That £299 website will cost you £8,000 over two years in lost customers, missed calls and technical debt. Here's the maths.
The tempting number
A cheap website looks like a bargain. £299 upfront. £15 a month hosting. "Live in 48 hours". For a small business watching every pound, that's a compelling pitch.
The problem isn't the £299. The problem is everything the £299 doesn't include.
The five hidden costs
1. Missed customers (£2,000-£6,000 per year)
A slow, ugly or broken site loses at least 40% of the visitors who arrive at it. If you get 200 people a month searching for your services, that's 80 lost prospects. At even a 2% closing rate and a £250 average sale, that's £4,800 a year walking away.
2. Poor Google rankings (£1,000-£4,000 per year)
Template sites fail Core Web Vitals, have thin content, and use identical structures to hundreds of other sites. Google notices. You get outranked by the next town's version of you, and you pay for Facebook ads to cover the gap.
3. Emergency fixes (£500-£2,000 per incident)
When your DIY site breaks on a Sunday morning, you don't know why and neither does the person who "built" it. You end up paying someone else to fix it — usually after it's been down for a week and cost you sales.
4. Trust erosion (unmeasurable but real)
Prospective customers judge your entire business from your website. A site that looks like it was built in 2012 tells them you're either not doing well or don't care. Both are reasons to buy from someone else.
5. Rebuild in 18 months (£3,000-£8,000)
Most cheap sites become unsalvageable inside two years. You end up paying for a proper one anyway — plus the migration, plus the SEO recovery, plus the customers you lost while it was still up.
Total two-year cost of a "cheap" website
At the low end: £6,500. At the high end: over £20,000. All to save around £3,000 upfront.
What a proper website actually costs
For a South Wales SMB with real ambitions:
- Design and build: £3,500-£8,000 one-off.
- Hosting and maintenance: £30-£80 per month.
- Ongoing content updates: £150-£400 per month, or DIY.
Over two years that's £4,500-£15,000 — with a site that earns its keep instead of leaking money.
The single question to ask before you buy any website
Don't ask "how much does it cost?". Ask "how do you measure whether it's working?"
Any agency worth hiring will answer that question with specific numbers — conversion rate, load speed, monthly enquiries, Core Web Vitals. Any agency that answers with "it'll look great" is selling you a brochure, not a business asset.
Your website isn't decoration. It's a member of staff. Hire it accordingly.
