UK trade website companies compared

I sat down and checked the live pricing page of seven UK companies that sell done-for-you websites to tradespeople. Three of them publish a clear monthly figure. One advertises a build from £999 and stops there. Two have no public pricing page at all, so the only way to find out what a website costs is to ring up and ask. That is a strange state of affairs for an industry selling to people who quote their own work in writing, on the doorstep, before they start.

There is no shortage of articles comparing Wix against Squarespace, or Checkatrade against MyBuilder. There is almost nothing comparing the companies that actually build trade websites for you. So here is that table. I run one of these businesses, which I will be straight about: Sitework is in the list, and it does not win every column.

The seven companies, and what they actually charge

Published pricing across seven UK trade website companies in August 2026 ranges from £39 a month with nothing upfront to a £600 one-off build, and the headline figure alone tells you almost nothing without the contract terms beside it.

How this was checked: each figure comes from the company's own live pricing or service page on 4 August 2026, not from a directory or a review site. Prices change and offers come and go, so check the current page before you decide. Sources: Digital Tradies pricing, TradeBolt, MyTradeSite and iTrades.

Two of them will not tell you the price

SwiftLead and BUILT for Trades both had no public pricing page in August 2026, so a tradesman cannot compare them against anything without booking a call first.

This is not automatically a stitch-up. Agencies that build bigger, more bespoke sites often genuinely cannot quote without a conversation, and both of those companies run substantial marketing operations that go well past a website. But it does put you at a disadvantage. You end up on a call, with a person whose job is selling, comparing a number you have just heard for the first time against numbers you looked up in your own time. Ask for the figure by email before the call and see what comes back.

What happens to the website when you stop paying

Digital Tradies publishes that the website files are yours to keep after 12 months, and that if you cancel before then it does not hand the files over, which is the clearest published cancellation term of any of the seven.

Credit where it is due: they say it out loud, on the pricing page, in plain English. Most companies in this trade do not. TradeBolt's page says that if you do not upgrade after the 14-day trial, access is paused until you do. MyTradeSite includes a free .co.uk domain that is registered and managed by them, which is a detail worth understanding properly, because the domain is the one asset that carries your Google history.

The pattern across UK providers is that the monthly model and the ownership question are joined at the hip. Nothing upfront has to be paid for somehow, and it is usually paid for by the site staying on the provider's side of the fence for a while. That is a legitimate business model, not a scandal. It just needs to be a decision you made on purpose, the same way you would want a customer to understand a staged payment on a bathroom.

If your provider has gone quiet rather than gone bust, that is a different and more common problem, and it is covered in what to do when your web designer stops replying.

The crossover: when monthly stops being cheaper

Against a £600 build plus £20 a month, a £49 monthly plan is cheaper until month 21, and more expensive every month after that.

Three years is the right window for a trade website, not twelve months. Most of the sites I have built are still doing the same job in year three with a few hundred pounds of edits along the way. If you are weighing the website against the other places that money could go, the cost per job across trade lead channels puts all of it on the same scale, and a full breakdown of what a build should cost sits on the tradesman website cost page.

Where a monthly plan genuinely wins

A monthly plan with nothing upfront is the better call for a new sole trader whose cash position matters more than the three-year total.

If you registered with Companies House three months ago and every outgoing is being counted, £600 in one lump is a real obstacle and £39 a month is not. Take the monthly plan. The crossover is nearly two years away, and a business that does not survive to month 21 does not care what happens at month 21. That is a straight answer and it goes against my own pricing, but it is the right one for that person.

There is a second case, and it comes up more than people expect. If you are testing something rather than committing to it, a new service line, a second town, a trade you are moving into, then renting the website for a year is the sensible way to find out whether the work is there. Paying to build an asset around a business decision you have not made yet is the wrong order. Rent it, see if the phone rings, and build properly once you know the answer. I have talked two people out of a build on exactly that basis.

Where the monthly model stops being the obvious call is the point at which the website is carrying real money. Once a meaningful share of your work arrives through it, the question changes from what does this cost a month to what happens to my enquiries if this relationship ends. That is a different question, and it is the one the cancellation terms answer.

Four questions to ask any of them

Domain ownership, the three-year total, the cancellation terms and the minimum term are the four answers that separate providers, and all four should be given in writing without hesitation.

What I would actually tell a tradesman choosing

Pick on the three-year total and the cancellation terms, not the month-one price, unless cash today is the binding constraint.

The honest summary of the table is that these companies are not really competing on quality of website, because you cannot judge that from a pricing page. They are competing on how the money is structured, and the structure is the thing to read carefully. Nothing upfront is a genuine benefit with a genuine cost attached, and a one-off build is a bigger cheque that stops being one. Neither is a trick.

What I would not do is choose a provider that will not tell you the price until you are on a call with them, unless you already know you want a bigger piece of work than a website. If you want to see how the done-for-you model works in practice before you talk to anyone, what done-for-you actually means for a trade website walks through it.

See yours before you pay anything

I will build a free mockup of your actual business, your trade, your area, your photos, before any money changes hands. If you like it, it is £600 to build, split £300 to start and £300 on final approval, then £20 a month covering hosting, SSL, security, domain renewal and unlimited small edits. Rolling, cancel any time, and it starts only once the site is live. Sites are usually live in about a week. Apply at sitework.uk/#apply.