What does Digital Tradies cost a tradesman? The year one number, from their own pages
A roofer in Kent reads the Digital Tradies homepage on his phone at half seven in the morning. Nothing upfront, £49 a month, website live in three days. He works out that a year costs him £588, which is less than a set of ladders, and he fills the form in before his first job.
There is a second document on the same website. It is linked in small type at the bottom of every page, it is called Terms of Service, and it says two things the pricing page does not. One is about VAT. The other is about how you leave. Between them they move year one by up to £176.
None of that makes Digital Tradies a bad buy. They are one of the cheaper managed options for a British trade business and they are more open about their twelve month ask than most of their competitors. It does mean the £588 in the roofer's head is not the figure he should be planning around.
Digital Tradies costs £49 a month for Starter or £79 for Pro, with £0 upfront, so twelve months is £588 or £948. Their Terms of Service add two things the pricing page does not: prices are exclusive of VAT unless stated otherwise, and cancelling takes thirty days' written notice. Counting both, a UK tradesman's first year on Starter lands between £588 and £764.40.
What a first year on the Starter plan actually adds up to
Digital Tradies publishes £49 a month with no setup fee, which is £588 over twelve months, but their own Terms of Service add a VAT clause and a thirty day notice period that between them can take year one to £764.40.
Here is the bill, itemised, with every line traced to a page on their site read on 26 August 2026. The two lines in the middle are the ones no comparison article has counted, because they live in a different document from the price.
Digital Tradies Starter, year one for a sole trader
| Payment on day one | £0 |
| Setup or build fee | £0 |
| Twelve monthly payments at £49 | £588 |
| Notice month, if you leave at the twelve month mark | £49 |
| VAT at 20%, if it is added to the above | £127.40 |
| Domain renewal from year two | Not published |
| Year one, staying, if no VAT is added | £588 |
| Year one, leaving at twelve months, with VAT | £764.40 |
Figures read from digitaltradies.com on 26 August 2026. The £49 and the £0 upfront are advertised. The notice month comes from their Terms of Service section 8, the VAT line from section 3.
Both ends of that range are real. If Digital Tradies is not VAT registered and you stay past the twelve months, £588 is exactly what a year costs you and it is a good price for a managed five page site. If VAT applies and you decide at month eleven that it is not working, you are £764.40 in. That is a 30% swing on a number most people treat as fixed.
The VAT line their pricing page does not answer
Section 3 of the Digital Tradies Terms of Service states that all prices are listed in GBP and are exclusive of VAT unless stated otherwise, and neither the homepage nor the pricing page states otherwise.
This is worth being careful about, because the innocent explanation is the likely one. A business only charges VAT once its taxable turnover passes the £90,000 registration threshold, and plenty of small British web outfits sit under it. If Digital Tradies is not registered, no VAT is added to anything and the clause is boilerplate that came with the terms template.
The problem is that a tradesman cannot tell which it is from the website. The advertised price says £49, the terms say prices exclude VAT, and nothing on the site closes the gap. For a VAT registered trade business it barely matters, because you claim it back. For the large majority of one van operations sitting under the threshold themselves, £58.80 a month is a different purchase from £49 a month.
Ask the question in an email and keep the reply. It applies to me too, and to every other name on the list when you are comparing UK trade website companies against each other.
"Cancel any time" and "we ask for 12 months" are both on the same page
Digital Tradies asks for twelve months but does not appear to legally bind you to it. What it holds back instead is the website: their FAQ states that if you cancel before twelve months, the website files are not handed over.
Three statements, all published by them, all currently live:
I do not think this is a trick, and I would rather say so plainly than score a point. Their FAQ answer is unusually direct for this market: "We ask for 12 months to keep pricing low. If you cancel before 12 months, we simply don't hand over the website files." That is a clear deal, written in words a tradesman can understand, and three of the nine companies I checked last week do not publish a price at all, let alone a cancellation position.
What it is, precisely, is a soft lock rather than a legal one. You can stop paying whenever you like. You just cannot take the website with you, so leaving in month nine means starting again from nothing, and knowing that changes how you feel at month nine. Worth understanding before you sign, alongside how monthly website plans work generally.
The notice month is the bit people miss
"Cancel any time" and "thirty days' written notice, no refund for the current billing period" are not the same offer. On the terms as published, a tradesman who waits for the twelve months to elapse and then cancels pays a thirteenth £49. It is not a penalty and it is a normal clause. It is just not what the pricing card implies.
Where the terms and the pricing page disagree
The Digital Tradies Terms of Service is dated February 2025 and describes a different commercial model from the one currently advertised, including a 50% deposit before work begins and service names that no longer appear anywhere on the pricing page.
I read both documents side by side. This is what came out.
| Question | Pricing page and FAQ say | Terms of Service say |
|---|---|---|
| What do you pay upfront? | £0 upfront, first payment when the site goes live | One-off services: 50% deposit before work begins |
| Is VAT included? | Not mentioned | Prices exclusive of VAT unless stated otherwise |
| How do you cancel? | "Cancel any time, there's no contract tying you in" | Thirty days' written notice, no refund for the current period |
| Who owns the website? | Files handed over after twelve months, not before | Ownership transfers to you upon full payment |
| Who owns the domain? | Not mentioned | Your domain remains your property at all times |
| Are edits included? | Not itemised on the Starter card | Minor text and image updates included in Care Plan and Growth Plan |
| Are rankings guaranteed? | "No", stated openly | No guarantee of rankings, traffic or lead volumes |
The last row of the middle column is the tell. "Care Plan" and "Growth Plan" are not products on the current pricing page, which sells Starter and Pro. The terms were written for an older version of the business and have not been brought forward. That is an extremely ordinary thing for a small company to let slide, and it is also the document that governs the agreement, so the mismatch is worth an email rather than a shrug.
The one to ask about hardest is edits. Starter lists hosting, SSL, backups, maintenance and uptime monitoring. It does not say what happens when you change your mobile number, add a service or want six new job photos on the gallery. The terms suggest minor updates belong to a plan by a name that no longer exists. For a working trade business that changes what it offers every couple of years, this is not a small line item.
Where Digital Tradies is genuinely good
Section 7 of their terms states that your domain name remains your property at all times and that they will assist with transferring the site and domain if you cancel, which is a better published position than several larger UK competitors offer.
The domain is the single most valuable thing a trade business owns online. Every Google result, every van sticker, every quote footer points at it. Companies that register it in their own name are the ones that make leaving expensive, and Digital Tradies explicitly does not do that. Whoever you buy from, that clause matters more than the monthly fee does.
Two other things they deserve credit for. They publish a price at all, which puts them ahead of Yell and two of the other firms I audited. And they say in writing that they do not guarantee rankings, traffic or lead volumes, because outcomes depend on your area and your competition. Every honest person in this business knows that. Very few put it on the pricing page.
What £49 a month buys against £50 every four weeks
Digital Tradies is cheaper than Sitework in cash terms, £588 against £650 in year one, because twelve monthly payments is fewer payments than thirteen four-weekly ones. The difference you are buying is the length of the wait before the site is yours.
I build these sites for a living, so read the next table knowing that. I have put my own plan in it at its real cost, and it is not the cheapest row.
| Plan | Advertised | Payments a year | Year one | Three years | Minimum term |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Tradies Starter, up to 5 pages | £49 / month | 12 | £588 | £1,764 | 12 months asked for |
| Digital Tradies Pro, adds Google and reviews | £79 / month | 12 | £948 | £2,844 | 12 months asked for |
| Sitework Website plan, what I do | £50 / 4 weeks | 13 | £650 | £1,950 | 3 months, then rolling |
On money, they win, and £62 a year is a real difference to a sole trader. Three honest points of separation, none of which are price:
The wait is three months rather than twelve. I will say the uncomfortable half of that too: before twelve months, my files do not transfer either. The difference is what you are committing to while you find out, which is three months against a year.
The first payment comes back if you do not like the finished site. Their guarantee covers revisions during setup, which is a different promise from a refund.
You see the site before you pay anything. Both of us charge nothing on day one, but they build after you subscribe and I build the mockup first. If you want the wider version of that argument there is a breakdown of what a trade should expect to pay for a website, and if you are still at the stage of deciding whether it is worth doing at all, the case for a self-employed tradesman covers it without the sales pitch.
The verdict
One last thing, and it applies to every company in this market including mine. Everything above was read from their own live pages on 26 August 2026 and the figures move. Comparison articles quoting a Digital Tradies setup fee are quoting a version of the business that no longer exists. Read the actual pages, note the date you read them, and if you want the version of this done across the whole market there is a breakdown of what a plumber's website should cost and include.