If you're looking into getting a proper website built from scratch, you've probably stumbled across the term "hand coded" and wondered what it actually costs compared to a WordPress site or a Squarespace template. Fair question. Let me give you the straight answer, because the pricing can seem all over the place when you start searching.
Right now, you're looking at anywhere between £800 and £5,000+ for a hand coded website, depending on what you need. That's a big range, I know, but it makes sense when you understand what goes into it.
A simple brochure site for a local tradesperson or small service business — maybe five pages, contact form, mobile-friendly, fast-loading — typically sits between £800 and £2,000. If you need something more involved, like a larger site with custom features, booking systems, or more complex design work, you're looking at the higher end.
The hand coded website cost depends on a few things: how many pages you need, whether you want custom features built specifically for your business, how much content you're providing versus what I need to write, and how involved the design is.
When someone builds you a hand coded website, they're writing every line of code from scratch. No dragging boxes around in a page builder. No installing a WordPress theme and swapping out the logo.
It takes longer upfront, but here's what you're paying for:
WordPress sites and page builders load a massive amount of code you'll never use, because they're built to do everything for everyone. A hand coded site only includes what your site actually needs. That means it loads faster, which matters for keeping visitors on your page and for how Google ranks you.
With a hand coded site, you're not paying monthly fees for premium themes, page builder licences, or a stack of plugins that need constant updating. You own the code. Your only recurring costs are hosting (usually £5-15 a month) and your domain name (about £10 a year).
Because there are no plugins to update, no theme compatibility issues, and no page builder that might change or disappear, hand coded sites just keep working. I've seen WordPress sites break after an update. I've never seen a hand coded site break because someone released a new version of HTML.
When your site is built from scratch, it looks like your business. Not like a template that five other companies in your area are using with different colours. That distinctiveness matters when you're trying to stand out locally.
A few things will move the hand coded website cost up or down for your specific project.
More pages mean more design work, more content to organise, and more code to write. A five-page site costs less than a fifteen-page site. Simple as that.
Do you need a contact form? That's standard and doesn't add much. Do you need a custom booking system, a searchable directory, or something built specifically for how your business works? That takes more time, so it costs more.
If you've got all your text ready and you know what you want to say, great — that keeps costs down. If you need help with writing or you're starting from scratch, that's extra work that gets factored in.
A clean, straightforward design costs less than something with custom animations, intricate layouts, or a lot of visual detail. Both can look professional, but one takes more hours to build.
Depends what you're comparing it to and what matters to you.
If you just need something online fast and you're happy to DIY it, a Wix or Squarespace site for £15 a month might do the job. But you're locked into their platform, their templates, their monthly fees forever, and their performance limits.
If you want a WordPress site, you might find someone to build one cheaper upfront, but you'll likely pay more over time in plugin licences, maintenance, hosting that can handle the load, and fixing things when updates break something.
A hand coded website costs more at the start, but it's faster, cleaner, yours to keep, and cheaper to run long-term. For a lot of small business owners in places like Hythe and the surrounding area, that makes more sense than being stuck on a platform or dealing with WordPress headaches.
When you pay for a hand coded website, you're getting a site that loads in under two seconds, works perfectly on phones and tablets, doesn't need constant updates, and is built exactly how you need it.
You get clean code that search engines can read easily. You get a site that won't slow down or break because of a plugin conflict. You get something that's yours, with no monthly platform fees eating into your budget year after year.
And you get to work with someone who actually understands your business and builds something that fits, rather than bending your business to fit a template.
If that sounds like what you're after, I build hand coded websites for small businesses right here in Hythe. No agency nonsense, no jargon, just a proper website that does its job. Take a look at what I do at ArloWebStudio, and if it feels like a good fit, get in touch.