If you run a trade business, your website has one job. It turns someone who found you into someone who rings you. It doesn't need to win design awards. It doesn't need clever features. It needs to load fast on a phone, make it obvious how to get a quote, and show that you do good work.
So before you think about budget, it helps to be clear on what a trade site actually needs. Get that right and the cost question mostly answers itself.
Trades sit at one end of a much wider range. We've set out how much a website costs in the UK in 2026 across every price band.
What a trade website actually needs to earn its keep
Most of the people who find a plumber, electrician, builder, roofer or joiner are on their phone, and often in a hurry. A tap has burst. The fuse box keeps tripping. They want someone reliable, and they want to call now. Your website is competing for that moment.
That means the list of things that genuinely matter is short. Your phone number should be visible and tappable the second the page loads. There should be a simple quote or callback form for people who can't talk right then. A handful of real photos of finished jobs does more than any stock image. A few plain lines on what you do and the areas you cover build trust. And the whole thing has to be quick, because a slow page on mobile loses people before they read a word.
Everything else is usually optional. A trade rarely needs an online shop, and rarely needs a booking engine either. You're not selling products off a shelf, and most trades want to speak to a customer before committing to a time. We wrote a whole piece on that choice in booking system, shop or contact form, and for the vast majority of trades the honest answer is a contact form.
Your phone number should be tappable the second the page loads.
Why a trade rarely needs a shop or a booking system
It's worth saying plainly, because these are the features that push a quote up. An online shop makes sense if you sell physical products. Most trades don't. A booking calendar makes sense if you sell fixed slots, like a barber or a class. Most trades price each job differently and want a conversation first.
If someone tries to sell you a large build stuffed with these features, ask what each one is actually for. Every feature is something to build, something to maintain, and something else that can break. On a trade site, more features usually means more cost and slower pages, not more calls.
What a trade business website costs in the UK
Prices vary a lot, so treat these as rough and general. A cheap template you build yourself can be nearly free, but you pay in your own evenings and it often looks like a template. UK freelancers usually land somewhere between £500 and £2,000 for a small site. Agencies tend to start around £3,000 and climb from there, which is far more than most trades need for what is, at heart, a five page site that gets you calls.
The catch with a one-off build is what happens after. Hosting, security updates, the odd content change and the day something breaks are all on you, or cost extra each time you ask. A cheap build with no support can quietly become the expensive option.
This is why we bill the way we do. Our pay monthly website has no setup fee, then from £20 a month. That covers design, build, hosting, security, updates, maintenance and small content changes, with UK support and no minimum term. Over year one that's from £240 before VAT. You can see the full breakdown on our pricing page.
A cheap build with no support can quietly become the expensive option.
Getting found locally is part of the cost
A trade site earns its keep by being found by people nearby who are ready to hire. That means the pages should be structured for search from day one, name the areas you cover, and load quickly, because Google leans on speed for mobile results. A slow, unstructured site can be invisible even when it looks fine.
None of this is exotic, but it does take doing properly. When you compare quotes, ask whether local search structure and mobile speed are included or treated as an extra. On a trade site they're not a nice to have. They're the difference between a website that sits there and one that brings work in.
If you'd like to see what that looks like for your own sector rather than in general, we've set out what we build for tradesmen and, more specifically, for electricians, including the pages and the local search structure each one needs to get found.
A simple way to judge the spend
Work back from a job. If a typical job earns you around £300 in profit, then a year of website costs from £240 is covered by a single extra job across the whole year, not three a month. If a decent site brings you even one extra enquiry a month that turns into work, it's more than paid for itself. If it brings none, no price was cheap.
That's also the honest limit of any advice here. A website isn't magic. If word of mouth already keeps you booked solid and you've no interest in more work, you may not need to spend anything at all. Be clear about what you actually want more of before you buy.
A low-risk way to see it first
If you'd rather see than guess, we'll rebuild your current homepage as a real, working prototype and send you a link within three working days. No card, no commitment. Try it on your phone, compare it to what you have now, and only pay if you want to go ahead. If you don't, you keep a screenshot and owe nothing.
It's the simplest way to judge whether a proper trade site is worth the money for you, before a penny changes hands. If that sounds useful, take a look at how the pay monthly website works and start from there.