What an accountancy website actually costs in the UK
A clear, unsalesy look at what an accountancy practice website actually costs in the UK in 2026, by route, with the hidden costs most tier comparisons quietly leave out.
01 / The honest price landscape
Accountancy websites are priced across a wide band, and the shape of the band is specific
An accountancy website in the UK can cost anything from £15 a month on a DIY builder to £20,000 from a professional services agency. The range is wide enough to be unhelpful on its own, so this page breaks it into the routes that actually exist, what each one buys, and where the tier boundaries sit for a solo or small-to-mid-size practice.
The lifetime value maths for an accountancy firm is unusually kind to web investment. A single limited company client with year-end, bookkeeping and payroll typically runs £1,800 to £6,000 a year and stays with the firm for four to seven years. A site that brings in one such client pays for a Standard subscription many times over in the first year alone, and the retention tail continues running for years.
What follows is the honest breakdown, route by route, with the hidden costs, the ongoing time cost, and the point at which each option stops making sense. Not a sales pitch. A decision aid.
02 / Six routes and what they cost
Where the money actually goes
DIY, freelance, agency, subscription. Plus the two hidden cost categories most comparisons skip.
DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace): £15 to £30 a month
Cheap on paper, but the template look gets spotted by the kind of owner-managed business that wants a proper accountant. ICAEW, ACCA and AAT mark displays are fiddly to place correctly, the privacy notice almost never covers AML and client data properly, and integrating a portal login or Calendly discovery call takes a weekend you should be spending on practice work. Fine for the first year of a new practice. Rarely right after that.
Freelancer, one-off build: £1,000 to £3,500
A freelance designer who understands accountancy is a real option. The risk is month fourteen, when you add an MTD for Income Tax service page, update your fixed-fee packages, or want a niche landing page for contractors. Freelancers move on, quote £80 per change, or reply in three weeks. Over three years you end up with a site you cannot edit and a designer you cannot reach.
Agency, one-off build: £5,000 to £20,000
Worth it for mid-size firms with multiple partners, a tax advisory arm, and genuine specialism routes like R&D or international clients. Overkill for most 1 to 4 partner practices. The real cost is the maintenance retainer, commonly £200 to £500 a month, which often covers hosting and little else. Ask exactly what the retainer buys, and what a new service page costs on top, before you sign.
Subscription, monthly: from £39/mo
Our Starter plan at £39/mo covers design, build, hosting, SSL, accessibility and ongoing edits. Standard at £79/mo adds service pages, niche pages, schema and SEO foundations. Studio is quoted for multi-partner firms with portal integration and MTD landing pages. No setup fee, no contract, British English, chartered-body aware. Suits the way a professional services firm actually evolves.
The hidden costs most tiers miss
AML and data-protection-compliant enquiry handling, a privacy notice that reflects the ICO register entry and the real data flows, a client portal link, secure document upload signposting, Companies House and HMRC links that stay live, accessibility for clients with disabilities, and the ongoing small edits when rates or thresholds change. Baked in at our tiers, usually extras at others.
Client lifetime value: one self-assessment client pays for a year
A basic self-assessment client is worth £200 to £450 a year. A limited company client with bookkeeping, payroll and year-end sits between £1,800 and £6,000 a year, often for five years or more. One new limited company client brought in by the site pays for a Standard subscription six times over in year one alone, and the retention tail keeps running. The cost question is usually the wrong question.
FAQ
Common questions
Is it cheaper to build it myself on Squarespace?
On the sticker, yes. £15 a month versus £39 a month. In practice, most accountants value their time at their chargeable rate of £90 to £200 an hour. A weekend on a template builder costs more than a full year of a proper subscription. And the resulting site tends to read as a new practice still finding its feet, which is not what a limited company director comparing three firms is looking for.
Can I not just use a template aimed at accountants?
You can, and plenty do. The problem is that half the accountants in your town are using the same two or three themes. Google treats the near-duplicate copy as low quality, and prospective clients reading four firms in a row spot the pattern immediately. A hand-built site with your own service pages and niche positioning is the lower-risk route once you are past the first year of trading.
Should I pay for a one-off build and maintain it myself?
Only if you are genuinely comfortable with SSL renewals, security patches, accessibility compliance and content updates when thresholds change. Most accountants we speak to tried this once, lost three months to a broken plugin around self-assessment deadline season, and switched to a subscription model. The ongoing time cost almost always exceeds the monthly difference.
How do multi-partner firms typically budget?
Firms with three or more partners usually benefit from a bespoke build or our Studio tier. It is less about the homepage and more about the partner profile pages, sector-specific landing pages, a proper MTD for Income Tax hub, and integration with a client portal like Xero HQ, TaxDome or Senta. Costs typically work out between £150 and £350 a month across the firm, well inside what a single new limited company instruction covers.
What realistic enquiry volume should I expect from a new site?
For a properly built site in a medium-competition town, expect first organic enquiries within two to four months, and a steady pattern of three to eight enquiries a month by month six. Niche-and-town pages (such as 'contractor accountant Cardiff' or 'dental accountant Manchester') tend to outperform generic 'accountant near me' pages by a wide margin, because the search intent is sharper.
Do I need to commit to a long contract?
No. Our plans are monthly, no contract, and you keep the site if you leave. The model works because, once a firm has a site that quietly brings in year-end and self-assessment enquiries, the last thing anyone wants to do is disrupt it mid-tax-season. Lock-in through quality, not through paperwork.
Ready to talk about the tier that fits your practice?
Plans from £39/mo. No setup, no contract, chartered-body aware. We can have a proper call whenever suits.