"How much does a website cost?" is a fair question with an annoying answer: it depends. But "it depends" is not much help when you are trying to budget, so let me give you something more useful - the real ranges, and what actually moves the number.
Why there is no single price
A website can be a five-page brochure or a booking system with logins and payments. It can be a template you fill in yourself or something designed and built from scratch around your business. Those are wildly different amounts of work, so they cost wildly different amounts. The honest framing is to think in tiers.
Template, DIY
Little to nothing up front, then roughly £10 to £50 a month for a builder like Wix or Squarespace. You do the work. Fine for getting online fast and cheap.
Freelancer, custom
Often somewhere from around £1,500 for something simple to £5,000 or more for a larger site. Built around your business, owned by you, no platform lock-in.
Agency
Typically £5,000 to £20,000 and up. More people involved, more process, suited to bigger projects with bigger requirements and budgets.
Those are rough UK ballparks to set expectations, not quotes - every project is different.
What actually drives the price
Within any tier, a few things push the cost up or down: how many pages you need, whether the design is custom or off the shelf, any functionality beyond the basics (bookings, e-commerce, member areas), and whether you are providing the words and images or paying someone to create them. Ongoing hosting and maintenance is a separate, smaller running cost on top.
What to watch out for
Cheap is not the same as good value. A bargain template can cost you later in speed and flexibility - I wrote about that trade-off in custom-built vs templates. At the other end, make sure you are not paying agency prices for freelancer work. And always check two things before you commit: what the ongoing fees are, and whether you actually own the finished site.
The short version
For most small businesses, a custom site built by a freelancer hits the sweet spot - properly made, owned by you, without agency overheads. If you want a straight answer on what your specific project would cost, tell me what you need and I will give you a real figure, not a vague range. You can also see what a build with me includes.