A care home website in the UK typically costs about £1,700 for a professional base build in 2026, excluding VAT. Add family enquiry forms, fee transparency pages and virtual tours, and the figure rises toward £3,000; include every feature priced in this guide and you are looking at about £4,100. All prices in this guide are indicative, in pounds sterling, and every figure excludes VAT at 20%.
This guide is written for care home operators across the UK — from single residential homes to small groups running nursing, dementia and residential care — who want an honest, itemised breakdown of what each part of a care website costs. Care home websites are a different animal from ordinary business sites: the visitor is usually not the resident but an adult child or relative, often researching under stress and time pressure, comparing several homes at once. That reality shapes everything — clear fee information, genuine reassurance about quality of care, and enquiry forms that work for a family member researching at 11pm. Those jobs — trust, transparency and easy contact — are exactly how this guide is organised.
Use the figures below as a planning aid. Tick the features your home actually needs in the cost calculator, compare the static scenario table, and you will land on a realistic number to take into agency conversations. If you want to compare costs across sectors, our guides to dental practice website costs and small business websites in the UK use the same itemised method.
How these ranges were compiled
The figures in this guide are built from two sources: published tariff pages from UK web agencies that specialise in healthcare and care-sector websites, and project build data from completed care home sites. The numbers were checked in October 2026 and reflect what independent care homes and small groups are actually being quoted in the current market — not enterprise prices for national chains, and not bargain-basement template deals.
Every price is indicative. A quotation from any agency will move with the complexity of your requirements, the quality of the design, and how much content you supply yourself. Treat these ranges as a map, not a quote. Three things sit outside the build figures throughout this guide: any recurring software subscriptions (for example a virtual-tour hosting plan), ongoing photography or content costs, and VAT at 20%, which UK agencies add to build quotes as standard.
What the £1,700 base covers
The £1,700 base is a professionally designed, mobile-responsive care home website of roughly eight to ten pages: home, about the home, our care (residential, nursing, dementia), life at the home (activities, dining, daily routine), meet the team, visiting information, fees overview, and contact. It includes a content management system so your team can edit text and swap photos without calling a developer, on-page search optimisation basics (titles, meta descriptions, heading structure), Google Business Profile linking, contact forms with spam protection, analytics setup, an SSL certificate, and a cookie consent banner suitable for UK requirements.
What the base deliberately does not include is the care-specific machinery: there are no virtual tours, no dedicated family enquiry workflows, no detailed fee and funding pages, no structured CQC trust section, no per-area local pages, no review feeds and no news section. Those are the seven priced features below. The base also assumes you supply your copy and photography — or accept sensible stock imagery as a starting point. Professional copywriting and a photographer visiting your home are separate line items with most agencies, and for a care home they are worth serious consideration: families respond to real rooms, real gardens and real staff faces, not stock photos of models.
One judgement call is worth making early: a base site with clear information and genuine photography can already outperform a flashier competitor that hides its fees and uses stock imagery. The features below matter most when you want to differentiate on transparency and trust — which, in this sector, is precisely where enquiries are won. That staged approach is one reason the calculator below starts from the base and lets you add features one at a time.
Tip: Ask any agency quoting you to itemise the base separately from each feature, exactly as this guide does. An itemised quote makes it easy to compare like with like — and to defer a feature without renegotiating the whole project.
Virtual tour integration — £550 indicative
Virtual tour integration lets prospective families look around your home from their sofa: a 360-degree walkthrough of lounges, bedrooms, dining areas and gardens, embedded on the website and navigable on a phone. The £550 covers planning the tour route, integrating the tour player, embedding it across the relevant pages, and optimising it for mobile. The photography or filming itself is usually a separate cost — confirm with the agency whether their quote includes the shoot.
For care homes, tours carry unusual weight. Choosing a home is an emotional, high-stakes decision, and a family that can "walk through" your lounges at midnight is a family that arrives for their visit already half-persuaded. Tours also answer the question relatives are often too polite to ask directly: what does it actually look like inside? Showing it openly is a trust signal in itself.
The honest caveat is upkeep. A tour filmed three years ago that shows furniture you no longer own quietly undermines trust. Plan to refresh the tour when the home is redecorated, and keep the photography date visible so families know what they are looking at.
Family enquiry forms — £350 indicative
Family enquiry forms are structured, empathetic multi-step forms designed for the way relatives actually enquire: who the care is for, the type of care needed, the funding situation, preferred visiting times, and the best way to respond. The £350 covers designing the stepped flow, validation, secure storage of enquiries, instant confirmation emails, and routing new leads to the right person in your team with source tagging so you know the website generated them.
Why does this modest feature matter so much? Because the enquirer is often stressed, researching late at night, and comparing several homes in tabs. A form that asks the right questions gently — and promises a named person will call back by a stated time — converts far better than a bare "contact us" page. The funding question deserves care: it is sensitive, but asking it early lets your team prepare a genuinely useful first conversation rather than discovering the mismatch on the phone.
Keep the tone human. Clinical or overly formal wording puts off exactly the families you want to reassure. Test the form yourself on a phone at arm's length: if it feels like paperwork, rewrite it.
Fee transparency and funding pages — £400 indicative
Fee transparency pages set out your weekly fees clearly — residential, nursing and dementia rates, what is included, what costs extra, and how funding works: self-funding, local authority contributions, NHS continuing healthcare, and top-up arrangements. The £400 covers building the fee page templates, structuring the funding explanations in plain English, and presenting the figures in a way your team can update when fees change.
This is the section competitors hide, which is exactly why publishing it wins enquiries. Families consistently say fees are the information they want first and find last. A home that states its fees openly looks confident and honest; a home that buries them behind "call for prices" looks like it has something to hide — even when the fees are perfectly reasonable.
Two honest caveats. First, fees must be kept current: an outdated fee page is worse than none, so the CMS update workflow needs to be simple enough that your manager actually uses it. Second, funding rules differ between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — make sure the funding explanations match the nation your home operates in, and never present indicative funding guidance as a guarantee. Individual circumstances vary, and the page should say so.
CQC trust and compliance section — £300 indicative
The CQC section presents your regulatory standing properly: your latest CQC rating with the report linked, what the rating means in plain language, your inspection history, and how families can raise concerns. The £300 covers the rating display components, the report links, the plain-English explanations, and a structure your team can update after each inspection.
In England, the Care Quality Commission rating is the first thing many families check — often before they look at anything else on your site. Displaying it prominently, with the full report one click away, signals confidence. If your rating is "requires improvement", the section earns its keep differently: it gives you the space to explain what has changed since the inspection, which is far better than letting families find the report with no context.
Keep the section scrupulously accurate. Ratings and report dates must match the CQC's published records exactly, and the section should be updated the day a new report lands. Note that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own regulators (the Care Inspectorate, CIW and RQIA respectively) — if your home operates there, the same principles apply to the relevant body.
Service-area and local pages — £400 indicative
Service-area pages are dedicated pages for each town or neighbourhood you serve — "Care Home in Harrogate", "Dementia Care in Knaresborough" — combining local relevance with search visibility. The £400 covers building a reusable page template (map, care types offered, visiting and travel information, local landmarks for directions) plus writing and publishing an initial batch of four to six pages to launch with.
The commercial logic is search behaviour. Families overwhelmingly search with a place attached — "care home near me", "dementia care [town]" — and a dedicated local page is the strongest on-site signal you can send for those queries. These pages compound: each new page is another entry point, and a library of well-written local pages makes your site look like the established local choice.
Two honest caveats. First, the pages only work if the content is real — genuine local detail, real visiting information, actual distances. Thin pages with the town name swapped in do not rank and do not reassure. Second, keep the catchment honest: if a family is an hour away, say so kindly rather than implying every page is equally convenient. Other local service sectors face the same content question — see how tradespeople handle their local pages.
Reviews and testimonials — £250 indicative
Reviews integration pulls your carehome.co.uk and Google reviews into the website — an aggregate rating in the header, family testimonials with photos (with consent), and review highlights on the relevant care-type pages. The £250 covers the display components, the platform connections, and a workflow for requesting reviews from families after a good experience.
In a sector built on trust, independent reviews are gold. Families researching care homes read reviews the way they read inspection reports — carefully, and looking for patterns. Displaying your real reviews on your own site captures visitors who would otherwise leave to verify you elsewhere, and the request workflow matters because care homes historically under-collect reviews compared with other sectors.
Never fabricate or selectively misrepresent reviews. Display the real aggregate; respond to negative reviews with grace rather than hiding them. If your review volume is thin today, launch with what you have and let the request workflow build it — a dozen genuine family reviews beat a hundred generic stars.
News and events section — £150 indicative
The news section is a simple, well-structured home for updates: activity highlights, seasonal events, staff news, community partnerships, and open-day announcements. The £150 covers the template, the archive structure, and the publishing workflow.
The value is liveliness. A care home whose latest news item is two years old looks dormant; one posting monthly activity photos looks like a place where things happen. For families, that distinction matters enormously — they are choosing a home, not a building. The honest cost is the writing and photography: the template is £150, but keeping it alive takes a short update or two a month from someone who knows the home's daily life. Budget the time, or skip the feature.
UK-specific costs and compliance
Four UK-specific points affect every figure in this guide. First, UK GDPR applies to every enquiry form on your site, because you are collecting names, phone numbers and email addresses — and enquiry details can touch on health-related matters, which deserve extra care. You need a clear privacy notice linked from each form, a lawful basis for processing (legitimate interest usually covers responding to an enquiry), and separate opt-in consent for marketing emails — pre-ticked boxes are not consent. Your organisation should also be registered with the ICO and paying the data protection fee; check your tier on the ICO site and treat any fee figure you see quoted as indicative.
Second, VAT at 20% applies to website build quotes in the UK. Every figure in this guide excludes VAT, so add a fifth when you are setting your real-world number: the £1,700 base becomes £2,040 once VAT is applied, and the £4,100 everything-included figure becomes £4,920. Agencies quote excluding VAT as standard practice, which is why this guide follows the same convention — just do not let it surprise you at invoice time.
Third, accessibility matters more here than in most sectors. Your visitors include older relatives who may use screen readers, high-contrast settings or large text. A site that meets accessibility basics — proper heading structure, readable contrast, keyboard navigation, alt text on images — is not just good practice; it is part of serving your actual audience. Ask any agency quoting you how they handle accessibility, and treat a blank look as a warning sign.
Finally, keep everything in GBP and write for a British audience: UK spelling throughout, UK address formats, and a local phone number prominently displayed. Small localisation details — "care home" rather than "nursing facility", "enquiries" rather than "inquiries" — signal that the site was built for your market. These details cost nothing and reassure quietly.
Warning: Enquiry forms on care websites can touch on health-related information. Before launch, confirm with your agency exactly what data each form collects, where it is stored, who can see it, and how long it is kept — and make sure the privacy notice says the same thing.
Cost components at a glance
Every priced element in one place. All figures are indicative and exclude VAT at 20%.
| Component | Indicative price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Base professional website | £1,700 | Design, CMS, core pages, forms, SEO basics, analytics |
| Virtual tour integration | £550 | 360° tour player embedded; filming usually separate |
| Family enquiry forms | £350 | Stepped empathetic flow, secure storage, team routing |
| Fee transparency pages | £400 | Fee templates, plain-English funding explanations |
| CQC trust section | £300 | Rating display, report links, plain-English explanations |
| Service-area / local pages | £400 | Reusable template plus an initial batch of 4–6 pages |
| Reviews and testimonials | £250 | Rating display, testimonial carousel, request workflow |
| News and events section | £150 | Template, archive, publishing workflow |
| Everything included | £4,100 | Base plus all seven features (1,700 + 550 + 350 + 400 + 300 + 400 + 250 + 150) |
Key takeaway: The base (£1,700) plus your chosen features is the whole maths of this guide. There are no hidden multipliers — the calculator below simply adds the features you tick.
Calculate your home's website cost
Tick the features your home needs and watch the estimate update. The static table right below lists the same figures, so this guide is complete with JavaScript off.
Base professional website: £1,700 (indicative, excluding VAT). Add what you need:
Indicative estimate: (usual range )
Static scenario totals (same figures, no JavaScript needed)
| Scenario | Indicative total | How it adds up |
|---|---|---|
| Base website | £1,700 | Base only — no added features |
| Base + family enquiry forms | £2,050 | £1,700 + £350 |
| Base + enquiry + fee transparency | £2,450 | £1,700 + £350 + £400 |
| Everything included | £4,100 | £1,700 + £550 + £350 + £400 + £300 + £400 + £250 + £150 |
Worked example: a residential and dementia care home in Yorkshire
Consider a 40-bed residential and dementia care home on the edge of Leeds — well regarded locally, CQC-rated "Good", commissioning its first proper website. They tick every feature in the calculator: virtual tour integration (£550), family enquiry forms (£350), fee transparency pages (£400), the CQC trust section (£300), service-area pages (£400), reviews and testimonials (£250), and the news section (£150). Added to the £1,700 base, the indicative total is £4,100 excluding VAT.
The choices are deliberate. The fee transparency pages and the enquiry forms are the enquiry engines: together they answer the two questions every family asks first — "what does it cost?" and "how do I arrange a visit?" The virtual tour is the differentiator: families researching at night can walk through the lounges and gardens before they ever pick up the phone, and that preview makes the eventual visit feel like a confirmation rather than a gamble. The CQC section is the reassurance layer — rating displayed openly, report linked, plain-English explanation of what "Good" means in practice.
The service-area pages are the search play: one page each for Leeds, Wakefield, Harrogate and Bradford turns "care home near me" traffic into direct enquiries instead of directory referrals. The reviews feed and the news section are the slow-burn assets: review volume builds trust compounding month over month, and monthly activity updates — summer fete photos, Christmas concert news, new staff introductions — keep the site feeling alive to families who may research for weeks before calling. Nothing here is decorative; every feature exists to make one anxious family decision slightly easier.
Care home website build totals in GBP (indicative, excl. VAT) — hover or tap each bar for details.
Typical build timeline
Most care home websites in this price bracket take six to nine weeks from kickoff to launch. The biggest variables are usually photography scheduling and how quickly the home supplies fee and policy details.
| Phase | Typical duration | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery and planning | 1–2 weeks | Requirements, sitemap, feature choices, fee structure agreed |
| Design | 1–2 weeks | Homepage and key templates designed, revised and approved |
| Build | 2–3 weeks | Templates coded, CMS configured, forms and tours connected |
| Content and photography | 1–2 weeks | Copy loaded, photos and tour shot, fee pages reviewed |
| Testing and launch | 1 week | Cross-device checks, accessibility review, analytics verified, go-live |
Five mistakes that inflate the bill
1. Hiding the fees behind "call for prices". Families want fee information first and find it last — on the sites that publish it at all. A home that states its fees openly looks confident; one that hides them looks evasive even when the fees are reasonable. The fee transparency feature is £400 of the best-spent money in this guide.
2. Launching with stock photography of models. Nothing undermines a care home website faster than generic images of smiling strangers. Families are choosing where a parent will live; they want to see your actual lounges, your actual garden, your actual staff. A photography visit costs a fraction of the website and pays back in trust immediately.
3. Writing the site for the resident instead of the family. The visitor is almost always an adult child or relative, often researching under stress. Dense clinical language, tiny text and buried contact details serve nobody. Write for the worried daughter at 11pm: clear, warm, large enough to read, and one click from a human.
4. Letting the CQC section go stale. An outdated rating display — or worse, a rating that no longer matches the published report — destroys credibility instantly. The section must be updated the day a new report lands. Build the update workflow into the home's routine, not the agency's invoice.
5. Collecting sensitive enquiry details without a clear data policy. Care enquiries can touch on health-related matters, and launching forms without knowing exactly what data is collected, where it is stored and how long it is kept is a UK GDPR problem waiting to happen — and fixing it means rebuilding every form. Getting it right the first time is cheaper than getting it right the second time. Other trust-heavy sectors run into the same issue; our dental practice cost guide covers consent-heavy enquiry forms in a similar way.
Running a care home and need a website that earns families' trust, not just lists your services? Tell us about your home, care types and catchment for an itemised GBP quotation. Book a free consultation with Asad Webs
Frequently asked questions
How much does a care home website cost in the UK in 2026?
A professional base website typically costs about £1,700 excluding VAT. With family enquiry forms, fee transparency pages and virtual tours the figure rises toward £3,000, and with every feature in this guide it reaches about £4,100. All figures are indicative and exclude VAT at 20%.
Should we publish our fees on the website?
Yes. Families consistently say fees are the information they want first and find last, and a home that states its fees openly looks confident and honest. Keep the figures current — an outdated fee page is worse than none — and present funding explanations as guidance, not guarantees.
Do we need a virtual tour?
It is the strongest differentiator in this guide. Choosing a home is an emotional, high-stakes decision, and a 360-degree walkthrough lets families preview your home from their sofa. Just plan to refresh the tour when the home is redecorated, and keep the filming date visible.
How do we handle our CQC rating on the website?
Display it prominently, link the full report, and explain what the rating means in plain language. Keep it scrupulously accurate and update it the day a new report lands. If the rating is "requires improvement", use the section to explain what has changed since the inspection.
Will local pages help families find us?
They are the strongest on-site signal for "care home near me" and town-specific searches — provided the content is genuine. Real local detail about each area you serve, backed by a complete Google Business Profile, is the combination that consistently works.
Do the prices in this guide include VAT?
No — every figure excludes VAT at 20%, following standard UK agency quoting practice. Add a fifth to get your real-world number: the £1,700 base becomes £2,040, and the £4,100 everything-included total becomes £4,920 once VAT is applied.
Can we add features later instead of paying for everything now?
Yes, and many homes do — the calculator is built for exactly that. Start with the base plus the enquiry forms and fee pages, then add the virtual tour, local pages and news section as the site starts earning its keep. Just note that retrofitting the enquiry forms after launch costs more than including them upfront, so prioritise the features that generate enquiries first.
A care home website is ultimately a trust-building machine dressed up as a brochure. Price it by the enquiries it will produce, stage the features by the confidence they give anxious families, and keep every indicative figure in this guide — in GBP, excluding VAT — beside any quotation you receive. However your site compares, an itemised quote measured against these ranges is the fastest way to spot whether you are being offered a fair deal.
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