How much does it cost to build a website? (the question actually answered)

If you've landed here, I'm going to take a wild guess: you've already Googled "how much does a website cost," and the internet served you up its single most useless answer: "anywhere from £500 to £50,000!" Brilliant. Cheers for that. Really cleared things up. (I design and build these things for a living, so trust me, that's the pricing equivalent of "how long is a piece of string?")

Here's the thing nobody in this industry likes to say out loud: most design studios won't tell you their prices. You'll scroll through a gorgeous portfolio, get to the bit where you'd quite reasonably like to know what any of it costs, and instead find a cheerful little button that says "Let's chat!" or "Book a discovery call." Translation: we'd much rather get you on the phone and charm you before we frighten you with a number.

We're guilty of doing exactly the same thing at Drool, and we've decided it's time to stop.

So why won't anyone just tell you the price? (or, the design studio's dirty little secret)

Partly it's because every website really is different, and a one-size price would be a lie. Fair enough. But mostly it's tactics. A number on a page is a number you can compare, and a number you can compare is a number that might make you click away. Keep it vague, get you talking, build the rapport, then reveal the cost once you're emotionally invested. It's a sales funnel dressed up as friendliness.

And, if I'm honest, it cuts both ways. In my experience the secrecy isn't just coming from our side of the table. Clients are just as cagey, and I reckon I know why: nobody wants to say their budget out loud for fear that the quote will magically rise to meet it. You tell a studio you've got £10k, and funny how the job suddenly costs… about £10k. So everyone ends up doing this awkward little dance, both sides hiding their cards, and the whole thing takes three meetings longer than it needs to. That's just my read on it, mind, but I doubt I'm the only one who's felt it.

The problem is it leaves you, the person actually trying to budget for a thing, completely in the dark. So instead of hiding the ball, let's do the radical thing and explain what actually moves the number. Funnily enough, these are the exact questions you'd get asked by any honest studio. We've just put them in writing and applied our own costs, which is now saving us a huge amount of time when negotiating with clients.

Right, so what actually decides the number? (the bits that move the needle)

• How big is this thing, really? (pages, and the bit everyone forgets, sections) A five-page site and a fifty-page site are not the same animal. And "page" is sneaky: each one can hold several sections, so a single page is rarely just a single page's worth of work. More to design, more to build, more to write. (That's three different hats, in case you're counting.)
• Template, bespoke, or "just give me the designs"? (the IKEA flatpack vs the architect-designed house) This is the single biggest lever on the whole quote. A template build sits on an existing framework: faster, cheaper, perfectly lovely for most people. A bespoke build is custom-coded to do exactly what you want, which costs more but means no compromises. Or we can do design only and hand you the files to build elsewhere. (It's a bit like the eternal "should I teach myself or pay a pro" debate.)
• How fancy are we getting? (does it sit there politely, or do the scrolly-swoopy thing?) Go bespoke and there's another fork in the road: a clean, structured site that does its job beautifully, or an immersive one full of scroll effects, animations and rich little interactions. The swoopier it is, the more it costs. Shocking, I know.
• The pretty extras (custom illustrations, animations, icons) All optional, all delightful, all gently nudging the total upward. Want bespoke illustrations and a set of custom icons instead of the same stock ones everyone else uses? Lovely. That's a line item.
• The clever stuff under the hood (booking systems, filters, user accounts) This is the quiet budget-tripler. "Can people just book an appointment / filter the products / log into an account?" sounds small. It is not small. Custom features are where simple sites quietly become complicated ones.
• The engine room (back-end development) The bit you never actually see but absolutely pay for. If your site needs to do things (store data, talk to other systems, run logic behind the scenes), there's a back end making it happen.
• And the planning bit (user flow diagrams) Yes, "thinking about it properly before we build it" is also a line item. Mapping how someone actually moves through your site saves a world of expensive backtracking later. Boring? A little. Worth it? Enormously.

The costs the quote won't show you (or, the gym membership of the internet)

One honest note: building the site is a one-off, but a website is a bit like a gym membership, in that the spending doesn't fully stop after you sign up. You'll have a domain to register, hosting to pay for, and the occasional bit of upkeep to keep everything secure and not-broken. None of it is scary, but pretend it doesn't exist and you'll get a nasty little surprise in year two.

So… how much is your website? (the shameless plug, but a genuinely useful one)

Right, here's where we put our money where our mouth is. Instead of making you book a call and wait three days, we built our own quote tool. You answer the same questions we just walked through (pages, template or bespoke, the fancy bits, the clever bits) and it gives you an instant, itemised estimate. Not a vague range. An actual breakdown: subtotal, VAT, grand total, emailed straight over. No awkward sales call required.

It takes about two minutes, and it costs you nothing but the crushing realisation that you probably can afford this after all.

And while you're in there: it doesn't just price up websites. Need an app, some branding, or a stack of graphic design? It does all of that too. Our brand identity packages start at £2,000 for the entry-level option, which, because we are very normal and serious people, is called Glow Up! (It goes up through Slay and tops out at Bombastic. We regret nothing.)

So there it is. Your website doesn't have to cost a kidney, and finding out what it will cost shouldn't cost you an afternoon either.