Quick answer
A professionally designed one-page website costs £299 flat from a specialist studio in 2026, £150 to £500 from freelancers, and £500 to £1,500 through agencies. DIY builders advertise from £10 to £30 a month, which sounds cheaper until you notice it never stops: by year three the subscription has quietly overtaken the professional build, and you did all the work.
What a one-page website actually is
One page, one scroll, everything a visitor needs: who you are, what you do, proof you’re good at it, and a way to get in touch. For a huge share of UK small businesses, trades, consultants, therapists, cafés, startups pre-launch, that is genuinely the whole job. The format forces clarity: no navigation maze, no “About Us” essay nobody reads, just a straight path from arrival to enquiry. We’ve written separately about when one page beats a multi-page site; this guide is about what the one-page route costs.
Route by route
| Route | Typical cost | What you get | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace) | £10–£30/month, forever | A template you fill in yourself | Your weeks of evenings; template look; the fee outlives the savings by year three |
| Freelancer | £150–£500 | Semi-custom build, often on a page builder | Wide quality range; ask who handles fixes in six months |
| Specialist studio | £299 flat | Custom design, mobile-first, contact form, live in ~5 days | Hosting billed separately (typically ~£20/month managed) |
| Agency | £500–£1,500 | Same scope with more meetings | You’re paying for process, not more website |
The subscription trap, with actual numbers
A £20/month builder plan is £240 a year. Over three years that’s £720, for a site you designed yourself on a template shared with thousands of others, that you can’t take with you when you leave. The £299 professional build plus managed hosting at £20/month costs more in month one and less every month after, and the design work is done by someone who does it daily. DIY makes sense when the budget genuinely doesn’t exist yet; it stops making sense the moment the business is real.
What £299 should buy (checklist)
A proper one-page build includes: layout designed around your content rather than a template’s; mobile-first construction (most local traffic is a phone in a pocket); a working contact form that actually reaches you; click-to-call and map links where they help; your imagery treated properly; titles and descriptions set for search; and load speed a visitor never notices. That’s the scope of our £299 one-page website service, live in about five days.
Where the £299 actually goes
Flat fees can look arbitrary until you see the hours inside them. A properly built one-pager breaks down roughly as: discovery and content structuring (understanding the business well enough to order the page, the thinking a template can’t do); custom design of the layout around your actual content; the build itself, mobile-first with the form wired and tested; on-page SEO, titles, description, heading structure, image alt text; and a final pass for speed and cross-device checks. None of those line items is exotic; the value is that someone who does them daily does all five in days, correctly, first time. Agencies charge £500–£1,500 for the same list because their overheads ride along; DIY charges you the same list in evenings.
Questions that expose a weak builder in two minutes
Whoever you’re considering, ask: Will my site be a custom layout or a theme with my logo on it? Can I see three one-page sites you’ve built and what they cost? Who owns the site and domain when we’re done, and can I move it elsewhere? What exactly happens when the contact form breaks on a Saturday? And what does page two cost when I need it next year? Confident, specific answers to all five are what you’re really buying. Vague answers at £150 are how £299 becomes the cheap option.
Three worked examples
The electrician. Needs to exist credibly online: photo, services list, service area, reviews, phone number. A £299 one-page site plus a properly set-up Google Business Profile is the whole stack; enquiries come from Maps and word of mouth, and the site’s job is to not lose them. Total year-one cost with hosting: around £540, less than one rewired kitchen.
The consultant. Sells one service to one audience. The one-pager works as a long-form pitch: problem, method, proof, fee structure, booking link. When she later adds a second service line with its own audience, that’s the moment to graduate to multi-page, and the one-page content becomes the template for each service page.
The café. Menu, photos, hours, location, Instagram link. One page is arguably over-serving, but the £299 build beats the £25/month builder subscription by month fourteen, and the photography actually looks like the food. The lesson across all three: the one-page format wins wherever the visitor’s question is “should I contact these people?” rather than “which of their many things do I need?”
What to have ready before the build starts
The five-day turnaround assumes the raw material exists. Before briefing anyone, gather: your logo (vector if possible, a £39 conversion fixes it if not), eight to twelve honest photos (your work, your premises, your face, phone photos in good light beat stock every time), the exact services and areas you cover, three to five short customer quotes with names, and the one action you want visitors to take. Builds that drag never drag on design; they drag on missing photos and unwritten paragraphs.
Running costs after launch
The build fee is not the whole story on any route, so here is the honest ongoing picture. Every website needs a domain (£10–£20/year) and somewhere to live: managed UK hosting runs about £20/month and should include SSL, daily backups, updates and someone to call when something breaks. DIY builders bundle hosting into their subscription, that’s precisely why the subscription never ends. A professionally built one-page site on managed hosting therefore costs roughly £299 up front plus £20/month; the DIY route costs £0 up front plus £10–£30/month plus your build time. From year two onward the professional route is the cheaper of the two, and it was better on day one.
Can a one-page site actually rank on Google?
Yes, for one thing at a time, done properly. A single page can absolutely own “wedding photographer Chester” or “mobile dog groomer Leeds”: clear heading structure, the service and area named in the title and opening copy, fast load, and a Google Business Profile pointing at it. What it cannot do is rank one URL for five unrelated services, search engines match pages to queries, and one page can only be the best answer to so many. That’s the honest boundary: when your ambitions outgrow one query family, budget for the multi-page build rather than stretching the format.
When one page is the wrong buy
Honesty matters here: a one-page site can only rank properly for one theme. If you offer three distinct services and want each to be found, “boiler repair”, “bathroom fitting”, “underfloor heating”, those want separate pages, which is multi-page website territory (from £499). Equally, if the site exists to convert paid-ad clicks for one specific offer, what you want is a landing page (£199) built for that campaign. And if cashflow is the constraint rather than total cost, a pay-monthly website at £79/month spreads a full custom build with hosting included.
The copy question nobody budgets for
Design gets all the attention, but on a one-page site the words do the converting, and most builds assume you’ll supply them. Write the page as answers, in the order a stranger asks: What do you do? For whom, and where? Why should I believe you (photos, years, reviews, accreditations)? What happens when I get in touch? Keep the opening line concrete (“Electrical work across Greater Manchester, first-fix to fault-finding”) rather than a slogan; put the phone number where thumbs live on a phone screen; and end with the one action you chose. If writing genuinely isn’t your thing, say so at briefing, copy polish inside a £299 build is a far cheaper fix than a beautiful page that undersells you for a year.
Deciding in five minutes
One service or one clear message → one-page site, £299. Multiple services that each need to be found in search → multi-page, from £499. A single campaign fed by ads → landing page, £199. No budget at all yet → DIY, with a plan to graduate. Whatever the route, every current price is on our full price list, no quotes, ordered online.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does a one-page website cost in the UK? +
A custom-designed one-page site costs £299 flat from a specialist studio, £150–£500 from freelancers, and £500–£1,500 through agencies. DIY builders look cheaper at £10–£30/month but never stop charging — three years of subscription usually exceeds the professional build.
Is a one-page website enough for a small business? +
For many, yes: a trade, consultant, café or local service whose visitors need to know what you do, see proof, and get in touch. It stops being enough when you need to rank for several distinct services — each service really wants its own page.
How long does a one-page website take to build? +
A specialist studio delivers a custom one-page site in around 5 days. DIY takes as long as your spare evenings allow — typically weeks of them.
What should a £299 one-page website include? +
Custom design (not a template), mobile-first build, a contact form, your content and imagery placed properly, basic on-page SEO, and fast load times. Hosting is typically separate — around £20/month for managed UK hosting.
What's the difference between a one-page website and a landing page? +
A one-page website is your permanent online home covering the whole business. A landing page (£199) is a campaign tool built for a single offer and traffic source, usually paired with paid ads. Many businesses eventually need both.
