talking to before your money's gone.
Zenlio started at the kitchen table. My brother's an electrician. He'd been quoted £3,000 by an agency for something that wouldn't even rank, and £150 by a "web designer" who'd have vanished after the build. Neither is a real answer. So I built him one. Then his mate asked. That's the whole reason this third option exists.
Because a big price buys polish, not necessarily performance. Plenty of expensive sites look beautiful and never rank, because the budget went on design and not on the structure that gets you found. A higher invoice is not proof the site will win you work. Ask any agency what happens to your enquiries after launch, and listen carefully to the answer.
Cheapest on day one. The cost shows up later, when the site doesn't rank, needs a change, and the person who built it has moved on. Some local designers are excellent. The problem is you're gambling on which one you got, with no support if it goes quiet.
One senior person does the work, at a fixed price, and stays around afterwards. You get the standard of an agency build without the account managers and the retainer, and the reliability the cheap option can't offer. And every site is built to be found, which is the part both of the others often skip.
Yes. If you're an established team that needs strategic web work rather than a local build, that's Zenlio Studio. Same senior pair of hands, scoped for in-house marketing teams.
It gets looked after. Content updates, monitoring and changes are part of the monthly plan. You email, we do it. No tickets, no waiting weeks, no chasing an invoice for a ten-minute job.
Yes, always. Fixed scope, fixed price, and what you pay for is yours. No CMS lock-in and no holding your domain hostage if you ever decide to move on.
Ask to see three or four live sites they've actually built, not a portfolio PDF, and check those sites still work a year or two on. Get the scope in writing, even if it's just an email confirming what's included. Ask what a small change costs after launch, and see how directly they answer. If they want the full amount upfront with nothing written down, that's worth pausing on. There's a fuller checklist further up this page if you want the whole list.
First, try the obvious routes: email, phone, and a message through whatever platform you found them on, with a clear deadline for a reply. If you paid by card, your bank may be able to help through a chargeback, depending on how long it's been. If the site's live but you can't get hold of them, check whether you actually have access to the domain and hosting; if you do, you're not as stuck as it feels. If you want someone to pick the project up properly, that's the next question.
Yes, this comes up more than you'd think. If a project has stalled with someone else, we can usually take what exists, keep what's worth keeping, and finish it properly, or start fresh if that's genuinely quicker. It gets scoped and priced like any other job. There's no penalty for having been let down once already.
You get a proper invoice for the build and for the monthly plan, itemised and sent by email, useful for your own accounts and your accountant. If VAT applies, it's shown clearly on the invoice, not folded into a vague total. Nothing is paid in cash with no paper trail.
You say so and it gets changed. There's no formal rounds-of-revision process to work through; if something's off, tell Dan directly and it gets fixed. The person who built it is the person making the change, so there's no relay through an account manager and no extra invoice for getting it right the first few times.
You get a clear written scope and price before anything starts, and terms covering the plan, the notice period and what's included. It's not a fifty-page legal document, because it doesn't need to be, but it is in writing, which is more than the £150 option usually offers and less bureaucratic than the paperwork a full agency puts in front of you.
Not through Zenlio Local, no. Local is built for service businesses who want enquiries and bookings, not a shop with a checkout, stock and payment processing. If you need to sell products online, that's a different job with different requirements, and it sits under Zenlio Studio rather than Local. Worth saying upfront rather than finding out halfway through a build.
Some can, most don't, and it's rarely their fault. Proper SEO, structure, schema, page speed, content built around how people actually search, takes time most £150 to £500 jobs simply don't have budget for. It's not that local designers are bad at their jobs, it's that a price that low usually buys the site, not the ranking, and that's the whole gap this page is about.
It's usually a discovery call, then a written proposal, then a kick-off meeting with a slide deck covering your goals, your audience and your competitors, most of which you told them on the first call. It's not wasted time exactly; a bigger team needs a shared brief to work from. But it does add weeks before any actual design work starts, and you're paying for that process as part of the fee.
Then it's a conversation, not a problem. If you outgrow a local build and start needing proper strategic web work, ongoing campaigns or a bigger scope, that's Zenlio Studio, same senior hands, different scope. Nothing about Local locks you out of that path later.
No account managers, no disappearing act, no site that looks the part but never ranks. Get a free callback, or book a 15-minute chat to talk it through.
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