A prospect called me last month. She'd paid £495 for a website from a marketplace freelancer six months earlier. Now she needed it fixed because it wasn't ranking, wasn't converting, and looked broken on mobile.

The fix? £2,800. More than five times what she'd originally spent. And we were basically rebuilding from scratch because the code was such a mess that patching it would take longer than starting over.

She'd saved money upfront and spent far more fixing it later. This happens all the time.

I'm not saying cheap websites are always bad. Sometimes they're perfect for what you need. But you need to understand what you're getting—and what you're not.

What You Get for £500

Let's be realistic about what a £500 website includes:

A template from ThemeForest or similar (probably used by 10,000+ other sites)
Basic customization: your logo, colors, and content plugged into pre-built sections
3-5 pages (Home, About, Services, Contact)
Mobile-responsive (usually, but not always optimized for mobile)
Contact form (connected to email)
Stock photos (because custom photography costs extra)

What you don't get:

Custom design tailored to your brand and audience
Strategy: who's your audience, what's your conversion goal, how should the site guide them?
SEO setup beyond basic on-page elements (and sometimes not even that)
Content writing (you provide the text, they paste it in)
Performance optimization (site might be slow)
Ongoing support or maintenance
Any sort of conversion optimization or analytics setup

For a basic brochure site where you just need an online presence, this might be fine. But if you're expecting leads or sales from this site, it's probably not enough.

Where Cheap Sites Fall Short

Here are the real problems I see when fixing cheap websites:

Problem 1: They Look Like Templates

When everyone uses the same template, nobody stands out. Your site looks like your competitor's site, which looks like 50 other businesses in different industries.

I've seen three different London businesses—a dentist, a consultant, and a software startup—all using the exact same template with just the colors swapped. It doesn't inspire confidence.

Problem 2: No Strategy or User Journey

Cheap sites are built page-by-page with no thought to how users move through them. There's no consideration of:

What do users need to know before they're ready to contact you?
What objections need to be addressed?
Where should they go after reading the homepage?
How do we guide them toward conversion?

The result: sites that look fine but don't actually drive action. They're digital business cards, not sales tools.

Problem 3: Technical Debt

This is the big one. Cheap sites often have serious technical issues:

Page load times of 6-10 seconds (killing SEO and conversions)
Plugins and code bloat that slow everything down
Poor mobile experience beyond just being 'responsive'
Security vulnerabilities from outdated themes or plugins
No proper SEO setup (missing meta descriptions, poor site structure, etc.)

This technical debt compounds over time. The longer you wait to fix it, the more expensive it becomes.

What You Get for £3,000-£5,000

At this price point, you're getting a professional site with strategy:

Strategy session: understanding your goals, audience, and conversion path
Custom design (not a template) that reflects your brand
User experience planning: intentional flow toward conversion goals
Professional copywriting (or at least guidance on messaging)
Technical SEO setup: proper structure, metadata, performance optimization
Mobile optimization (not just responsive, but actually optimized)
Analytics and conversion tracking setup
Testing before launch (cross-browser, device, speed, etc.)
Training on how to manage and update your site
Ongoing support options

This is a site built to drive business results, not just exist online.

The ROI Calculation Nobody Makes

Here's the math that matters:

Scenario 1: £500 website with 1% conversion rate (1 out of 100 visitors contacts you). You get 200 visitors per month = 2 leads per month.

Scenario 2: £3,500 website with 4% conversion rate (strategically designed to convert). Same 200 visitors = 8 leads per month.

That's 6 extra leads per month, 72 per year. If your average customer is worth £2,000, that's £144,000 in additional revenue per year.

The £3,000 difference in website cost pays for itself with one extra customer. Everything after that is pure ROI.

But only if the site is actually designed to convert. A pretty £5,000 site that doesn't convert is just as useless as a cheap template.

When Cheap Is Fine (And When It's Not)

Let's be fair: there are situations where a cheap website makes sense.

Go cheap if:

You just need a basic online presence and aren't trying to generate leads
You're validating a business idea and need something temporary
You already have strong referral channels and the site is just informational
You're planning to rebuild in 6-12 months anyway

Don't go cheap if:

Your website is a primary customer acquisition channel
You're in a competitive market where first impressions matter
You need SEO traffic to survive
You're expecting the site to generate ROI

The worst scenario: paying for cheap because it's all you can afford, but expecting professional results. That leads to frustration and wasted money.

The Middle Ground Option

If you can't afford a full custom site but need something better than a template, consider:

A phased approach: Start with 3 core pages (Home, Service/Product, Contact) done properly with strategy and optimization. Add content and features over time as budget allows.

This gives you a professional foundation you can build on, rather than a cheap site you'll need to replace.

The Bottom Line

A website isn't an expense—it's an investment. The question isn't 'What's the cheapest site I can get?' It's 'What's the ROI of investing properly in my website?'

If your answer is 'I can't afford a professional site,' then you probably can't afford a cheap one either—because it won't generate the returns you need to grow.

Save up and do it right, or use that money on customer acquisition channels that work for you now (networking, partnerships, ads). A cheap website that doesn't work isn't saving you money. It's wasting it.

The Real Cost of Cheap Web Design