What a solicitor website actually costs in the UK
A clear, unsalesy look at what a solicitor website actually costs in the UK in 2026, by route, with the SRA-shaped hidden costs most tier comparisons quietly leave out.
01 / The honest price landscape
Law firm websites are priced across a wide band, and the shape of the band is specific
A solicitor website in the UK can cost anything from £18 a month on a DIY builder to £25,000 from a legal-specialist 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 high-street or mid-market firm.
The lead-value maths for law firms is heavily front-loaded. A single conveyancing instruction pays £1,200 to £2,500. A probate matter, £2,500 to £8,000. A divorce or financial remedy brief, often much more. A site that brings two new instructions a month has already paid for any subscription tier several times over. At a steady five to fifteen enquiries a month from a properly ranked practice-area-and-town page structure, the cost discussion stops being about price and becomes about which route fits the firm.
What follows is the honest breakdown, route by route, with the SRA-shaped hidden costs, the ongoing time cost, and the point at which each option stops making sense.
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
The subscription is the cheap bit. The real cost is the awkward integration of SRA Transparency Rules content into template fee tables, the lack of a proper author-page structure that E-E-A-T on legal content quietly demands, and the visible template sameness that reads, to a prospective client instructing on a house purchase or a probate matter, as a firm that has not yet got its bearings online. Acceptable for a very small practice in year one. Rarely right beyond that.
Freelancer, one-off build: £1,500 to £5,000
A properly built one-off site from a freelance designer with genuine law-firm experience is a real option. The risk is what happens in month fourteen when the SRA amends the Transparency Rules, a new solicitor joins, or a fee bracket changes. Freelancers move on, respond slowly or price each change at £120 an hour. Over three years, many firms find themselves with a site they cannot edit and a designer they cannot reach.
Agency, one-off build: £6,000 to £25,000
Worth it for multi-office firms, firms with a significant commercial or private-client offering, and firms where the brand is genuinely a market differentiator. Overkill for most two- to six-partner high-street practices. The real cost is often the ongoing maintenance contract, commonly £200 to £600 a month, covering little in practice. Ask precisely what the retainer buys before signing.
Subscription, monthly: from £39/mo
Our Starter plan at £39/mo covers design, build, hosting, SSL, accessibility, SRA-compliant footer and ongoing changes. Standard at £79/mo adds full practice-area pages, solicitor bios with roll numbers, Transparency Rules pricing pages, Lexcel and CQS displays, schema markup and SEO foundations. Studio is quoted for multi-office firms. No setup fee, no contract, British English, legally literate.
The hidden costs most tiers miss
SRA register cross-checking, SRA digital badge embedding, a proper legal notices page covering PII provider and client account protection under the SRA Accounts Rules, GDPR-compliant enquiry storage and a privacy notice that actually addresses confidentiality of first-contact enquiries, accessibility compliance, and the ongoing small edits (a fee update, a new associate bio) that keep a firm site honest. Baked in at our tiers, usually extras elsewhere.
Lead value: one instruction covers several years
A single residential conveyancing matter represents £1,200 to £2,500 in fees. A probate matter often £2,500 to £8,000. An uncontested divorce £1,500 to £4,000. A well-ranked firm site bringing a handful of instructions a month has paid back any subscription tier several times over. The cost conversation, honestly done, stops being about price and becomes about which route fits the firm.
FAQ
Common questions
Is it cheaper to build it ourselves on Squarespace?
On the surface, yes. £18 a month against £39 a month. In practice, most firms value their partner time at charge-out rates between £180 and £350 an hour. A weekend of partner time on a template builder costs more than three years of a Starter plan. And the resulting site tends to look like the other hundred Squarespace templates a careful conveyancing client has already scrolled past.
What about free builders like WordPress.com?
Free builders show ads, restrict what you can embed, and do not let you control the privacy behaviour of the contact page. None of that is acceptable for a firm handling confidential enquiries about divorce, estate planning or employment disputes. If budget is genuinely the constraint, a £39/mo plan is almost always the right call over a free-but-compromised one.
Should we pay for a one-off build and maintain it ourselves?
Only if you have dedicated internal resource. Most firms that tried this route found that the SRA Transparency Rules page quietly went out of date within six months, a Lexcel audit flagged the privacy notice, or an accessibility regression appeared after a theme update. Ongoing time cost is usually higher than the price difference between a subscription and a one-off.
How do multi-office firms typically budget?
Multi-office firms usually benefit from a bespoke build or our Studio tier. The reason is not the headline site but the per-office landing pages (critical for local search in each town), the solicitor bio structure across a larger team, the practice-area clusters and the case-management or conveyancing-quote widget integrations. Per-office cost generally works out between £60 and £120 a month, well inside what a single extra instruction a month covers.
What are realistic expectations for enquiries from a new firm site?
For a properly built site in a town with moderate competition, expect the first organic enquiries within eight to sixteen weeks, and a steady pattern of three to eight enquiries a month by month nine. Transparency Rules pages and practice-area-plus-town pages (such as 'probate solicitor Cheltenham' or 'conveyancing Altrincham') tend to outperform homepage rankings by a wide margin.
Do we need to commit to a long contract?
No. Our plans are monthly with no contract, and you can take the site with you if you leave. The model works because, once a firm has a site that quietly brings instructions and is always up to date on SRA requirements, the last thing anyone wants to do is disrupt it. Lock-in through quality, not through paperwork.
Ready to talk about the tier that fits your firm?
Plans from £39/mo. No setup, no contract, SRA-aware. We can have a quiet call whenever suits.