How Much Does an Ecommerce Website Cost in the UK?
- Website Design
Checkatrade is worth it when the cost of winning one job through it sits comfortably below what you keep on that job, and it is not worth it when that stops being true. The honest answer to whether Checkatrade is worth it depends on three numbers that are yours, not theirs: what you spend, how many real enquiries that spend produces, and how many of those you convert. Run those three numbers and you have a verdict in about ten minutes.
That is the reason most articles on this question read as vague. They are written by Checkatrade, by affiliates earning on sign-ups, or by companies selling a rival directory, and none of those three want you doing the arithmetic. So here is the arithmetic.
Checkatrade’s published pricing, checked in August 2026, lists a free profile, an Approved plan at £30 a month, and a lead-generating Growth plan starting from £59 a month, both paid tiers on a 12 month term. What you will pay in practice is not on that page, because the Growth price rises with how many enquiries you want a year and how many postcode areas you want to cover.
That structure matters more than the headline figure. You are buying a recurring subscription priced by your trade, your area and your appetite for volume, not a fixed advertised price, which is why two tradespeople doing the same job in different towns can compare notes and both be right.
It also means most of the Checkatrade fees quoted online are stale. Forum threads, blog posts and the figures above all have a shelf life, so work from your own invoice rather than anyone else’s.
Before you sign anything, get four answers in writing:
If a salesperson will not put those in an email, ask again before you agree to anything.
The method takes one evening with your invoices and your phone log.
Work out what one won job costs you through the platform, then compare it to what you keep on that job. Not what you invoice, but what is left after materials and your own time.
| Line | What goes in it | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|
| A | Everything you paid the platform last month | Your invoices, including VAT and any extras |
| B | Genuine enquiries it produced | Your own phone and inbox, not the dashboard |
| C | Cost per lead (A divided by B) | |
| D | Jobs you actually won from those enquiries | |
| E | Win rate (D divided by B) | |
| F | Cost per won job (C divided by E) | |
| G | What you keep on an average job of that type | After materials and your time, not the invoice total |
| H | The verdict: does F fit comfortably inside G |
If line F is a small fraction of line G, the membership pays and the question is answered. If F is creeping towards a third of G, it is marginal and worth watching month to month. If F is anywhere near G, the jobs are barely covering the subscription that produced them.
One deliberate detail in line B. Count the enquiries yourself, from your own phone and inbox, and only count the ones that were a real person with a real job. Platform dashboards count differently to how a tradesperson counts, and the gap between the two numbers is often large.
One month of data will not tell you much.
Trades are seasonal and lumpy. A roofer has a February and a July that look like different businesses. A landscaper’s quiet month is not evidence of anything, and one big win in a good month is not evidence either. Run the same calculation across at least six months, ideally twelve, and only then decide.
Directory work also arrives in a rhythm you cannot see over four weeks: a burst after a review lands, a lull, then another burst after a cold snap takes out half the boilers in the area.
When you tally line A, tally the whole year of it. A monthly subscription figure is easy to wave through in a way the annual total is not.
The same membership at the same price can work well for one trade and badly for another. It depends almost entirely on what a single job is worth to you.
Below are two illustrative sets of numbers. They are made up to show the shape of the arithmetic, not drawn from any real business.
| High-value trade, few large jobs | Low-value trade, many small jobs | |
|---|---|---|
| A. Monthly spend | £250 | £250 |
| B. Real enquiries | 6 | 20 |
| C. Cost per lead | £42 | £12.50 |
| D. Jobs won | 1.5 | 6.7 |
| E. Win rate | 1 in 4 | 1 in 3 |
| F. Cost per won job | £167 | £38 |
| G. Kept per job | £900 | £80 |
| H. Verdict | Comfortable | Marginal at best |
Look at line C. The high-value trade is paying more than three times as much per lead and is in the far better position, because line G carries it easily. The cheaper leads are the ones failing here.
Cost per lead is the number everyone quotes, and on its own it decides nothing. Cost per won job, set against what you keep on that job, is the pairing that answers the question.
The low-value column also hides an unpaid cost. Twenty enquiries a month means twenty conversations, site visits and quotes, most of which go nowhere. That time is real even though it never appears on an invoice.
A directory rents you access to demand. A website that ranks earns you demand you keep. Both cost money, whatever anyone selling either one tells you.
The rented version has genuine advantages. It works from day one, it needs no patience, and if you stop paying it stops costing. There are other places to rent demand, including rival directories and paid ads, and we cover those properly in a separate piece rather than pretending this one is neutral about them.
The owned version is slower and it is a lump of money up front. What it buys is different: enquiries that come to you rather than to you and four competitors, no monthly fee attached to each one, and an asset that is still yours in three years. A website built specifically for a trade business does a narrower job than a general brochure site, because the whole point is showing up for the searches that end in a phone call. If the number in front of you is a shock, what a website actually costs to build sets out the real ranges, and spreading the cost monthly exists precisely because a lump sum is the objection that stops most trades doing it.
Worth noting on both sides of the ledger: HMRC lists advertising or marketing, for example website costs as an allowable business expense for the self-employed, and directory fees sit in the same category. The tax treatment does not favour either choice, so do not let anyone tell you it does.
And a free one that most trades under-use. Google states a Business Profile lets you manage how your business appears on Maps and Search at no charge. If yours is half-filled and has four reviews on it, that is the cheapest hour of marketing available to you this week.
We would not tell you to cancel, at least not on day one. Cancelling in month one of building a replacement is how trades end up with a quiet March and a website that has not started ranking yet. Rented demand stops the day you stop paying, and earned demand takes months to arrive.
The sequence that works is dull: run the calculation, keep paying while you build the alternative, watch where enquiries come from for six months, then cut the one that is not carrying you.
If you already have a website and it is producing nothing, do not conclude that websites do not work for trades. Find out why it is not showing up on Google first, because a site that does not rank has not really been tested yet.
Is Checkatrade worth it for a sole trader? It depends on your average job value. If you keep several hundred pounds on a typical job, a cost per won job in the low hundreds is comfortable. If you keep under £100 on a typical job, the arithmetic gets tight quickly, especially once you count the unpaid time spent quoting for work you do not win.
How much does Checkatrade cost? Checkatrade’s own pricing page lists a free profile, an Approved plan at £30 a month and a Growth plan from £59 a month, on 12 month terms, as at August 2026. The Growth price rises with the number of enquiries and postcode areas you choose, so ask for a written quote for your trade and your area.
How do I work out my cost per lead? Divide everything you paid the platform in a month by the number of genuine enquiries it produced that month. Count the enquiries from your own phone and inbox rather than the platform dashboard, and only count real people with real jobs. That single number is the start of the calculation, not the end of it.
Is a website better than Checkatrade? They do different jobs. A directory rents you access to demand and works immediately. A website earns you demand you keep and takes months to build up. Most trades that are doing well are running both for a period, then dropping whichever one stops paying for itself.
Can I be on Checkatrade for free? Checkatrade lists a free profile tier that carries your business page and reviews. The lead-generating features sit on the paid plans. A free listing is worth having for the review collection alone, in the same way a Google Business Profile is worth having whether or not you pay for anything else.
Should I cancel if the numbers do not work? Not immediately. Cancelling before a replacement source of work exists usually creates a gap rather than a saving. Build the alternative first, track where enquiries actually come from for six months, then cut what is not carrying its weight. That order costs a little more in the short term and far less overall.
Spend an evening with your invoices and fill in the table. If the cost of a won job is a small fraction of what you keep on that job, keep paying and stop worrying about it. If it is not, at least the decision is now sitting in numbers.
If you would like us to run a free check on your site while you are working it out, you know where we are.
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