How much does a website cost for a plumber? Each route, three years out

Search this question and you get what you get for most money questions in this trade: pages written by the people selling the thing. Agency price guides say agencies are worth it, the builders say building it yourself is easy, the pay-monthly firms say pay monthly. I run a business that now sells one of these, so read this knowing that, and check the sums yourself — every figure here is dated.

The short answer. Build it yourself and it's £90 to £200 a year. Pay a firm to build and run it and the usual run is £45 to £99 a month. Pay a freelancer or an agency once and it's £500 to £3,000, plus £100 to £150 a year to keep it on the internet. The long answer is what each of those buys, what it costs over three years rather than at the checkout, and what you own at the end, which is where the real differences are.

Everything below applies to an electrician or a roofer as much as to a plumber. The plumber part is the shape of the site, so that's where to start.

What a plumber's site has to do

Most people looking up a plumber are standing in a kitchen with a problem. A site that works for them does four things on a phone, above the fold: says what you do and where, shows a number they can tap, shows you're registered where it matters — a Gas Safe number if you do gas — and shows a review or two. Nobody reads a welcome paragraph with water coming through the ceiling.

After that it's a page for each kind of job people search for — a boiler repair, a bathroom, a leak, a new radiator — each naming the towns you cover, so the right page can show up when someone in the next town searches. That is the whole job of a plumber's site. Hold on to it when a provider starts talking about your online presence; Google can find a page about boiler repair in Perth, and it can't find a presence.

Route one: build it yourself

The builders price in a way that rewards reading the small print. These were checked on 5 October 2026; builders change their prices often.

• Squarespace is £12 a month for its Basic plan if you pay the year up front — £144 — and more month to month. Every plan includes a domain for the first year, which then renews at the registrar's ordinary price.
• Weebly is £6 a month billed annually, or £9 month to month, for a plan that connects to your own domain.
• Hostinger advertises £2.99 a month, which means paying 48 months up front — £143.52 — after which it renews at £10.99 a month.
• Wix shows its prices in US dollars even from here, and tells you the sterling figure at the checkout.

So a do-it-yourself site is £90 to £200 a year — call it £300 to £600 over three years — plus the domain renewals from year two. What the price doesn't include is the weekend, and the words: you write every line. The templates are good enough that the result looks like a website. Whether it looks like your business depends on how good you are at this, and for most people on the tools the answer is "fine, and I never went back to it", which is how sites end up with a welcome paragraph and a photo from 2019.

Route two: pay monthly, built for you

This is the part of the market that's grown fastest, and the part where the sticker price tells you least. On 5 October 2026 I looked at sixteen UK firms selling websites for tradespeople on a monthly fee. The usual run is £45 to £99 a month. The cheapest was £19.99; the dearest, an agency, £250 a month plus VAT on a twelve-month minimum. Most charge nothing to set up. Some add VAT and some don't say.

Over three years the usual run is £1,600 to £3,600. For that the site is built, hosted, kept up and usually changed when you ask, which is the thing doing it yourself never gives you. What separates a good one from a bad one is what happens when you stop paying, and the firms answer that very differently:

• Whose name is the domain in? MyTradeSite, at £99 a month, says your domain is registered in your name, so it's yours whatever happens. Several don't say, which is an answer of a kind, and what to do if it isn't in yours has its own post.
• What's the minimum term? Toolbelt, from £49 a month plus VAT, has a twelve-month minimum. SteadyWeb at £45 and HardHat at £79 are rolling, with 30 days' notice; Tradesmen's Websites at £59 is a rolling month with no fixed term.
• What do you keep? HardHat's answer is that the copy, the photos and the domain are all yours, and they'll export the lot if you leave. PlumberWebDesign, £79 a month at its launch price, hands over ownership of the site after six months. Tradesmen's Websites keeps the platform, the source code and the templates, and you keep what you supplied — your logo, your photos, your words. That last shape is the usual one, and it's ours too.

Ours, since I sell one. grafter.ly Websites is £15 a month with no contract, and the site is built by answering questions rather than by a designer: your name and town, a look, your photos, a voice note about the business, the services you do. Over three years that's £540. Bring a domain you own and the site answers on it, and the domain, the words and the photos stay yours. The site itself is rendered from our templates, like every pay-monthly product, so if you stop paying it comes down. If owning the files matters to you, route three is the one.

Route three: pay once

The price guides for a one-off build agree on the shape and disagree on the numbers. Bark's 2026 guide puts a basic site from a freelancer at £300 to £1,000 and a small-business site at £1,000 to £3,000, with agencies at £2,000 to £7,000 for the same work. Expert Market, updated December 2024, has a freelancer's basic site at £960 to £1,500 and a one- to five-page agency site at £500 to £2,500. Checkatrade's own cost guide, last updated May 2024, gives £495 to £15,000 for website design and £400 to £7,000 for a WordPress build. That spread is the market. There's no going rate; there's who you ask.

Then the site has to live somewhere. A .co.uk domain is a penny to £5 for the first year at the big registrars and £8 to £13 a year after that: 123 Reg's own blog puts its renewal at £12.99, GoDaddy's first year is a penny on a three-year purchase and £12.99 a year after, Namecheap renews at £7.56. Hosting is where the first-year prices are steepest. IONOS is £1 a month for a year and £9 a month after. 123 Reg's economy plan is £1.99 a month for three years paid up front, then renews at £251.64 for the next three. Hostinger's £1.49 a month means paying for four years at once, then £7.99 a month after that. Krystal, a UK host that lets you pay monthly from the start, is £7 a month. Email on your own domain is extra almost everywhere.

So a one-off build is £500 to £3,000 once, plus £100 to £150 a year, and it's the only route where you own the files at the end. It's also the route where every change costs money, because the person who built it has moved on, and where search engine work gets sold to you as a second project.

Three years out, on one page

Figures checked 5 October 2026. VAT is on top of some of these and not others, which is the next section.

The costs that don't show on the price

The first-year price is a teaser. Domains at a penny, hosting at £1 a month: every one steps up at renewal, usually by a multiple, and the renewal lands twelve months later when you've stopped thinking about it. Write the renewal price down when you buy.

VAT. Some prices are plus VAT and some aren't, and the ones that don't say usually mean plus. If you aren't VAT registered — most sole-trader plumbers aren't — add 20% to anything marked plus VAT to get what actually leaves your account.

The words. On a builder you write them. From a freelancer the copy is often a separate line, or they ask you to send it over, at which point the site stalls for three months. The pay-monthly firms write them, and the quality runs from plain to boilerplate; read two or three of a firm's customers' sites before you sign, because if they all say the same thing with the town swapped, yours will too.

Changes. A new service, a new area, a new number. On a monthly plan that's usually a message. On a one-off build it's an invoice.

Email. An address at your own domain is rarely in the price. Budget £50 to £80 a year for it, or carry on with the address you've got, as plenty do.

What to ask before you pay anyone

1. Whose name is the domain registered in, and can I log in to that account myself?
2. What's the minimum term, and how do I cancel?
3. If I stop paying, what do I keep — the files, the words, the photos, the domain?
4. Is that price plus VAT?
5. What's included — hosting, the padlock, updates, changes — and what costs extra?

A provider who answers those five plainly is one you can pay. One who answers with "online presence" isn't.

Whether to spend any of it

That's a different question, and I've written the long answer in do tradespeople actually need a website? The short one: for a plumber working a local patch, a free Google Business Profile covers most of what a brochure site would, and a site earns its money when you want work from the next town over, when you want enquiries that come to your inbox and nobody else's, or when the work needs showing. Whether a Checkatrade profile can stand in for a website is a separate question. And if a site is what you want, the £15 version is here: type your name and town and look at it before you pay anything.

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Sources. Builder prices from Squarespace, Weebly, Hostinger and Wix. The pay-monthly survey covered sixteen UK firms' published prices and terms on 5 October 2026, including SteadyWeb, Tradesmen's Websites and its terms, HardHat, MyTradeSite, Toolbelt Websites, PlumberWebDesign, InstaWebsite and HungryWolf. One-off ranges from Bark's price guide (2026), Expert Market (updated 20 December 2024) and Checkatrade's cost guide (last updated May 2024). Domain and hosting prices from 123 Reg and its renewal note (9 September 2026), GoDaddy, Namecheap, IONOS, 123 Reg hosting, Hostinger hosting and Krystal. All checked 5 October 2026; check them again before you buy.