Cheap Website Design Companies: How to Vet Them Properly
Cheap website design companies are easy to find in the UK, and I see their quotes every month. The useful filter is not the lowest number, but who does the work, what the price excludes, and whether you will own the site when they finish. Use the checks below before you pay a deposit.
What a cheap company is usually selling
In the quotes I review, a cheap website design company is selling speed and a fixed scope, not a blank canvas. The typical product is a five to seven page site built on a theme, with your logo dropped in, a contact form, and a mobile layout that already existed. UK quotes for that product commonly sit between £300 and £1,200 at a volume firm, and between £80 and £400 through a marketplace. You are paying for assembly more than original design.
That is not automatically a bad buy. Plenty of trades, salons and local shops only need hours, services, a few photos and a way to get in touch. The mistake is treating a £500 template job as the same product as a £4,000 studio build. They share a name. They are not the same job.
The four company models you will actually meet
Price is a weak filter. Two firms quoting £750 can be completely different businesses. Look at how they make money.
| Model | Who does the work | Typical one-off range | What you are buying |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace seller | Unknown freelancer, often overseas | £80 to £400 | A theme edit, little recourse if it goes wrong |
| Volume UK firm | UK sales, build often outsourced | £400 to £1,200 | A packaged site with tight revision limits |
| Solo freelancer | The person you speak to | £800 to £3,000 | Direct contact, quality varies with the individual |
| Small studio | A named designer or small team | £1,500 to £6,000 | More original layout, slower pace, a written scope |
Some UK companies pass your brief to a white-label partner and add a markup. Fine if they say so. Not fine if you think a local designer is building it.
What cheap quotes quietly exclude
The headline figure is almost never the cost of being online. Ask every company to put these lines in writing, even if the answer is not included.
- Domain name: £10 to £15 a year for a .co.uk or .uk
- Hosting: £8 to £30 a month for ordinary small-business hosting, more for shops that take payment
- Copywriting: many cheap jobs assume you supply every word
- Photos and extra stock licences
- Cookie consent and a basic privacy notice if you collect enquiries
- Redirects from an old site, email mailboxes, and extra revision rounds
A £600 site plus hosting, domain and copy you thought was included is no longer £600. Extra pages at £80 each push it toward a clearer quote.
Twenty minutes of checks before you pay a deposit
You do not need a procurement process. You need evidence the company exists and will still pick up the phone next year.
- Search the name at Companies House. A limited company should show officers and recent filings. A sole trader will not appear; then insist on a real name.
- Match the website, phone and email domain. A personal email and a mobile with no office is a person, not a firm. That can still be fine.
- Open three live portfolio sites on your phone. If two clients share the same layout and stock faces, you know the product.
- Ask who physically builds the site and in which country. You want a straight answer, not a vague team.
- Ask who owns the domain, hosting and files at handover. If they keep the keys, you are renting.
- Get the revision policy, timeline and cancellation terms in an email.
A deposit of 30 to 50 percent is normal in the UK. Full payment up front to a company you have never used is not.
One-off payment or a monthly plan
Cheap companies push one-off packages because they are simple to sell. That is only one route. Pay-monthly plans are common for small businesses that need to spread cost. The usual shape is a setup fee, then a monthly price that bundles hosting, updates and ongoing management so you are not chasing backups and plugin updates yourself.
Over 24 months a £49 a month plan with a £200 setup is about £1,376. A £1,800 one-off plus £15 a month hosting is about £2,160, but you own the work if the contract says so. Neither is automatically cheaper. Monthly suits tight cash and a patched site. One-off suits you if you have the budget and will handle updates, or buy maintenance at £25 to £80 a month.
I offer both a one-off build and a pay-monthly route from my Kent studio. If you want the current figures, they are on arlowebstudio.com.
When a cheap company is a rational choice
A low-cost firm is a sensible pick if all of these apply:
- You have five pages or fewer and no payments, bookings or member logins
- You can supply photos and copy, or you accept plain, generic wording
- You are not relying on the new site as your main source of new work in the first months
- You will own the domain and can take a full backup or export
- The contract names a completion date and a revision cap you can live with
Walk away if you need a shop, quote tools or a diary connection. Volume firms rarely price those honestly.
Company red flags, not price red flags
Low prices are not the warning. These behaviours are:
- No contract, or a contract that lets you use the design only while you keep paying
- They register the domain in their own name
- Portfolio sites that fail to load, or that still show placeholder text
- Pressure to pay the same day to hold a discount
- They will not take a 15-minute call. Written-only sales on a custom job usually means a script
- Hosting, marketing add-ons and a logo bundled so you cannot see each line
If they cannot name the system you will log into, they are selling, not building. WordPress, a builder, or a locked platform have very different exit costs.
Comparing two quotes on equal terms
Put both quotes on the same grid before you pick:
- Pages included, and the price of an extra page
- Whose hosting, whose domain registrar
- The system name, and whether you can take an export
- Revision rounds and the hourly rate after launch
- Who writes the copy and who sources images
- Timeline in working days, not a vague month
- Support window after launch: a week, a month, or nothing
- Cash out in month 1, month 12 and month 24
That last row catches the firm that wins on the build then charges for hosting and edits. A dearer studio can cost less by year two if you own the files. Ask for a redacted brief. A company with a process can show one.
Frequently asked questions
Should I accept the cheapest quote if the page count matches?
No. Page count is the easy part. Ask who builds the site, which system it runs on, who owns the domain and hosting, how many revision rounds you get, and what month 12 costs. Two five-page quotes can differ by thousands of pounds once those lines are filled in.
Is a UK company always safer than an overseas seller?
Safer on contracts, phone contact and Companies House checks, not automatically better at design. A named UK sole trader with three solid live sites beats a glossy UK sales desk that outsources the build and will not say where. Ask where the work is done, in writing.
Who should own the domain name and hosting account?
You should. The domain should sit in a registrar account in your name, and you should hold the login for hosting or have a documented way to take a full export. If the company keeps both, leaving later means rebuilding, not moving.
How much deposit is reasonable for a cheap build?
Thirty to fifty percent is normal in the UK once you have a written scope. Full payment before any work starts is a poor sign unless you already know the firm. Tie the final payment to launch and handover of logins, not to a vague sign-off.
When does a monthly plan beat a cheap one-off website?
When you cannot fund a lump sum, and you want hosting, updates and management included rather than another bill later. Add up 24 months of monthly fees plus setup, then compare that with the cheap one-off plus hosting plus paid edits. The lower day-one quote often loses that sum.
Can I move the site if the company goes quiet?
Only if you own the domain, you can access the files or CMS export, and the site is not locked to their proprietary platform. Get that in the contract before you pay. A cheap site on a closed system is a rental, even if the invoice said design.