What a £299 website actually includes (and what it doesn't)

Most trades have had the same experience: one company quotes three hundred pounds, another quotes three thousand, and neither of them explains why. So when you see a fixed £299 on a pricing page, the sensible reaction is suspicion. Either something is missing, or the bill arrives later.

Fair enough. This article is the answer to that, using our own Launch package as the worked example. What the money buys, what it does not, what happens in month thirteen, and the cases where you should spend it somewhere else.

What do you actually get for £299?

The Launch build is one to three pages, live in three to five working days. Alongside that, every build we do carries the same foundations regardless of which package it sits in:

• A design made to your brief rather than a template with your logo dropped in.
• Mobile-first and fast, aiming at green Core Web Vitals, because most of your visitors are standing in the room they want fixing.
• A working enquiry form with spam protection, plus your number tappable on every page.
• On-page SEO and privacy-friendly analytics set up from the start.
• SSL, deployment and go-live handled.
• Your domain connected free, or registered for you at cost price.
• Hosting for the first twelve months.
• Two rounds of revisions before sign-off.
• Full ownership handed over on launch: the code and the accounts are yours.
• Thirty days of support after you go live.

That last pair matters more than it looks. A site you do not own is not an asset, it is a rental you cannot leave, and plenty of cheap builds are exactly that.

Is one to three pages enough for a trade business?

For a sole trader, a newly formed limited company, or anyone whose current online presence is a Facebook page and a phone number, yes. Three pages will carry what you do, where you work, proof that you have done it before, and how to reach you. That is the whole job of a first website: turn someone who already found you into someone who rings you.

Where three pages stops being enough is search. If you want to be found for a specific trade in a specific town, you need a page that actually answers that search, and that means a page per service and per area. We wrote about which pages earn their place in the pages every UK contractor needs, and that structure is a Growth-sized job, not a Launch-sized one.

So the honest framing is this. Launch gets you credible and contactable. It does not get you ranking across a county.

What is not in the £299?

Everything below is a real published price on our build configurator, so you can total your own version before you speak to anybody:

• Extra pages, £60 each beyond the package allowance.
• Professional copywriting, £150, if you would rather not write the words yourself. This is included from Growth upwards, so on Launch it is the add-on people take most often.
• Logo and brand kit, £250, if you do not have one that works.
• Advanced SEO setup, £200, which is the keyword and indexing work on top of the on-page basics.
• Google Business setup, £120. If you only add one thing to a Launch site, make it this one. It is the profile local customers actually call.
• AI chatbot, £200, or booking and scheduling, £200, or an online shop, £400, if the work needs them.

None of that is a surprise invoice. It is a menu, and the point of publishing it is that you can decide what you need instead of finding out afterwards. The £299 is a floor, not a ceiling, and any quote that does not tell you where its floor is should worry you more than one that does.

What happens after the first twelve months?

Hosting and SSL are included for the first year. After that you have two routes: move the site onto your own hosting account, which you can do because you own it, or take a care plan from £49 a month covering hosting, backups, security updates and uptime monitoring.

What you will not get from us is the thing the industry is quietly full of, where the agency holds the hosting and the domain, so leaving means starting again. Ask any provider a direct question before you pay: if I walk away in two years, what do I take with me? The answer tells you what you are really buying.

Why is somebody else quoting ten times as much?

Usually because it is a different product, not a worse one. Bigger builds are bigger for real reasons: twenty pages instead of three, custom functionality, a booking or CRM system, ongoing marketing baked into the fee, and an agency with staff and offices behind it. We break the bands down properly in how much a trade website costs in the UK.

The question is not which number is right. It is which product matches where your business actually is this year.

When should you not buy the £299 site?

Three cases, and we would rather say so up front.

You already have a site that ranks. Rebuilding from scratch can lose the search position you have earned. A redesign that keeps your domain and content while fixing the look and the enquiry flow is usually better value.

Your problem is the phone, not the website. If enquiries come in and go unanswered because you are up a ladder, a new homepage changes nothing. Start with what missed calls cost you.

You need coverage across many towns now. Then Launch is the wrong starting block and you will pay twice. Start at the size you actually need.

Where to start

If you already have a site, find out what is wrong with it before you spend anything. Run the free site audit for an instant check on the technical basics and where enquiries are leaking away.

If you are starting fresh, build your quote on the configurator and watch the number change as you add things. You will see your exact price and delivery window before you commit to anything.