What a two-page trade website should cost in the UK, with real 2026 prices

If you run a trade and you’ve asked three people what a website costs, you’ve probably had three answers that don’t overlap. One said £150. One said £1,500. One wouldn’t say until you’d had “a discovery call”. This guide gives you the real numbers, so you can tell a fair quote from a bad one.

We checked the prices of the UK web design sellers ranking on Google in October 2026, plus what small business owners say they actually paid in UK forums. Prices below are what was shown on sellers’ pages that month. They change, so treat them as bands, not quotes.

First: what a two-page trade website actually is

Two pages is the smallest site worth having. For a roofer, plasterer, plumber or sparky it usually means:

• A home page that says what you do, where you cover, why you’re worth calling, and shows a few photos of your work and a review or two.
• A contact or services page with your phone number, a form, your areas, and a list of what you take on.

That’s enough for the job a website does for a trade: when someone gets your name from a neighbour or a van, they look you up on their phone. If what they find looks proper and makes calling easy, you get the job. A two-page site does that. A twenty-page site doesn’t do it better.

The four price bands in the UK right now

Do it yourself: £100 to £180 a year, plus your evenings

Forum posters who built their own site on a website builder report paying £180 a year, or £100 to £180 a year for hosting and a template. The money is small. The cost is time: evenings learning the builder, writing every word yourself, and a site that often looks like every other one on the same template. One owner found WordPress DIY cost as much as a website builder once hosting, theme and plugins were added.

Cheap one-off web design: £75 to £600

This is the band most tradespeople end up in. UK sellers we checked in October 2026 listed one-off sites from £74.99 (an eight-page template site) up to £599, with the bulk between £149 and £499. Almost every seller in this band includes twelve months of hosting. Page counts run from three to twenty.

For a two-page site, the honest end of this band is £150 to £350. One Chelmsford designer listed a three-page site at £325. Our own Basic pack is £179 for two pages with the first year of hosting in; the point of this guide isn’t to sell it, but it’s a fair marker for what two pages should cost from a real person who also writes the words.

Be careful with the very bottom. Under £100 usually means a template, text you write yourself, and extras later.

Pay monthly: £19 to £95 a month

Pay-monthly sellers in the UK price by page count. A one-page site starts at about £19 a month and stays under £30. A four-to-ten-page site is £45 to £75. Fifteen pages or extras like CRM tools push it to £95 and beyond. A few sellers are rolling month to month; others have 12 to 36 month terms.

The question that matters in this band isn’t the monthly figure. It’s what happens at the end. Only a handful of the sellers we checked said on their website whether you own the site when the payments stop. Ask before you sign; we’ve written seven questions to put to any pay monthly seller.

Freelancers and agencies: £800 to £3,000+

UK forum owners describe “about £1,000 to £2,000 for five pages” and “£1,500 to £3,000” as typical agency quotes, and “under £1,000” from a local freelancer for a basic site. Agency pages we checked started at £825 to £995 and went to £1,500 for a basic package.

For a two-page trade site, this band is usually paying for things you don’t need: branding workshops, a project manager, a strategy deck. It’s the right band if you’re a multi-van firm with several services and areas and want a bigger site with SEO built in. For a sole trader who needs to look proper on a phone, it’s £1,000 you could spend on a van wrap.

What the headline price leaves out

The quote is rarely the whole cost. On the sellers we checked, these were the extras that appear later:

• Hosting after year one. Nearly every cheap seller bundles twelve months. What comes after varies: Oakmont’s renewal is £50 a year; another UK seller we checked charges £80; some just say “contact us”. If a seller won’t say, assume it’s not cheap.
• SSL (the padlock). Most include it. One pay-monthly seller charges about £70 a year for it on its cheapest plan.
• The domain. Some sellers register it in their own name. If you ever leave, you find out whether it’s yours. Ask whose account it sits in and whether it transfers.
• Extra pages. Around £45 each on one seller’s price list. A two-page quote that becomes a six-page site can double.
• Changes after launch. Some include a few; many charge by the hour. Ask what a small text change costs in year two.
• Writing the words. If the quote assumes you’ll supply the text, add your own time, and the real risk that the site never goes live because the words never got written.

A fair quote tells you all six of these before you ask.

A simple test for any quote

Take the price you’ve been given and ask the seller for three things in writing:

1. The total you’ll pay in year one, including domain, hosting and SSL.
2. The total in year two.
3. Who owns the site and the domain once you’ve paid, and what it costs to leave.

If the three answers come back quickly and in plain English, the price is probably fair whatever it is. If the answer to any of them is “it depends” or a PDF, keep looking.

So what should a two-page trade website cost?

From the October 2026 numbers: £150 to £350 as a one-off, including the first year’s hosting and someone else writing the words, then a yearly hosting fee you know before you buy (Oakmont’s is £50; another UK seller we checked charges £80). Pay monthly, the same site should land at £20 to £30 a month over 12 months and then be yours.

Pay more than that for two pages and you’re paying for the seller’s overhead. Pay much less and you’re paying later, in extras or in evenings.

If you want to see one worked example in full, with what’s in and what’s out, our affordable web design page lists exactly what £179 buys. You can get a draft built before you pay anything, which is the easiest way to find out if a cheap site is a good one.