You've probably had two quotes on a restaurant website that were £400 apart for what looked like the same thing. One agency told you it would cost £4,000. A cousin's mate said he'd do it for £300. A Wix template caught your eye at £15 a month. None of them explained what you actually get.
This guide is here to fix that. Below is what UK takeaways and restaurants typically pay across four price tiers, what's included at each tier, and the questions that decide which tier is right for your business. We build restaurant websites — so we have a vested interest. But the goal here is that you walk away knowing whether you need us, a £20/month template, or something in between.
The four real tiers
Setting aside marketing language, every UK restaurant website you can buy falls into one of four buckets:
| Tier | Typical cost (UK, 2026) | Who builds it | Time to launch |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY template | £15–£30/month + £15/year domain | You, on Wix / Squarespace / GoDaddy | 1–2 weekends |
| Freelancer | £400–£1,500 one-off | A solo developer or designer | 2–6 weeks |
| Boutique studio | £2,000–£5,000 one-off | Small specialist agency | 4–10 weeks |
| Full agency | £5,000–£15,000+ | 3–10 person agency | 8–16 weeks |
Most independent UK takeaways sit in the £15/month template tier or the £400–£1,500 freelancer tier. Most independent restaurants with table service sit in the £2,000–£5,000 boutique tier. There are good reasons for each. Below is what's actually inside each tier.
Tier 1 — DIY template (£15–£30/month)
This is Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, GoSquared, or one of the newer AI builders. You pick a template, drag your logo on, type in your menu, and publish.
What you get for the money:
- A professional-looking site that loads on phones
- A custom domain (yourname.co.uk)
- A contact form that emails you
- Basic SEO settings (meta titles, descriptions)
- Hosting bundled in
- The ability to update menus and hours yourself
What you don't get:
- Direct online ordering (without a separate plugin like £20–£60/month extra)
- Real local SEO (the templates are built for hairdressers and accountants — not for "ranking in Tower Hamlets for 'best Bangladeshi takeaway'")
- Page speed that competes with hand-built sites (templates carry significant code bloat that hurts mobile speed)
- Anything beyond the most basic structured data
When this tier is right:
- You're a single-location takeaway under 18 months old, on a tight budget, and 90% of your orders already come through Just Eat or in-shop.
- Your goal is "exist online so people can find a phone number and a menu," not "compete with the bigger restaurants on Google."
When it's wrong:
- You want to drive direct orders to your own site (templates make this expensive and clunky).
- You want to rank on Google for "[your food] near me" searches.
Tier 2 — Freelancer (£400–£1,500 one-off)
A solo developer or designer builds you a custom WordPress, Webflow, or Shopify site. Usually 5–10 pages, semi-custom design, basic SEO, and either no online ordering or a third-party plugin (Flipdish, ChowNow, Toast TakeOut).
What you get for the money:
- A site that looks more like your business and less like every other Wix template
- Better page speed (if the freelancer knows what they're doing — many don't)
- Some local SEO setup (Google Business Profile linked, structured data, location pages if you ask)
- Photographs integrated properly into the design
- A site you own (vs renting from Wix)
What you don't get:
- Ongoing maintenance (most one-off builds quietly rot — plugins go out of date, menus get stale, page speed degrades)
- A real content plan or blog strategy
- Reliable support 6 months later
The big risk at this tier: you pay £900 to a freelancer who builds you a beautiful site and disappears six months later. The site keeps working, but when WordPress needs updating or your menu changes, you can't reach them. We see this constantly when restaurants migrate to us — we inherit a site stuck on a 2022 plugin version with no admin login.
The fix if you go this route: ask the freelancer in writing whether they offer a £20–£40/month maintenance retainer, and what response time they guarantee. If they say "you can just do updates yourself," walk away — most owners can't, and the site will degrade.
When this tier is right:
- You want a unique-looking site without paying agency money.
- You have a friend or relative you trust to do basic ongoing updates, OR the freelancer offers a maintenance plan in writing.
Tier 3 — Boutique studio (£2,000–£5,000 one-off, sometimes + monthly retainer)
A small specialist agency — often 2–6 people — that focuses on hospitality, restaurants or local businesses. This is where Manto Studio sits, alongside a handful of other UK restaurant-focused studios.
What you get for the money:
- A genuinely custom design built around your brand and menu (not a template)
- Page speed that competes (Core Web Vitals in the green — which the Web Almanac has consistently shown materially improves conversion)[3]
- Properly built local SEO from launch — schema markup, location pages, Google Business Profile integration
- Direct online ordering integrated with your existing POS or a no-commission system
- A real content plan, with a blog set up for ranking on local searches
- ICO-compliant cookie consent and privacy policy[4]
- Photo direction or photographer recommendations — most boutique studios know who to call locally
- Ongoing relationship with the studio (most offer monthly retainers from £150–£600)
What you should expect not to get:
- The same volume of monthly meetings a £15K agency provides
- Round-the-clock support (most studios are 9–6 weekdays)
- Bespoke video production or studio-quality photography (usually outsourced and quoted separately)
When this tier is right:
- You're a serious restaurant or growing takeaway and the website needs to drive bookings or direct orders.
- You want to reduce your reliance on Just Eat / Deliveroo (a real ordering site is the only way to do this, and templates can't deliver it well).
- You can budget £100–£500/month ongoing for SEO, content and maintenance after launch.
Tier 4 — Full agency (£5,000–£15,000+)
A larger agency with dedicated departments — designers, developers, SEO specialists, content writers, project managers. Usually targeting restaurant groups, hotel groups, or chains.
What you get for the money:
- Polish at every level — design, copy, photography, video
- Project managers, account managers, dedicated points of contact
- Multi-location support, multi-language support, complex booking systems
- Brand strategy and brand identity work alongside the build
- Genuinely custom development for unusual requirements
When this tier is right:
- You operate 3+ locations or are a restaurant group.
- You're launching a flagship venue and the website is part of an opening campaign with a real budget.
- You need bespoke integrations (custom POS, custom inventory, multi-tenant systems).
When it's wrong:
- You're an independent takeaway. £8,000 buys 8 months of pretty much any other marketing channel and would almost certainly produce more orders.
What's worth paying for, regardless of tier
A few things genuinely move revenue and are worth insisting on at every tier:
- Mobile page speed. If the site loads in over 3 seconds on a phone, every other thing you spend on it is partially wasted.[3]
- A menu in HTML, not a PDF. PDFs don't rank, can't be updated easily, and are bad on mobile. Every menu item should be a piece of text on the page.
- Your address, phone, and hours in plain text on every page. Schema markup is great, but text matters more.
- One clear primary call to action per page. "Order now," "Book a table," "Get directions" — not all three competing.
- Photographs, not stock images. If your site uses generic stock photos of food, customers assume the food is generic too.
The retainer question
A website is not a one-off purchase. The Federation of Small Businesses' digital research repeatedly finds that small businesses who treat their website as a living asset (with monthly content, SEO and maintenance) significantly outperform those who buy once and forget.[1]
Expect to pay between £100 and £500 per month after launch for one of the following, depending on tier:
- £0 (DIY tier): you do the work yourself
- £20–£40 (freelancer): plugin updates, basic security, occasional fixes
- £150–£500 (boutique studio): the above plus monthly content, local SEO work, Google Business Profile management, performance monitoring
- £500–£2,000+ (full agency): the above plus paid ads management, photography refreshes, ongoing strategy
If a website builder offers no retainer and tells you "just maintain it yourself," your site will be substantially worse in 18 months than the day it launched. Plan for the retainer in the budget from day one.
The honest bottom line
A typical independent UK takeaway pays one of two things:
- £15–£30/month forever for a Wix or Squarespace template. Total over 3 years: £540–£1,080. You compromise on speed, ranking, and direct orders.
- £2,500–£4,000 upfront + £200–£400/month for a boutique-built site. Total over 3 years: £9,700–£18,400. You get a real digital presence, less Just Eat dependency, and (typically) materially more direct orders.
Which one is right depends entirely on whether you want the website to be a phone book entry or a sales channel. Both are valid choices. The mistake is paying tier 3 prices for a tier 1 result, or expecting tier 1 prices to deliver tier 3 outcomes.
If you're not sure which side of that line your restaurant is on, send us a message and we'll tell you straight. If your business genuinely doesn't need a £4,000 site, we'll point you at a Wix template and wish you well. We'd rather give a fair answer than sell the wrong product.
Sources & further reading
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