A website is one of the most valuable assets an organisation owns — a living platform that shapes how customers and employees engage with the business. Yet for finance leaders, website costs can be difficult to forecast. What starts as an inexpensive project can quickly grow once design updates, compliance, and maintenance come into play.
This guide outlines what UK companies should expect to pay to operate and maintain a website — and how CFOs can bring clarity to spending and long-term financial planning.
What’s the cost of a website?
From a finance perspective, building a website is only half the story. The true cost of making a website combines upfront investment — in design, development, and infrastructure — with recurring spend on hosting, security, maintenance, and upgrades that keep the site running smoothly.
These expenses matter because they’re tied directly to cash flow and forecasts. For a CFO coordinating with multiple departments, even small discrepancies in digital initiatives can distort planning. Setting realistic expectations at the outset prevents underfunding and helps deliver more accurate models for the business overall.
Why does a website cost money?
A functioning website combines several elements: technical infrastructure, design and content, compliance, and security. Some costs are fixed, such as domain registration, while others fluctuate with usage and growth, including hosting, bandwidth, and cloud storage.
Less obvious line items, like plug-in renewals, premium content management system (CMS) themes, licence fees, and audit requirements, require further attention. Individually these expenses may appear minor, but when dealing with multiple sites or departments, they can accumulate rapidly. Baking them into regular budgeting helps keep smaller expenses from snowballing.
And remember: A website isn’t a one-and-done investment. Ongoing maintenance is essential to keep performance, security, and user experience strong. A dated interface can erode customer trust — for instance, if visitors struggle with a confusing checkout or encounter broken links — while compliance gaps can expose the organisation to fines or legal action.
The financial impact goes beyond direct spend, influencing both revenue and long-term brand credibility.
Website development options: In-house, agency, or freelance?
Choosing how to build your website is one of the first and most important strategic decisions a company makes. Each approach — in-house, agency, or freelance — carries different implications for cost, control, and scalability. While budget is often the starting point, it’s just as important to consider the long-term role the website will play in the business.
Here are the development options you could pursue.
In-house teams
Hiring internal developers and designers gives an organisation full control over the process and ensures close alignment with company goals. Internal teams retain institutional knowledge and can manage ongoing updates without depending on external partners. The trade-off is higher fixed costs, including salaries and training, but they’re likely to remain constant and predictable.
In the UK, salaries for experienced developers and designers can range from £30,000 to £91,000 per year↗ or higher, and bigger organisations usually have entire teams dedicated to keeping their digital presence running smoothly. It’s a significant investment, but many enterprises see it as worthwhile. Having dedicated staff means faster updates, seamless integrations, and consistent brand oversight.
Agencies
Partnering with outside agencies provides access to a full suite of expertise — covering design, development, SEO, and compliance — under a single contract. While agency fees can recur, they’re often more cost-effective than maintaining in-house teams, especially for smaller organisations. Agencies are well positioned to deliver large projects quickly and at scale, often drawing on cross-industry experience that reduces the learning curve for e-commerce or multilingual sites.
For enterprises, agencies are typically best suited to full-scale website builds or major redesigns, where dedicated project management and multi-specialist coordination are essential.
The main drawback is fees, which can run into the thousands↗. Rates are generally higher in London than in other regions, and additional expenses may apply for premium services like accessibility audits or custom integrations. Still, many enterprises consider agencies a worthwhile investment for their speed, accountability, and ability to deliver complex builds efficiently — provided budgets stay aligned with internal oversight.
Freelancers
Hiring freelancers can be an economical way to cover specific tasks like copywriting, graphic design, front-end adjustments, or ongoing content updates. They provide flexibility and normally lower rates, which makes them well-suited for smaller projects, short-term assignments, and helping manage website costs for small-business budgets.
According to a 2025 freelancer rates report↗, UK developers typically average around £55 per hour, with rates starting near £45 and the top 10% of specialists commanding over £80 per hour. Capacity is limited, however; heavy reliance on individuals can cause delays. For enterprises, freelancers are usually best for supplementary work rather than an entire website build.
Common website costs for UK companies
When finance leaders ask how much does it cost to run a website, the answer depends on multiple components, with some expenses recurring annually and others monthly. Understanding these core categories lets finance leaders see where budgets land and which items are more likely to increase as the business expands.
Domain registration
Domain names are generally one of the lowest website expenses when it comes to the cost of web page design. Standard domain extensions typically cost between £12 and £30↗ per year. Prices rise sharply for premium or in-demand domains — especially newer extensions like .io or .co, which can run significantly higher.
Organisations operating several brands or regional sites should budget for multiple registrations.
Hosting
Hosting services range from a few pounds per month↗ for shared packages to several hundred pounds monthly for dedicated or enterprise-grade cloud solutions. The more bandwidth, storage, and security required, the higher the price.
Large companies usually need advanced hosting to manage traffic volume and compliance standards.
Website builders or CMS
Choosing the right website builder or CMS is critical because it determines how easily a site can be created, updated, and scaled over time. Subscription fees for these platforms vary widely: Entry-level builder plans can be free or cost only a few pounds per month↗, while enterprise setups with WordPress premium plugins or custom CMS licencing can reach several hundred pounds or even thousands monthly.
SSL certificate
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates are fundamental for security and customer trust. Basic domain-validated certificates are sometimes free or just a few pounds↗ annually, while higher-assurance organisation-validated or extended-validation certificates with warranties are priced in the hundreds per year.
Finance and enterprise sites typically invest at the higher end for compliance and credibility purposes.
Website design and UX
The cost of designing a website can range from a few hundred pounds↗ for basic templates to £10,000–50,000+ for bespoke, feature-rich builds. Projects that include dashboards, CRM links, or advanced automation often need higher budgets.
For enterprises, the cost of a website design and user experience (UX) often represent one of the largest digital investments during major launches or redesigns.
Enterprise-specific considerations
Enterprises face additional layers of cost beyond the basics. These include high-performance hosting needs, advanced compliance requirements, like GDPR, ISO, and PCI DSS, alongside integration with enterprise resource planning or accounting platforms.
Multimarket operations require localisation — adapting content, design, and functionality for different regions — which adds translation and infrastructure costs. For companies balancing regional sites and multilingual campaigns, it’s worth reviewing how digital marketing budget planning↗ fits into wider website spend.
Altogether, these factors push enterprise websites far beyond the standard business range, sometimes into six-figure budgets↗.
Ongoing website maintenance costs
Building a website is just the start, given that keeping it secure and operational requires ongoing investment. Over time, website maintenance costs often surpass the initial investment, especially for organisations managing multiple properties. Typical UK maintenance costs range from under £100 to £1,500↗ or more per month, including content, CMS, and plug-in updates; server monitoring; security patching; and periodic design refreshes.
Neglecting these areas risks downtime, security incidents, or lower visibility in search-engine results. Clear processes for allocating and monitoring these outgoings are part of broader budget management practices↗ that keep costs predictable.
Budgeting for scalability
Growth introduces new pressures, including higher traffic, additional business units, or international audiences. Planning for scalability means forecasting for server capacity, more integrations, and contingency spend.
Linking these forecasts into broader cash flow strategies keeps expansion on track without unexpected costs.
How to save on website costs without sacrificing quality
While many website expenses are unavoidable, finance leaders can still take practical steps to control them. The strategies below show how to cut costs without compromising quality or user experience.
Open-source CMS
Open-source platforms like WordPress or Drupal minimise licensing fees and provide flexibility over time. They may require more technical expertise, but they prevent dependence on a single provider and give long-term control.
Cloud hosting over dedicated servers
Cloud hosting offers flexible pricing and scalability. Spend can be aligned more closely with actual usage, reducing wasted capacity compared to fixed dedicated servers.
Automated monitoring tools
Automating security checks, uptime tracking, and backups reduces manual effort while strengthening site resilience. Early alerts help teams resolve issues before they escalate, minimising downtime and preserving customer trust.
Other cost-saving approaches include consolidating vendor contracts, negotiating multi-year agreements, and ensuring finance teams have visibility of renewals with expense reporting systems. Similar tactics apply to marketing teams, where careful oversight of campaigns can make advertising spend more effective↗.
How to optimise website costs at the enterprise level
Managing expenditures within an enterprise requires coordination between departments. For larger organisations, this becomes more challenging as marketing, IT, and business units each assume ownership of their own tools and sites.
Marketing may subscribe to design software while IT handles hosting, and business units are likely to commission their own microsites. Distributing spend so widely makes tracking harder and duplication more likely.
Shared purchasing, vendor negotiation, and automated reporting bring order to this complexity. They allow finance leaders to link website spend to wider budgets and see how digital spending supports strategic goals.
Treating website spend as part of broader financial workflows minimises waste and improves forecasting. These steps reflect the wider principles of cost control↗ — helping finance leaders manage spending as businesses scale.
How Moss helps businesses control website and digital expenses
Digital operations often hide unexpected costs, from hosting fees and software-as-a-service (SaaS) licences that auto-renew to forgotten software subscriptions buried in billing cycles. Moss gives finance teams the clarity and structure they need to manage these expenses consistently.
Automate expense reporting for hosting and software
The platform can capture and categorise web-related overhead in real time and ensure hosting bills, design tools, and other costs are logged automatically in reporting dashboards.
Track recurring SaaS subscriptions
Moss flags duplicate tools and overlooked renewals before they inflate budgets, with every subscription kept visible in one place.
Ensure audit trails and approvals
Approval flows are applied and audit-ready records are maintained on all website and software spend, allowing finance to meet compliance requirements without slowing down operations.
With project-level tracking, CFOs can oversee digital budgets for the organisation and align decisions with strategic goals.
Bring website costs under control with Moss
Website costs in the UK range from modest monthly hosting fees to complex enterprise budgets that cover design, compliance, and security. For CFOs, the challenge is to understand these financial commitments and align them with wider planning.
Moss helps meet that challenge by automating reporting, tracking subscriptions, and overseeing digital spend through project-based budgets and approvals. Finance leaders gain clear insight into all website-related costs, while audit-ready trails, live oversight, and unified visibility make these expenses easier to control and forecast.
See how Moss helps CFOs optimise budgeting and cash flow with real-time expense tracking and automated reporting↗.
