How Much Should A Recruitment Website Cost?

Are you launching a new recruitment agency or looking for a redesign of your current website? Do you need a website to reflect you and your brand? 

Whether you’re a startup or an established recruitment firm, one key factor in purchase decision making will always be the cost of the product or service. However, rather view this as an investment in your business that will generate a return. That ROI can be measured through increased relevant candidates & clients approaching you and higher conversion rates. 

The cost to build a recruitment website in the UK can vary greatly depending on a number of factors, such as the complexity of the site, the technology used to build it, and the experience of the development team.

Pricing model wise there tends to be two pricing plans. Firstly the one off fee to build & deploy the website combined with a hosting charge of around £30 - £50/month. Secondly the monthly subscription model, which could be anything from £50/month for a basic template WordPress website to £1,000/month for a large, complex, integrated website. 

In general with the first payment model, you can expect to pay anywhere from £300 for a basic, minimal functionality, WordPress one page template-based website, right up to tens of thousands of pounds for a custom-built site with advanced features, integrations and functionality. There will also be a payment schedule, normally along the lines of a 50% payment upfront and a 50% payment once work has been completed and fully signed off by you. 

A key factor contributing to cost as mentioned is the complexity of a website. A one page website without a jobs & blogs page and a minimal contact page (just contact details), will cost much less than a website with full job search functionality, storage for job & blog posts and working contact form with attachment functionality. Depending on how long your recruitment firm has been established, will dictate what you need from your website. If you’re just launching your recruitment agency or it’s a lifestyle agency, which may be just yourself for the foreseeable future, then a “brochure” - one page website with a Home, About Us, Clients, Candidates and basic Contact Us section will probably be sufficient. If you’re a year or two in and you’re starting to grow your agency and looking for more traction in search engines then you’ll need a Jobs & Blogs page to keep it continually updated and competitive in the search rankings.  

Once again smaller recruitment website design companies or freelance developers with less experience will probably be able to offer lower prices than larger design agencies with extra staff to cover the cost of - so that’s a factor to take account of. 

The juicy bit… 

WordPress template websites are generally relatively easy to put together and there are several videos online that will walk you through how to put one together, easy to follow even for those with minimal technical experience. You could, with some time and concentration, produce and deploy a basic WordPress website in a space of a day, following a YouTube tutorial. WordPress websites make up around 60% of the internet so are very popular but normally confined to blogs and small business websites. They also tend to perform not so well speed wise against websites built simply from HTML, CSS & JavaScript combined with a backend built with a language such as Java, C#, Rust, etc. Also, unless kept up to date they are also more prone to malicious attacks. A WordPress website could cost you anything from £400 - £2,500 for a template website and around £4,500 - £8,500 for a custom built website. 

A website built with a front end framework like Angular, React, Svelte or Vue or simply with HTML, CSS & JavaScript/TypeScript, combined with a backend framework & language will probably cost a little more but you’ll have a more secure website, which tends to perform better than its WordPress counterparts. These websites tend to take a little longer to produce and deploy. You could be looking anywhere from around £1,300 - £2,500 for a template website, up to £4,500-£10,000 for a custom website for a small-medium sized recruitment firm. At the top end, for a large recruitment firm with hundreds of staff, integrations into various systems, reporting functionality, etc. you are probably looking at around £40,000-£60,000. 

Also you’ll need to factor in the costs of domain registration, hosting and website storage costs, which may be around £30 - £50 per month. 

To get a more accurate estimate, it would be best to speak with a web development company or agency that specifically works with the recruitment sector and discuss your specific requirements. They should be able to provide you with a detailed quote based on your needs, along with timeframes.

Get in touch for an in-depth chat about what you want, what you need and how we can help deliver just that and more.