What a roofer's website should actually cost
DIY, freelancer, agency or subscription. Here is what each route actually costs a UK roofer, and the lead-value maths that decides which one pays back fastest.
01 / Why this is a strange question
Most roofers overthink the cost and undercount the payback
Ask ten UK roofers what a website should cost and you will get ten different answers, most of them wrong. Some quote the £300 they spent on a Fiverr gig in 2019. Some quote the £6,000 their cousin's agency quoted for a 'brand refresh'. Neither number is useful because they ignore the only maths that matters: what a job is worth, and how many extra jobs the site brings in.
A slipped tile repair is £200 to £800 of work. A chimney re-pointing or lead-flashing reseat is £600 to £1,500. A full re-roof on a typical three-bed semi is £7,000 to £12,000 revenue, with £5,000 to £8,000 sitting in margin after materials and labour. Emergency storm work turning into insurance claims commonly runs £3,000 to £8,000. One extra re-roof a year covers a decade of website fees on almost any plan.
Below is what the four main routes actually cost, what you get, and where the hidden expenses sit. The goal is not the cheapest website. It is the one that pays for itself fastest and keeps working three years from now.
02 / The four routes, honestly
What a roofer website costs by route
Real ranges. Real trade-offs. Pick the one that fits your diary, not just your budget.
DIY builder: £0 to £300 a year
Wix, Squarespace, Gododdy. Cheap on paper. Expensive in time. You spend weekends dragging elements around, fighting template limitations and writing copy. The finished product looks like a template because it is one. For a roofing business the bigger issue is that these platforms are slow, which kills emergency mobile search ranking. Fine for a hobby, tight for a trade.
Freelancer one-off: £800 to £3,000
A freelancer builds it, you pay once, you own it. Then they disappear. Six months later you want a new service area page and no-one answers the emails. Hosting expires, SSL lapses, the contact form breaks silently. Most roofers who go this route end up paying twice within two years because they have to start over.
Agency build: £3,000 to £10,000 up front plus retainer
A proper agency. Good work, polished result. But the quote scares off most roofers, the project runs six to twelve weeks, and changes afterwards come at £60 to £100 per hour. Worth it if you are a twenty-person operation with a marketing budget. Overkill for a three-person roofing team that just needs the phone to ring.
Subscription web design: £39 to £99 per month
No upfront bill. Design, build, hosting, security, SSL, backups, analytics and ongoing changes all rolled into one monthly fee. For a roofer the maths works because the site pays for itself with a single emergency repair, never mind a full re-roof. Leave any time and take the domain with you.
The lead value maths
One full re-roof on a three-bedroom semi delivers £5,000 to £15,000 in margin. One emergency repair that turns into an insurance claim delivers £3,000 to £8,000. A £79/month website costs £948 a year. If the site brings in one extra job a year, it has paid back roughly ten times over. Two jobs and you are well into pure profit territory.
Where the hidden costs hide
On one-off builds the hidden costs are hosting renewals, SSL certificates, plugin licences, security patches, theme updates and the day your freelancer stops replying. For DIY builders it is the monthly platform fee, the premium plan required for ecommerce, the SEO app, and the extra domain. Subscription plans roll these in up front, which is cheaper once you count hours honestly.
03 / The lead-value view
Thinking in jobs, not in pounds
A website is a sales asset, not an expense. The useful question is not 'how much does this cost' but 'how many extra jobs a year does it need to bring in to justify itself'. At £79 a month that number is one emergency call-out. At £39 a month it is about one slipped-tile repair. Neither is a stretch for a website that is set up properly for local search and emergency intent.
Underneath that, a good website compounds. New job photos get added, Google Business Profile gets stronger, reviews accumulate, material-specific pages start ranking for longer-tail searches, and the site that was bringing in one lead a month in year one brings in three a month by year three. That is the case for treating the website as infrastructure, not a one-off project.
The roofers who do badly with websites are not the ones who spent too little. They are the ones who spent once, got no support afterwards, watched the site decay, and never replaced it. A modest ongoing spend with someone who keeps the site moving almost always beats a one-off splurge that ends the day the invoice is paid.
FAQ
Common questions
What is the honest minimum a roofer should spend on a website?
Under about £40 a month, you cannot run a fast, secure, properly hosted website with ongoing changes. You can buy a template-builder subscription and spend your own time on it, which is a legitimate trade-off if you have the time. But for a working roofer with a full diary, paying £39 to £79 a month for a site that is built, maintained and updated for you is almost always cheaper per hour than doing it yourself.
Does a roofer need more than five pages?
Most do, yes. A homepage, plus separate pages for slate, tile, flat roof, lead flashing, chimney and emergency work, plus service-area pages for the three to five towns you cover, plus an about page with accreditations. That is closer to twelve to fifteen pages. You can start smaller and add over time, which is what most subscription plans are built around.
Should I pay extra for SEO?
Not as a separate bolt-on, no. Proper SEO for a roofer is structural: material-specific pages, town-specific pages, correct schema markup, fast hosting, Google Business Profile linked properly. Those are build-time decisions, not a monthly line item. Be wary of agencies charging £500 a month for 'SEO services' on top of a website that is not set up for local search in the first place.
How much does one emergency repair or re-roof need to bring in for the site to pay back?
On a £79/month plan that is £948 a year. A single emergency tile replacement is £200 to £500. A storm-damage temporary cover with follow-on insurance claim is £3,000 to £8,000. A full re-roof on a three-bed semi is £7,000 to £12,000 revenue, £5,000 to £8,000 margin. Even one slipped-tile job a year pays back the website at the lower end. One re-roof covers a decade.
What about ongoing changes - how are they priced?
On one-off builds, changes usually cost £60 to £100 per hour from the original developer, if you can get hold of them. On subscription plans, changes within normal scope (new service area page, updated opening hours, new accreditation badge, fresh job photos) are included. Larger structural changes are agreed separately. Clear scopes save arguments later.
Can I start on a lower plan and upgrade later?
Yes. We start most roofers on Starter at £39/month, which covers a clean five-page site plus hosting, security and ongoing changes. Many upgrade to Standard at £79/month within six months once they want proper material-specific pages, service-area content and SEO foundations. There is no contract, so sizing up or down is a conversation, not a renegotiation.
Want a roofer website that pays for itself?
Plans from £39/mo. Design, build, hosting and ongoing changes, all rolled into one. Leave any time, take the domain with you.