We pulled the pricing pages of ten Manchester and Salford web agencies on 6 July 2026. Two of them showed prices on the page. Eight of them wanted a form filled in first. This post is the list, with the numbers we could actually read, and what a Greater Manchester small-business site should cost in 2026.
Who we looked at
The sample is the top-ranking agencies in the GB Google SERP for “web design manchester” on 6 July 2026, plus two ring-town sites that came up in adjacent searches. All prices below are pulled straight from each agency’s public page. Where a page hid prices behind a form or a project planner, we say “no prices visible” and note where the buyer has to go next.
URLs are cited in the sources block at the bottom so you can check each one yourself. Prices exclude VAT unless the agency’s page states otherwise.
The prices we could actually find
| Agency | Location | Starter tier | Growth tier | Ecommerce tier | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polar Web ← Best value for money | Greater Manchester ring | £1,495 (5 pages, fixed) | £2,995 (10 pages, fixed) | £4,995 (15 pages WooCommerce, fixed) | 3 to 6 weeks |
| Designers Up North | Manchester | From £1,500 (brochure) | From £2,000 (business) | From £3,000 (WooCommerce) | 4 to 10 weeks |
| Manchester Web Agency | Manchester | £499 (3 pages, 1 week) | £999 (up to 10 pages, 2 weeks) | £1,499 (unlimited pages, 3 weeks) | 1 to 3 weeks |
| Pixel Kicks | Manchester (Northern Quarter) | No prices visible | No prices visible | No prices visible | Not stated |
| Bamboo Manchester | Manchester | No prices visible | No prices visible | No prices visible | Not stated |
| MadeByShape | Manchester | No prices visible | No prices visible | Custom Shopify in 4 weeks (no price) | Partial |
| Duo Design | Manchester | Pricing calculator gated by sector | Pricing calculator gated by sector | Pricing calculator gated by sector | Not stated |
| Future (Design by Future) | Greater Manchester | No prices visible | No prices visible | No prices visible | Not stated |
| 22 Group | Manchester | No prices visible | No prices visible | No prices visible | Not stated |
| Sam Heaton | Manchester (solo) | No prices visible | No prices visible | No prices visible | Not stated |
| Reason Digital | Manchester | No prices visible | No prices visible | No prices visible | Not stated |
What the two visible price sheets tell you
Designers Up North sits in the middle of the market. A five-to-eight-page WordPress brochure site starts at £2,000 plus VAT and takes four to six weeks. A WooCommerce store starts at £3,000 plus VAT and takes six to ten weeks. Their bracket for the smallest brochure builds is £1,500 to £2,500. That is the reference band for a proper Manchester-city small-business site in 2026.
Manchester Web Agency is the outlier at the low end. £499 for three pages in one week, £999 for up to ten pages in two weeks, £1,499 for full ecommerce with multi-language support in three weeks. Read those numbers carefully. A one-week three-page turnaround at £499 is a template-and-fill build. It can be honest work for a very small trader, but you should assume there is no bespoke design phase and very limited iteration.
The eight who hide the price
Eight of the ten agencies we checked show no prices anywhere on the pages we hit. To find out what a build will cost, you have to submit a form, wait for a callback, or fill in a “project planner”. Some patterns from that group:
- Pixel Kicks routes every price question through “Discuss your project”. They are a Shopify and WordPress ecommerce shop, so we would expect their real floor to be well above the ring-town small-business bracket.
- MadeByShape mentions a “Custom Shopify store in 4 weeks” on the homepage but no figure. Their project planner is the pricing route.
- Duo Design has a pricing calculator, but it splits by sector (schools, shopping centres, web apps, ecommerce, membership organisations, professional services) and you have to click into a sector page to see any numbers. Two of those sector pricing pages returned 404 when we tested them.
- Reason Digital is a purpose-driven Manchester agency with charity, health, and social-impact clients. Realistic project floor from their client mix reads as £15,000 and up, though the site does not state it.
None of that is a criticism of the work. Hidden prices are a sales choice: it lets an agency price each buyer differently and it filters out low-budget enquiries before a human has to answer them. What it also does, though, is push a Salford dentist or a Bramhall florist to send a form to five agencies and wait four days for callbacks. That is friction the buyer pays for.
What a Greater Manchester small-business site actually costs in 2026
From the two published price sheets, plus what we can infer from where the hidden-price agencies sit in the market, the honest 2026 bracket for a Greater Manchester small-business website looks like this:
| Type of site | Realistic 2026 bracket (GB, ex VAT) | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|
| One-page landing / trader site | £300 to £900 (template) or £500 to £1,500 (bespoke) | 1 to 2 weeks |
| Five to eight page small-business site | £1,500 to £3,000 at a shop, £3,000 to £8,000 at a Manchester-city agency | 3 to 8 weeks |
| WooCommerce or Shopify starter store | £3,000 to £5,000 at a shop, £5,000 to £15,000 at an agency | 4 to 10 weeks |
| Full brand plus site plus content | £8,000 to £25,000 at a Manchester-city agency | 8 to 16 weeks |
| Enterprise / product build | £25,000 upward, no ceiling | 3 months plus |
If a Chorlton cafe or a Stockport plumber is being quoted £8,000 for a five-page WordPress site, that quote is priced for a Manchester-city agency floor, not for the job. If the same shop is being quoted £299 with a one-day turnaround, that is a template resell with no real design phase. The honest small-business band sits between those two, and it is narrower than most buyers think.
Where Polar Web sits on the table
Our packs are fixed price, shown on the packs page, and delivered in three to six weeks. Landing pack £500 for a one-page site. Starter pack £1,495 for a small brochure site. Growth pack £2,995 for a fuller marketing site. Ecommerce pack £4,995 for a WooCommerce or Shopify starter store. Same prices apply whether the postcode is M1 Ancoats, WA4 Stockton Heath, SK7 Bramhall, WA16 Knutsford, or BL6 Horwich. No form-first gate. Prices are on the pack.
How we pulled the numbers
We used the Ahrefs SERP overview endpoint for the query “web design manchester” in country GB on 6 July 2026 to identify the ten agencies. We then fetched each agency’s homepage plus, where present, its pricing page or project planner. Prices are quoted exactly as each agency stated them on the day. Where a pricing page returned 404 or the price was gated behind a form, we recorded “no prices visible”. This is a snapshot: agencies change their published prices, and some hide different tiers on different landing pages. If a number in the table has shifted since 6 July 2026, tell us and we will update.
Sources
- Ahrefs SERP overview, keyword “web design manchester”, country GB, 2026-07-06.
- Designers Up North pricing: https://www.designersupnorth.com/pricing
- Manchester Web Agency homepage: https://manchesterwebagency.com/
- Pixel Kicks homepage: https://www.pixelkicks.co.uk/
- Bamboo Manchester homepage: https://www.bamboomanchester.uk/
- MadeByShape homepage: https://madebyshape.co.uk/
- Duo Design pricing: https://www.duodesign.co.uk/pricing/
- Design by Future services: https://designbyfuture.co.uk/services/
- 22 Group homepage: https://www.22group.co.uk/
- Sam Heaton web design Manchester: https://www.samjayheaton.com/web-design-manchester/
- Reason Digital services: https://reasondigital.com/what-we-do/
Send the postcode, get the pack. Contact Polar Web.