You've decided you need a website. Good. That's the hard part done, honestly. But now you're looking at the pricing page and wondering which package to go for. Starter or Business? What's actually different? Is the Business package worth the extra money, or is it just padding?
Fair questions. Let me break it down properly so you can make the right call for your situation. Because the right choice genuinely depends on what your business needs right now, not what sounds impressive.
What you get with Starter
The Starter package is £299 including VAT, and it covers everything you need to get online with a professional website:
- AI-generated website tailored to your business
- Mobile responsive design (looks proper on phones and tablets)
- Up to 5 pages (Home, About, Services, Gallery, Contact)
- Contact form that sends enquiries to your email
- Basic SEO setup so Google can find you
- SSL certificate (the padlock in the browser bar)
- 12 months of hosting included
- Custom domain connection
That's a fully working website. Not a placeholder. Not a "coming soon" page. A real site that looks professional, loads fast, works on every device, and actually represents your business properly.
What you get with Business
The Business package is £539 including VAT. It includes everything in Starter, plus:
- Up to 10 pages (room for detailed service pages, team bios, FAQs, etc.)
- Monthly blog articles written and published for you
- Advanced SEO with keyword targeting for your area and services
- Google Business Profile setup and optimisation
- Schema markup (technical SEO that helps you appear in rich Google results)
- Priority support with faster response times
- Quarterly performance report showing traffic and rankings
The big difference is the ongoing SEO work and blog content. Starter gets you online. Business gets you online and actively works to get you found.
Who Starter is actually for
Starter is the right choice for more people than you'd think. It's not the "cheap" option. It's the smart option for businesses in certain situations.
You're brand new
If you've just started your business and you're not even sure what services you'll focus on yet, Starter makes sense. Get a professional site up, start trading, and figure out the details as you go. You can always upgrade later when you know what's working.
You rely on word of mouth
Some businesses genuinely don't need Google rankings. If you're fully booked from referrals and you just need a website so people can check you out after hearing your name, Starter is plenty. You're not trying to attract strangers from Google. You just need to look credible when existing leads look you up.
Budget is tight
Real talk. If spending £539 would mean cutting into your operating budget, don't do it. Get Starter, focus on building the business, and upgrade when the revenue is there to support it. A £299 website that's live today is infinitely better than a £539 website you keep putting off because the money isn't there.
Who Business is for
You need to attract new customers from Google
If your business depends on people finding you through search (and most local service businesses do), the Business package is where the ROI lives. The SEO work and blog content are specifically designed to get you ranking for the searches your customers are actually making.
Let's do some quick maths. Say you're a locksmith and the keyword "emergency locksmith [your town]" gets 200 searches a month. If your site ranks on the first page and captures even 10% of those clicks, that's 20 potential customers a month. If you convert a quarter of them, that's 5 jobs. At an average of £80-150 per call-out, you're looking at £400-750 in extra revenue. Monthly. From one keyword.
The Business package costs £240 more than Starter. That extra cost pays for itself after a couple of jobs. Everything after that is pure profit.
You're in a competitive area
If there are loads of businesses doing what you do in your area, showing up on Google isn't a bonus. It's survival. The companies that invest in SEO and content are the ones that show up on page one. Everyone else is invisible.
Blog articles are a big part of this. Each article targets a specific question or topic that potential customers search for. Over time, they build up a body of content that tells Google your site is authoritative and relevant. It's a snowball effect. The more content, the more visibility, the more traffic, the more customers.
You want to build long-term value
Every blog post, every optimised page, every month of SEO work adds permanent value to your online presence. It's not like paid advertising where you stop paying and the traffic stops. Organic rankings stick around. Content you publish this month could still bring in customers two years from now.
Do you actually need blog articles?
Short answer: if you want to grow through Google, yes. If you're happy with your current customer flow, probably not.
Long answer: blog articles serve a specific purpose in SEO. They target the questions and problems your potential customers are searching for. A plumber with articles about "how to fix a dripping tap" and "what to do if your boiler loses pressure" isn't just providing helpful content. They're showing up in Google for dozens of searches that lead back to their business.
Each article is a new entry point to your website. More entry points means more visitors. More visitors means more enquiries. It's not complicated, but it does require consistency, which is why the Business package handles it for you rather than relying on you to write articles yourself (because let's be honest, you won't).
The upgrade path
If you're genuinely unsure, start with Starter. Seriously. It's not a lesser product. It's a complete, professional website that you can be proud of.
When you're ready, upgrading to Business is straightforward. Your existing site stays exactly the same. We just layer on the SEO work, add the blog content, and start building your Google presence. Nothing gets rebuilt. Nothing gets lost. You just get more.
Plenty of our customers do exactly this. They start with Starter to get up and running, spend a few months getting comfortable with having a web presence, and then upgrade to Business once they see how much a website changes things for their enquiry rate.
There's no penalty for starting small. You won't lose any content, any design work, or any of the trust you've built with Google. Think of it like renting a shop and then expanding into the unit next door when business picks up. Same location, same customers, just more space to grow into.
The honest recommendation
If your business relies on local customers finding you through Google, Business will pay for itself quickly. The maths works out in almost every scenario for service businesses.
If you just need a professional online presence and you've got your customer acquisition sorted through other channels, Starter is genuinely all you need. Don't overspend just because a more expensive option exists.
Either way, you end up with a proper website that represents your business well. One that you can point customers to with confidence. And honestly, that's the most important thing.
