Pricing
What this actually costs.
Most developers make you book a call before they will tell you a number. Here are the real starting points, what sits at each level, and what pushes a project higher.
Direct to the developer
You brief the person who writes the code. No account manager in between.
Fixed written price
Scope and cost agreed in writing before any work begins. No hourly drift.
You own everything
Code, hosting and data in your name from day one. No lock-in, ever.
Nottingham & Leicester
On site across the East Midlands, or online anywhere in the UK.
Starting prices
Four things I build, and where each begins
These are starting points for a typical project, not ceilings and not hidden minimums.
Website
Be found, and be contactable.
Starting from
£900
- Designed around your business, not a template
- Works properly on phones
- Search fundamentals built in
- Contact form that reaches you
- Domain, hosting and SSL sorted
Business automation
Stop doing it by hand.
Starting from
£1,500
- One clearly defined manual process removed
- Built around how your team actually works
- Tested with the people who will use it
- Usually the fastest thing to pay for itself
Booking or client portal
Let people serve themselves.
Starting from
£2,499
- Customers book themselves in
- Secure client login
- Documents and invoices in one place
- Card payments if you need them
- Connects to what you already use
Care compliance platform
Inspection-ready, every day.
Starting from
£4,999
- Staff, training and supervision tracked
- Reminders before anything expires
- Incidents and safeguarding logged
- One click inspection evidence pack
- UK hosted, GDPR compliant
What actually drives the price
Not page count, which is what most people expect. The real driver is whether the thing has to remember anything.
A page that displays information is cheap to build and cheap to be wrong about. The moment software holds state, logins, bookings, records, permissions, payments, it has to be correct rather than merely look correct, and correctness is where the hours go. That is why a five page brochure site and a five page booking system are completely different jobs.
Things that add cost
- User accounts and permissions. Deciding who can see what, and proving it holds when someone tries to bend it.
- Payments. Money has to reconcile, which means handling the unhappy paths properly, not just the successful one.
- Integrations. Talking to a system you already use, where its limits become your limits.
- Regulated records. Audit trails and evidence that stand up when someone asks, which is a different standard from storing a date.
- Migrating existing data. Usually messier than anyone expects, because real data is never as tidy as the spreadsheet suggests.
Things that do not add much
- More pages of similar content. Once the design exists, pages are comparatively cheap.
- Looking good. Design quality is largely decided in the first week, not bought by the hour afterwards.
- Search fundamentals. Included as standard, because leaving them out and selling them back later is a con.
How I quote
Per project, in writing, before anything starts. The quote lists what is included, what is excluded and what it costs. If you later want something that is not on the list, I price that separately rather than absorbing it and quietly rushing the rest.
I do not bill by the hour. Hourly billing rewards me for being slow and punishes you for asking questions, which is the wrong incentive on both sides.
If an off-the-shelf product is cheaper, I will say so
This costs me work and it is still the right answer. If a product genuinely covers what you need, buying it beats commissioning a build almost every time. Custom makes sense when your process is unusual, when you are paying staff to rekey data between systems, or when configuration has quietly turned into development. The build or buy guide goes through how to tell.
How we work
Three steps, no surprises in between
Every project runs the same way, whether it is a full platform or an afternoon of changes.
Free scoping call
Thirty minutes. You tell me what you are trying to fix, open or win, and I tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it.
Written proposal, fixed price
Scope, what you get, timeline and a fixed price in writing before any work starts. No hourly drift and no surprise invoices.
Build, then handover
You get a link and regular updates as it comes together, then a walkthrough so your team can run it without me.
Questions
Questions about cost
How much does a small business website cost in the UK?
Most small business websites sit between £900 and £3,000 depending on how many pages you need and whether the site has to do anything beyond inform. Anything advertised much below that is usually a template with a monthly fee attached, and anything much above usually includes an agency's overheads.
Why do some agencies not publish prices?
Partly because it genuinely depends on scope, and partly because it lets them price the client rather than the job. I publish starting figures because being told a number is the fastest way for you to work out whether to keep reading.
What makes a project more expensive?
Anything that has to hold state or make decisions. A page that displays information is cheap. Logins, bookings, payments, permissions, records and anything that must still be correct in two years are what add cost, because they need to be right rather than merely look right.
Do you charge a deposit?
Yes, typically a third before work starts and the balance on delivery. For larger builds the work is split into stages with a payment at each, so neither of us is carrying much risk at any point.
Are there ongoing costs?
Hosting and the domain, which for a typical small business site is somewhere around £20 to £100 a year and paid directly by you to the provider, not to me. There is no licence fee and no retainer unless you want ongoing support.
What if I only have a small budget?
Tell me the number. I would rather scope something honest that fits it, or tell you plainly that it does not stretch far enough, than take a deposit for something that was never going to work.
Get started
Want an exact number for your project?
Describe what you need in a couple of sentences. You get a written scope and a fixed price, with no obligation to go ahead.