Search for the cost of a website in Watford and you get a page of agencies saying "it depends", followed by a form. It does depend. But a dentist asking what a crown costs does not accept "it depends" as the whole answer, and neither should you.
I publish my prices, so I can write the guide I wish had existed when I was the one buying. The figures below are what I see quoted locally, excluding VAT, in October 2026. Where a figure is mine, I say so.
Five ways to buy a website, and what each costs here
1. Do it yourself on a builder. Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and the like. £15 to £40 a month, plus your evenings. The site is a theme and lives on their platform. Right for testing an idea, or for a business with no budget yet and someone who enjoys the work. Wrong the moment the site needs to do something the template does not.
2. Rent one from a subscription provider. Several franchises operate in Watford on this model. A deposit of £350 to £950, then £28 to £60 a month on a twelve or twenty-four month minimum. A consultant builds the pages on the platform's builder; hosting and an editor are included. You do not own the site and it switches off when you stop paying. Right for a business that needs to exist online and will leave the site alone. I have written about why I do not sell this, and about who should buy it anyway.
3. Hire a freelancer. Typically £800 to £3,000 for a brochure site on WordPress or a builder, sometimes less. The range is wide because the word covers a student and a twenty-year veteran. The question to ask is not the price but what happens when they are busy, on holiday, or no longer doing it.
4. Hire an independent studio. This is where I sit. My fees are fixed and published: £3,500 for a five-page site designed for you and live in a week; £8,500 for up to twelve pages with a content studio and a booking or enquiry flow; from £12,000 when the site has to take payments, bookings or accounts; from £25,000 when it is really software with a website in front. The directory price guides put a Watford brochure site at £2,000 to £4,000 and bespoke work above £15,000, which matches what I see.
5. Hire an agency. £5,000 to £20,000 and up for a brochure site, with a retainer expected after. You are paying for account management, meetings and a team. Right for an organisation with several stakeholders who all need to be in the room. Expensive for a business of one to ten people who just need the site to work.
What actually moves the price
Not the number of pages. These five things.
- How many distinct page types need designing. Twelve pages on three layouts is a small job. Six pages on six layouts is a bigger one.
- Whether the content and photographs exist. A site built from a blank page costs more than one built from a business that already knows what it wants to say.
- Integrations. A booking system or payment provider with a real API is a day's work. A system with no API is a week of workarounds, if it can be done at all.
- Regulated sectors. Dental, medical, legal and financial sites need compliance review on the copy, and that is time.
- Migration. Moving a site that already has traffic means protecting every URL that ranks. A new site for a new business skips that entirely.
What should be in any quote you get
If a quote does not answer these, ask, and write the answers down.
- Who owns the code, the domain and the content? The only acceptable answer is you.
- What does it cost after launch, and is any of it compulsory? A hosting or care fee is normal. A fee you cannot leave is rent.
- What does "SEO included" mean, concretely? Page titles, structured data, a sitemap, Search Console set up, speed measured. If they cannot list it, it is a word, not a deliverable.
- How are changes priced? Included hours, an hourly rate, or a fixed fee per change. Any of the three is fine. "We'll sort it out" is not.
- What happens if we fall out? The honest answer is that you keep everything and go elsewhere. Ask it on the first call, while everyone is friendly.
The monthly fee after launch
The range runs from nothing, if the site is static and you host it yourself, to several hundred pounds a month on a platform that needs constant attention to stay up. Mine are £95, £295 and £950 a month depending on how much changes, all on thirty days' notice and none compulsory. I wrote up exactly what sits behind each. The rule of thumb: a cheap site that needs an expensive monthly fee to stay standing is not a cheap site.
Three worked examples with my fees
- A plumber, a salon, a single practitioner. Launch at £3,500 fixed, or the Foundation plan at £875 to set up and £375 a month for a year, then £95. Live in a week.
- A dental practice, a clinic, a restaurant that lives on bookings. Business at £8,500 with Active care at £295 a month, or the Growth plan at £1,650 a month with the visual identity and ongoing search included. Four weeks.
- A shop, a membership business, a multi-site practice. Commerce and platform from £12,000, or the Partner plan at £2,850 a month with the full brand identity and the search programme. Six weeks and up.
Each starts with a free discovery call and a scope document with the fixed fee written on it. If the right answer for you is a £20-a-month builder, the scope document says that instead, and costs nothing.
What this guide does not do
It does not give you a price without a scope. Nobody honest can. Mine are fixed because the scope document comes first, not because every job is the same. It does not claim a dearer site ranks higher; nobody can promise rankings, and anyone who does is selling something else. And it does not include photography, copywriting from a blank page or paid advertising, which are priced separately by everyone, me included.
The cheapest useful thing you can do today is ask whoever is quoting you to put the price in writing before the call ends. If they will not, ask why.
Paul Redman runs Redman Studio, an independent web design and engineering studio in Watford, Hertfordshire. Every figure attributed to the studio in this post is on the published price list.