Artist Growth Website Builders for Artists

How Much Does an Artist Website Cost in the UK?

June 18, 2026

How Much Does an Artist Website Cost in the UK? | Discount Art Supplies

Written by Paul Worrall

One of the most common questions I see from artists in our community is how much a website actually costs. The answer ranges from about £10 a month if you build it yourself to £3,000+ if you hire someone who knows what they’re doing — and the right answer depends entirely on what you need the website to do and how much of your own time you’re prepared to invest. I’ve spent sixteen years in the art supplies industry, run Discount Art Supplies which reaches over 36,000 UK artists every week, and build websites through my consultancy The Digital Palette. Here’s the straight answer.

Quick Cost Guide — Artist Websites UK 2026

DIY website builder (Squarespace, Wix, Format): £10-50/month. You build it yourself. Good for portfolios, limited for e-commerce.

Freelance web designer: £800-3,000 one-off. Someone builds it for you. Quality varies significantly.

Artist-specialist web designer: £1,500-3,000. Built by someone who understands artists’ specific needs. Better result.

Ongoing costs: £50-300/year for hosting, domain and maintenance on top of any build cost.

Option 1 — Build It Yourself with a Website Builder

Squarespace website builder for artists UK

The cheapest route to an artist website is a DIY website builder — platforms like Squarespace, Wix, Format, Pixpa or Adobe Portfolio that let you assemble a professional-looking website from templates without any coding knowledge. Costs range from around £10 to £50 per month depending on the platform and the plan you choose.

The trade-off is time. Building a good website yourself takes longer than most artists expect — not because the platforms are difficult, but because deciding what to include, writing the copy, selecting and editing the images and getting the structure right takes thought and iteration. My honest estimate is 20-40 hours for a first-time builder to get a portfolio site to a standard they’re genuinley happy with. If your time is worth anything, that has a real cost even if the platform fee is modest.

The platforms best suited to artists are covered in detail in our guide to the best artist website builders — Squarespace and Format consistently come out ahead for portfolio-focused sites. We also have a detailed Weebly vs Wix comparison for artists if you’re considering those platforms. For artists who also want to sell their work online, Shopify is the stronger e-commerce platform though it requires more setup.

Option 2 — Hire a Freelance Web Designer

A freelance web designer will build the site for you — you provide the images, the text and your preferences, they handle the technical build and design. UK freelance rates for a straightforward artist portfolio website run from around £800 at the budget end to £3,000 for something more considered and comprehensive. Julia Douglas, who specialises specifically in websites for artists, writers and designers, starts at approximately £1,750 — a price that reflects genuine specialism rather than the generic freelancer market.

The advantage of hiring a freelance web designer is obvious — you get a properly built website without spending 40 hours learning a platform. The risk is quality inconsistency. A freelancer charging £800 and one charging £3,000 can produce wildly different results and you often can’t tell which you’re getting until the work is done. Always ask to see their portfolio of artist websites specifically, not just their general client work. An artist website has specific requirements — gallery functionality, image quality, mobile presentation of artwork, clean navigation — that a generic web designer may not intuitively understand.

Always clarify before signing anything: what’s included in the price, who owns the finished website, what happens if you need changes after launch, and what the ongoing hosting and maintenance costs will be. Many freelancers quote a build fee that excludes hosting — you’ll typically pay £50-150 per year for hosting on top of the one-off build cost.

Option 3 — A Specialist Artist Website Designer

The best results for artists generally come from working with someone who specialises in building websites for creative practitioners specifically — someone who understands how artwork needs to be presented, what collectors and commissioners look for when they arrive on an artist’s website, and how the site needs to function differently from a standard business website.

Through The Digital Palette I build websites for artists using Remixer — a fast, clean website builder that produces professional results without the bloat of WordPress or the limitations of Squarespace. The advantage of working with someone who also has sixteen years inside the art supplies industry is that the website is built with an understanding of your actual audience — the collectors, commissioners, galleries and art buyers who will visit it — rather than just the technical requirements of a website build.

Pricing for a done-for-you artist website through The Digital Palette starts from £995 for a standard portfolio site — home page, about, gallery, contact — through to £1,500-2,500 for sites with an online shop, blog or additional functionality. Hosting is separate at around £60-100 per year. Get in touch for a no-obligation quote →

What Should an Artist Website Include?

Regardless of which route you choose, a professional artist website needs to cover specific ground. A home page that immediately communicates what kind of work you make and creates a strong first impression — most visitors decide within five seconds whether they’re in the right place. A portfolio or gallery section that presents your work at the highest possible quality without slowing the page down. An about page that tells your story as an artist — not just a CV, but something that explains your practice and gives a sense of who you are. A contact page that makes it genuinley easy to reach you. And if you sell your work, a shop or commissions page that explains how buyers can purchase.

What most artists underestimate is the copy — the words on the website. Tools like Canva Pro and Adobe Creative Cloud can help with design assets, social graphics and promotional images to support your website once it’s live — but neither replaces good written copy. A beautifully designed site with weak copy underperforms consistently. The about page in particular is worth spending serious time on. Lucy — my wife, who paints watercolours — spent longer getting her about page right than any other part of her site, and it’s the page that gets the most time from visitors. That’s typical. People buy from artists they feel they know something about.

Do You Need an Online Shop on Your Artist Website?

Not necessarily — and adding e-commerce to a website significantely increases both the build cost and the complexity of maintaining it. If you primarily sell through Etsy, Artfinder, Redbubble or Society6 or at fairs and exhibitions, a portfolio site without a built-in shop is often the right approach — link to your existing selling platform from the website rather than building a parallel selling infrastructure. Our Etsy vs Shopify guide for UK artists covers this decision in detail. Big Cartel is another option worth considering for artists selling a smaller number of works. And if you want to sell prints rather than originals, our Printful vs Printify comparison covers the print-on-demand options in detail.

If you want to sell directly from your own site and keep 100% of the margin without Etsy’s fees, a Shopify-based shop is the most robust solution for artists selling regularly. Build costs for a Shopify artist store start around £1,500-2,500 for a freelance build alongside Shopify’s monthly subscription fee of £25-£65 per month depending on the plan.

Ongoing Costs — What to Budget After Launch

The build cost is a one-off. The ongoing costs are annual and easy to overlook. Domain name: £10-30 per year for a .co.uk or .com. Hosting: £50-150 per year for standard shared hosting, more for managed WordPress hosting. SSL certificate: usually included with hosting but worth confirming. If you’re on a DIY builder like Squarespace or Format, these are all bundled into your monthly subscription — the simplicity is part of what you’re paying for.

Maintenance is the other ongoing cost that surprises people. Websites need updating — software updates, security patches, occasional design tweaks, content updates as your work evolves. On a DIY builder this is manageable yourself. On a custom-built WordPress site it requires either your own time or a maintenance agreement with your developer. Budget £20-100 per month if you want someone else to handle it, or zero if you’re comfortable doing it yourself.