What a Small Business Website Really Costs in Scotland
Ask three agencies what a website costs and you'll get three very different answers, which leaves a lot of small businesses in Edinburgh and the Lothians assuming somebody is trying it on. Usually nobody is — they're quoting for three different jobs. We design and host business websites, so what follows is what actually drives the price, set out so you can read a quote properly and ask better questions before you sign anything.
Why nobody can price it over the phone
A website isn't a product with a shelf price. It's a bundle of decisions — how many pages, who writes them, whether the design is bespoke or built on an existing theme, whether it takes payments, whether it has to talk to your booking or accounts system. Change any one of those and the number moves substantially. A designer who gives you a firm figure before asking what the site has to do is either guessing or quoting for the cheapest version of the job.
The things that actually move the number
- Scope and page count. Five pages of company information is a different job from forty pages covering every service in every town you cover.
- Template versus bespoke. A well-chosen theme, configured properly, is far cheaper than a design drawn from scratch for your business alone.
- Content and photography. Who writes the words and takes the pictures? It's the most commonly underestimated line.
- E-commerce. Selling online adds products, payments, delivery rules, tax handling and testing. It's a category change, not an add-on.
- Integrations. Anything that has to connect to a booking system, CRM, stock system or accounts package adds work that isn't visible on the finished page.
- Accessibility and speed. Doing these properly takes deliberate effort; skipping them is cheaper now and costs you later.
Broad market tiers — and why they're only tiers
Nobody can quote your site from an article, so what follows is the shape of the market rather than a price. A small brochure site built on a good template, with you supplying the words, sits at the lower end. A bespoke design with professional copywriting and photography sits well above that. A functioning e-commerce or booking site, with integrations and proper testing, sits higher again — often by a multiple rather than a margin. Ranges overlap: a freelancer in Linlithgow and an agency in central Edinburgh can price the same brief very differently and both be fair. Put the same written brief to three providers; the spread, and what each one includes, tells you more than any figure.
The costs people forget
The build is a one-off; the site is not. Running costs are what catch people out a year in. You'll need a domain name, renewed annually. You'll need hosting, billed monthly or yearly, and cheap hosting is often slow hosting. You'll need an SSL certificate so the padlock shows — frequently included these days, but confirm it rather than assume. And you'll need maintenance: platform and plugin updates, security patches, backups and the occasional broken thing. Budget for these from the start, the same way you'd budget for any other recurring cost in your IT budget.
Maintenance isn't optional
An unmaintained site is a liability. Content platforms and their plugins get security fixes constantly, and an out-of-date site is easy to compromise — usually not by someone targeting you, but by automated scanning that doesn't care who you are. Make sure someone is clearly responsible for updates, and that the site is genuinely backed up somewhere separate from the hosting, on the same principles you'd apply to your business data. Protect the admin login properly too — two-factor authentication on the website dashboard and the domain account is worth the two minutes.
Questions worth asking any provider
- Who owns what? The domain and hosting should be registered to your business, not your developer. It's the most common trap of all.
- What happens after launch? Get the ongoing cost and what it covers in writing, separately from the build price.
- Can we edit it ourselves? If every text change is billable, the cheap build stops being cheap.
- What's excluded? Content, photography, and post-launch changes are the usual exclusions. Ask directly.
We design, host and look after business websites
If you want the site built, we will build it — design, hosting, the domain registered in your name, and the running costs written down before you commit. If you already have a WordPress site, we can take on the updates, backups and security. We run email hosting too, and we plan and carry out Microsoft 365 moves, for firms across Edinburgh and out through Livingston and the Lothians, from our base in Wishaw. It sits alongside the rest of your business IT, with a clear quote before any work.