Short answer: a plumber's website should cost a fraction of a single boiler install. If it costs more than that every month, or ties you in for three years, someone's having you.
The trouble is nobody quotes it straight. Ask five companies what a website costs and you get five shrugs, a "well, it depends," and a monthly figure with the contract length buried in clause 14.3. So here's the honest map: what the real options cost a plumber in 2026, and the bit they leave out of the sales call.
A good site pays for itself the first time it wins you one boiler swap.The options, honestly priced
Build it yourself
Cheapest on paper. Dearest in evenings.
DIY website builder
Wix, Squarespace or WordPress. Pick a template, write the words yourself, publish. No build fee.
Your time, and your ranking. A proper site is 30 to 60 hours of work, and even then it won't show up for "new boiler in your town" because nobody told you about area pages, schema, or getting your Gas Safe number where Google can read it.
The "free website" subscription
Monthly subscription companies
"Free website, just £99 a month." The word free is doing a lot of lifting.
Three years at £99 a month is £3,564, and you usually don't own the site. Stop paying and it vanishes. Four figures spent, nothing owned.
A traditional agency
Traditional web agency
One-off fee, you own it. Nothing wrong with that in principle.
Every change after launch is on the clock. Updating a phone number: £75. A new service page: £200 to £400. So nothing gets updated, the site goes stale, and Google quietly drops you.
It has to rank for the jobs that pay
A pretty website nobody finds is a business card that charges rent. What earns is a site that shows up when someone in your patch searches "new boiler in your town", "Gas Safe plumber near me", or "emergency plumber in your town" at 11pm with water coming through the ceiling. That means a page for each job in each area, your Gas Safe registration in the schema, and the AI-search plumbing so ChatGPT and Perplexity recommend you too. Cheap sites do none of it.
The one-job mathsDo the sum that counts
A boiler install runs £1,800 to £3,500, around £2,400 on average. A bathroom fit is more. Now put the website next to that. A Starter build is £500 and £49 a month. Win one extra boiler swap a year and the site is paid for several times over. Win one a month and it's not a cost, it's the best-value apprentice you'll ever hire.
Three tiers, all transparent
A one-off build fee plus a small monthly. No long tie-in. You own the site. Cancel any time after the 3-month minimum.
Three years at the Professional tier is £3,844 all in: about the cost of one agency build, but with 36 months of new content, updates, hosting and ongoing SEO bundled in. Stop any time and you keep the site.
Three questions before you sign
Do you own it? If the answer mentions "platform" or "as long as you're a customer", you don't. Walk.
What's the three-year total? Monthly times 36, plus any build fee. That's your real number, and the cheap monthly with a long contract usually wins the wooden spoon.
What does the monthly actually buy? Hosting is £5 to £15. The rest should be real content, updates and SEO. If you can't list what next month's fee delivers, you're paying for nothing.
The right question isn't "what does it cost?" It's "what does it win me, and do I own it at the end?"
Want the full breakdown of every route, ours included? That's the honest cost of a tradesperson's website. And the version built specifically for plumbers is the plumber websites page.