What should a construction subcontractor website cost in 2026, and what should it bring back?

Ask three agencies what a subcontractor website costs and you will get a template for £1,500, a bespoke build for £12,000 and a quote that depends on a discovery call. None of them tell you what the money buys or what it should bring back. This guide sets out what a construction subcontractor should expect to pay in 2026, what separates the price points, and how to judge whether a site is worth it against the packages it needs to win.

The three price points

• Under £2,000: a template with your logo and photos, five to eight pages, copy written by you. Fine for a firm whose work all comes through two contractors and never tenders. Fails every verification check a buyer runs, because the template does not know what SSIP is.
• £3,000 to £6,000: a custom build around how your work is procured. A page per trade, an accreditations page a buyer can verify, case studies in PQQ format, sector and regional pages, a capability statement and a tender route. Copy written for you from a call and a questionnaire. This is where most subcontractors with ten or more staff should be.
• £8,000 and up: usually a bigger group, several divisions or depots, each with its own section, or a site with integrated systems such as a client portal or a supply chain register of its own. Worth it when the structure genuinely needs it, not because an agency prefers a bigger number.

Our own custom website starts at £3,999 with the figure agreed before we start, which puts it in the middle band. The point of this guide is not that number. It is what should be inside any number you are quoted.

What should be inside the price

1. A page for each trade or package you tender for, with scope, typical values and sectors.
2. An accreditations page with every certificate written out, linked to its register and marked up so AI tools can read it.
3. Case studies in the format a PQQ asks for: client, main contractor, sector, value band, programme, scope, named contracts manager.
4. A capability statement generated from the site so it never goes out of date.
5. Sector and regional pages written around the contractors and programmes that are actually there.
6. A tender route: a named contact, a direct email and phone, a stated response time, document upload for drawings and tender packs, tap-to-call on mobile.
7. The technical layer: structured data, an llms.txt file, Google Business Profile set up, Search Console, analytics with call and form tracking, and IP tracking so you can see which companies visited.
8. Copy written for you, not a questionnaire that expects you to write it.
9. A fixed delivery date and a price agreed before work starts, with half on booking and half before launch.
10. Everything in your name: domain, hosting, logins, content, from day one.

If a quote does not list most of these, ask what the money is for. If it lists them for £1,500, ask how.

The ongoing cost

A website is not finished at launch. Accreditations renew, competitors catch up, Google and the AI tools change what they reward. A monthly plan that adds a page or case study each month, keeps the accreditations current, checks what AI tools say about you and tells you which companies have been looking at your site costs £250 to £500 a month from most specialist agencies. Ours is from £299, rolling monthly, cancel any time. Hosting on its own should be £15 to £40 a month and is usually free for the first year in a build.

The one-off alternative

If your current site is on WordPress and less than four years old, you may not need a rebuild. The four things buyers check, accreditations, case studies, matching business details and a tender route, can usually be fixed on the site you have in a fortnight. We call that the Foundations Sprint and charge £999 for it, credited against a build if you upgrade within six months. Other agencies offer similar fixes under other names. Ask for one before you accept a rebuild quote.

How to judge whether it is worth it

Judge a website on the packages it helps win, not on how it looks. A groundworks package for a regional housebuilder is commonly worth £300k to £1m. A single invitation to tender you would otherwise not have received, won at one in three, covers a £3,999 site several times over. The honest question is not whether the site costs too much but whether your current one is losing invitations you never hear about, and the free Tender Check will tell you that in three minutes.

Questions to ask any agency

• Can you show me a subcontractor site you built where the accreditations are written out and linked to the registers?
• Will the case studies carry value bands and programmes, and who writes them?
• What is the technical setup for AI search, and can I see it on a site you have built?
• Is the price fixed and the delivery date agreed before you start?
• Who owns the domain, the hosting and the logins?
• What does the monthly plan do each month, and can I cancel it?

What to do this week

• Run the free Tender Check on your current site to find out whether you need a rebuild, a fix or nothing.
• Write down the three packages you most want to win next year and their values. That is the number any website cost should be judged against.
• Get one quote that answers the six questions above in writing.

The market this is being spent in

Nobody is spending £3,999 on a website in 2026 without looking at the order book first, so it is worth being plain about the conditions. The Insolvency Service recorded 3,866 construction insolvencies in England and Wales in the year to August 2026, more than any other sector, and specialist contractors were 56% of the August cases. When a main contractor fails, the subcontractors beneath it are the unsecured creditors; the Ardmore administration in June left its supply chain owed £23.6 million.

Against that, the Procurement Act 2023 has implied 30-day payment into public contracts and the subcontracts under them since February 2025, and from April 2026 buyers publish their payment performance. Public work is better protected than it was, and more of it is visible before it is tendered. The firms winning it are the ones procurement teams can find and verify, which is the only reason to spend money on a website at all. Judge the price against one package, and read the supply chains guide before you brief anyone.