This isn’t a wild fabrication (unlike the photo above). We have a potential client arguing about this with his board right now. The board manages a significant community asset – a facility worth millions, thousands of users, online booking systems and a substantial need for an engaging usable design … and yet the hill that one board member is preparing to die on is his belief that a family member can provide them with a £500 website.
We get it, times have been better, everyone right now is flinging money around as if they had no arms. Whether you represent a community concern or a growing SME, getting value for money from your suppliers is more than desirable; it’s your duty.
So, as we say, we get it – a “£500 website” is very tempting.
But …
Your website is the tireless workhorse of your marketing effort. Gamely representing your business, working for your business, earning for your business when you aren’t. Given that the poor beast is doing that 24/7, while you’re down the pub or tending your allotment, doesn’t it also behove you to give it the best chance of doing it well?
There is a point where “frugality” becomes a liability. That middle-aisle-bargain-bucket parachute will look like a very poor choice as the jump door opens 4,000 metres over Hertfordshire.
Suddenly, you haven’t achieved value for money – you haven’t even wasted money. Instead, you have just bought yourself a yawning chasm of horrible risk.
No organisation with a reputation to protect should regard the cheapest possible digital infrastructure as the best choice for their business on cost alone.
Table of Contents
When a £500 Website Makes Sense
We still get it. For a sole trader or a brand-new start-up, a £500 website is often a perfectly reasonable way to get an initial foothold online.
We would never suggest otherwise.
Actually, sometimes we do. For a window cleaner, a fistful of flyers put through local front doors or a local newspaper advert is a much more appropriate choice than a website – and if we believe that’s the best use of your cash, we’ll tell you.
So Why is a £500 Website a Bad Idea?
For an established SME or a facility upon which a community relies, the requirements change fundamentally.
A week’s lost business can be in the tens of thousands of pounds. The user data you’re handling is far more valuable. The demands of due diligence and legal compliance are far higher. You are better known, so damage to your reputation really matters. Everywhere, the risks of failure are just much, much greater.
If you wouldn’t hire the cheapest, least-insured builder to renovate your community hall or your office, why would you do it for your online reputation, your global online reputation?
Where are the Web Developers?
A professional website requires a certain amount of man-hours – a £500 website reeks of a one-man (or -woman) band. Again, this is fine, until you need something doing and they are on holiday, ill or just have stopped trading – gone back to the day job.
- How will you access your domain, website or email then?
- If someone reports your site is leaking passwords, how will you stop it?
You need a team, and teams require salaries.
To make a living doing £500 websites, an individual will be …
Pushing Out Websites Constantly
The systems, the passwords and the knowledge to keep a website running are fairly complex and the best tools for doing so are not free. Someone producing huge numbers of under-priced websites will be cutting corners somewhere: reusing passwords, ripping off images, sweating poor AI for content or just not doing the job well.
We have seen ‘finished’ websites with literally nothing on the contact page.
Of course, there will be individuals who can juggle all the information, keep everything together and up to date but these people are rare and, if they are that good, they tend to know their own value and charge a lot more than £500.
Performing a Labour of Love
Someone producing a single website for you for just £500 either:
- loves you and will be happy to work for next to nothing – lucky you, we hope they are good!
- loves the idea of creating websites but probably has little experience of the work and knowledge involved (or they would be charging more)
The experience and the knowledge to do things well come from experience. What is more, the knowledge required to build websites well is constantly changing. An individual who does not work in the industry is very unlikely to know what they don’t know.
Just as you wouldn’t opt for a hobbyist surgeon, you really shouldn’t trust your business’s online presence to someone whose knowledge isn’t bang up to date.
… and knowledge isn’t cheap.
What About a Page Builder?
It’s true, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace will all let you create convincing-looking websites for very little. In the last six months we have only had to shut down three such websites which had since become infected and riddled with malware.
There was another, we charged more for cleaning the site up than the website had cost to build – and then the owner rebuilt the site anyway.
Skin in the Game
Don’t forget, if your website suddenly starts to advertise Chinese pornography (it has happened), it’s your website, your logo at the top of the page and your reputation that suffers – you have little comeback against a one-man band.
If your developer is not paying for software to monitor your content and not sacrificing the time to review that software regularly, then you could be advertising pornography or infecting your clients’ computers with malware, right now, even as you read this.
The Integration Gap
Any business of any size will rely on a stack of technology and systems to keep things moving. You might have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, an email marketing tool, a booking platform or an e-commerce engine.
A professional build ensures these systems “talk” to each other seamlessly. This is Technical Seniority in action.
Again, you need knowledge to do this effectively and securely. You need an ongoing commitment to ensure software doesn’t drift out of development, endpoints don’t move and the show stays on the road.
At a £500 price point, you are rarely paying for someone who understands API architecture or database integrity (again they would be charging more). You are paying for someone to skin a template.
When those integrations fail – or when a software update breaks the link between your website and your booking system – the cost of manual workarounds and lost revenue will quickly eclipse that initial “saving”.
Security as a Fiduciary Duty
If you are an SME or a community facility, you handle data. Whether it is a mailing list of local residents or the records of your customers, you have a legal and moral obligation to keep that information safe.
- Will your £500 website developer be Cyber Essentials complaint?
- Will they even know what it means?
“I’ve never heard of cyberwhatnot!” said the owner of a £25M company recently.
Government-backed standards require you follow a rigorous set of standards to protect against the vast majority cyber-attacks.
A budget developer, often working as a side hustle or hobbyist, rarely has the time or expertise to implement high-level “hardening”. If your site is breached, the ICO will not care that you were trying to save a few hundred pounds; they will care that you failed in your duty of care toward the people you serve.
The reputational business cost of a data breach are dizzying, and the fines for a careless data breach are crippling. Estimates vary, but most small businesses go out of business after a cyberattack.
… bet you’re glad you saved that money now.
Copyright and Licensing
This is perhaps the most common way “cheap” sites become incredibly expensive.
Image libraries offer a bounty to people who spot images in use without appopriate copyright … and people can make a good living doing it. Upon finding an image, issues an invoice that you have to pay if you cannot assert those rights.
You get fleeced, the library gets paid and the bounty-hunter a healthy slice of your gravy.
The smallest invoice we’ve seen was £1,100 and the largest, £12,000.
… and AI is going to make it much, much easier to find pirated content.
- Will your £500 website developer understand the licencing implications of the assets they are adding to your site?
- Do you?
An agency like Little Fire audits copyright assets as we add them. We validate the rights to use every icon, font, image and code library used on your site. We ensure everything is correctly licensed for commercial use and write it down.
In the last few years, these logs have saved our clients thousands of pounds.
Representing the Community with AI
Community facilities often struggle with imagery. You want to look vibrant and inclusive, but conducting photoshoots with real members of the public is a logistical and GDPR nightmare – especially when children are involved.
We solve this using a Three-Tier Sourcing Model:
- Authentic Property: Real shots of your physical facility.
- Licensed Stock: Professional, high-end lifestyle imagery.
- Strategically Deployed AI: We use AI to create “synthetic” people for your marketing. This allows us to show a diverse, warm and human community – reflecting different ethnicities, ages and disabilities – without the legal risk of model releases or the safeguarding concerns of storing photos of real local children. It is a smart, professional solution that budget builds simply cannot offer.
Accountability and Professional Insurance
Ultimately, the difference between a bargain and an investment is accountability. Our work is backed by full Professional Indemnity and Public Liability Insurance. We build to WCAG accessibility standards, ensuring your site is inclusive and compliant with the Equality Act.
If an informal build goes wrong, the developer might simply stop answering their phone. As a professional partner, we are here for the long haul. We provide the Board or the Directors with a formal, insured safety net.