Free tool
What will your website really cost over 5 years?
Most cost comparisons leave out the hours you spend wrestling with a Wix layout, or the £45 a freelancer charges to swap a photo. This one doesn't. Pick your situation, set your hourly rate, and see the real number.
Where are you now?
How many changes do you make a year?
Things like a new photo, updated pricing, a fresh review, a new service. Most sole traders need 12-20 per year.
What is your hourly rate worth?
What you charge a customer, or what you could be earning instead of fighting with a website builder.
Advanced settings
Total cost over 5 years
Including build time, monthly fees, hosting, and changes.
DIY (Wix, Squarespace)
Plus 38 hours of your time
£2,600
Freelancer build
Including ~£45 per change after launch
£4,650
Seenely managed
Everything included. No hourly rate spent.
£1,200
Your 5-year saving with Seenely
£1,400
Compared to the cheaper of DIY or freelancer in your scenario. Plus the hours of your life you get back.
Numbers are estimates based on UK market data, May 2026. Your actual costs will vary. The calculation includes the time you spend at the hourly rate you set, which is a real cost most builders ignore.
How we calculate the numbers
DIYis a monthly Wix or Squarespace plan, plus 8 hours of your time to build it, plus 30 minutes per edit. Both blocks of time are valued at the hourly rate you set. Most sole traders we've spoken to said this was the line they had never seen anyone cost out before.
Freelancer is a one-off build (usually £600-£2,000 for a sole-trader site in the UK), plus £80-£300 a year for hosting and support, plus around £45 per edit. The edit number is the average we see invoiced by smaller UK freelancers in 2026. Bigger agencies are higher.
Managed is a flat monthly fee with edits included. Seenely is £20. Some competitors are £40-£150. We set ours at the £20 mark to make the upgrade from a DIY plan obvious.
The calculator uses sensible defaults but every number is editable in Advanced settings. If your freelancer charged £400 and never updates anything, drop the numbers in and see what happens. The honest answer is usually: not a lot, until you need a change.
Want the long version?
We wrote a full breakdown of the three options, with the real-world numbers and the trade-offs nobody mentions, in how much a small business website should actually cost.
Stop putting it off.
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