Nobody in this industry publishes prices. We do. Here is exactly what the cheapest one buys.

The reason most agencies will not publish prices is that a price invites comparison, and comparison is uncomfortable when you cannot explain the difference. We would rather have the uncomfortable conversation in public.

The list

What £600 actually buys

• One page, designed for one job. Usually getting an enquiry.
• Written to work on a phone first, because that is where most of your visitors are.
• A form that goes somewhere a person reads, with an automatic acknowledgement to whoever filled it in.
• The search basics set up properly: title, description, sitemap, and the page structure search engines expect.
• It is yours. The code, the domain, the accounts. Nothing is held hostage.

What it does not buy, and people assume it does

1. The words

   Copywriting is £600 on top. Most people write their own, which is fine and often better, but it is the single most common reason a one-week project takes five. Decide before you start.

2. A logo or a brand

   £750 as a separate piece. If you have a logo and nothing else, a landing page can be built around it. If you have nothing, the page will look like it.

3. Anything connecting to anything

   Bookings, payments, customer logins, a second language, your accounting software. These are each a few hundred to just under a thousand pounds, and each one is a real piece of work rather than a switch.

4. Somebody looking after it afterwards

   Hosting, updates, backups and a monthly hour of changes is £90 a month. It is optional. Skipping it is a perfectly reasonable choice, as long as it is a choice rather than a surprise.

5. Photography

   Nobody includes this and everybody assumes it. Good photographs of your own work are usually the highest-return thing you can spend money on, and they are not a web design cost.

When £600 is the right answer

When you have one thing to sell and one action you want people to take. A trade business that wants the phone to ring. A consultant who needs somewhere credible to point people. A product launch that needs a page before it needs a site. In all three cases a single page done properly beats five pages done thinly, and it can be live next week.

When it is not

When you have several distinct services that each deserve their own page, when you need to keep publishing, or when the site has to do a job beyond producing an enquiry. Stretching a landing page to cover those is how you end up paying twice. That is the point at which £1,200 or £2,400 stops being an upsell and starts being the cheaper option.