What a web agency in London costs
An honest answer, the parts of the bill nobody quotes, and who should still hire one.
A real Clay site, built from a Google listing
London agency day rates start where most small businesses' whole budget ends. That is not a complaint about agencies, it is a description of a market where the same studio that builds your barbershop site also builds for people with a media budget.
A small-business website built by people costs about €1,500, designer €700 · developer €550 · copywriter €250, and then a line every month for hosting and for somebody to change things. Clay is €29 a month for all of it, and you change things yourself.
What you are actually buying
Every trade in London already has a website; the question is almost never whether to have one, it is why the one you have is four years old and nobody can change the opening hours on it. That is the real cost of an agency site for a small business, not the build, the fact that changing it needs somebody else's calendar.
This page is not for everybody
Hire one when the site has to do something that is genuinely yours: a membership, an integration, a catalogue of thousands. For a shop, a salon or a restaurant, the honest answer is that an agency will build you something lovely that you cannot edit.
Your photographs, already sorted
Clay reads the pictures on your Google listing, grades them, crops them for the shape each band needs and puts the best one at the top. Nothing to upload, nothing to resize.
What it looks like when it is live
Drawn rather than described, the page, the address, and what it can switch on.
What you get
Real sites, made with Clay
Open one. It is the live site in a frame, not a screenshot, so what you see is what it looks like right now.
Questions
Is an agency ever the right answer?
Hire one when the site has to do something that is genuinely yours: a membership, an integration, a catalogue of thousands. For a shop, a salon or a restaurant, the honest answer is that an agency will build you something lovely that you cannot edit.
What does an agency site actually cost in London?
We publish one figure and it is a European average for a small-business build: €1,500, made of designer €700 · developer €550 · copywriter €250. We are not going to invent a London number, ask two studios and you will have a real one in a day.
What is the part nobody quotes?
Changes. A new menu, a fourth photograph, a Sunday you decide to open. On an agency site each of those is somebody else's calendar and usually an invoice; over a year it is often more than the build. That is the line Clay is actually replacing.
Will it be found locally?
The page carries your address, your opening hours and your reviews as real text with structured data around it, which is what a search engine and an assistant read. It is not a substitute for your Google listing, it is built from it.
Can I move to my own domain?
Yes, on the paid plan, and the free clay.site address keeps working afterwards, so anything already printed still lands: what free covers, and what it does not.
Try it with your business
Search your business and see your site in seconds, free, no signup.