Pub website design · hand-coded from £400
Mobile-first sites that put bookings, kitchen menu, and what's on this week above the fold. Free trade or tied house, hand-coded from £400, £0 monthly hosting, no per-cover booking commission.
Most pub websites are designed for the wrong audience. They open with a sweeping shot of the bar, a paragraph about the building's history, and a navigation bar built for a desktop screen in 2014. That is fine for a coffee table book. It is wrong for the actual visitor, who is almost always on a phone, often standing on the same street, and deciding in roughly four seconds whether to walk through your door or carry on to the next pub.
A pub website's job is to answer six questions, fast: are you open right now (and is the kitchen still on), where are you, what is the booking situation, what is on the menu, what's happening this week (quiz, live music, sports, function room available), and does the room look like somewhere I want to spend two hours. Everything else is decoration. If the homepage answers those six in two seconds on a flaky 4G connection, the visitor walks in. If it does not, they tap back to Google Maps and pick the next pin.
That is what this page is selling. Not "a website for your pub." A website built to win the four seconds when somebody on the high street decides where to drink, eat, or take their parents on a Sunday.
Today's opening hours, kitchen hours called out separately, address with one-tap Google Maps, and tap-to-call number all visible above the fold on a phone. Decision time is four seconds.
Lightweight booking that routes straight to your kitchen inbox or printer. No per-cover fee. No third-party checkout. No commission. Swap for a "currently quiet / busy / fully booked" indicator if you take walk-ins only.
A single password-protected page where the kitchen updates dishes, marks something 86'd, or pushes Sunday roast specials from a phone. Changes go live in about 30 seconds. No developer needed for menu changes, ever.
Pub quiz, live music, sports fixtures, comedy night, function bookings, all on a single editable calendar with structured-data markup so Google can surface them in the snippet.
The latest 4 to 5 star reviews from your Google Business Profile pulled in automatically. No manual copying. Schema markup so Google can show the star rating in search results.
BarOrPub schema, opening hours marked up in JSON-LD so Google can show them in the snippet, address linked to your Google Business Profile. Built to rank for "pub near me", "sunday roast near me", and "[town] pub" in your area.
Kasto is a plant-based restaurant in Bali, not a UK pub, but the architecture is identical: mobile-first hero, live kitchen menu editor, integrated booking, room photography. Replace "menu" with "kitchen menu" and "atmosphere" with "snug" and the template runs a pub.
Chef Giuseppe wanted the site to feel like the room: warm, cinematic, plant-forward. The old Wix site looked generic, loaded slowly, and cost more every month than the espresso budget. Editing the menu took the chef away from the kitchen, which is the worst place to lose time during service.
The new build ships a password-protected menu editor that the chef updates from a phone between services. Bookings route directly to the kitchen inbox. No third-party widget, no drop-off, no monthly platform fee. Three days from brief to live. Swap "Kasto's tasting menu" for "tonight's specials" and the same template covers any pub kitchen.
Read the full Kasto Bali case study"James delivered something beautiful - professional animations, a booking system, and a simple menu editor, in just a few days."
If you are tied to a pubco or brewery and they offered you a "free" or subsidised website, the maths usually still works in favour of a hand-coded build. Here is the breakdown.
Every tied pub in your region runs the same template with the same site structure. From a Google ranking point of view that flattens your local SEO, because you all look identical to the algorithm. A custom site for your address pulls clear of that pack quickly.
If you ever go free trade, switch pubcos, or the pubco changes provider, the website usually goes with them. A hand-coded build ships you the source code and runs on £0/month hosting that you control. You own it, end of.
Pubco templates surface the pubco's identity, recipes, and offers above yours. That is fine for the pubco. It is unhelpful for the actual punter who Googled your pub by name and wants your hours, your booking, your snug photo, not a brand banner.
Function room or events focus? Signature adds brand kit, room hire enquiry flow, and premium animations from £1,200. See full pricing and tiers →
Six things visible within two seconds on a phone: today's opening hours (with the kitchen hours called out separately if they differ), address with a Google Maps link, a table booking widget or call-to-book number, the current kitchen menu, what is on this week (quiz, live music, sports, function), and a strong photo of the room. The visitor is almost always on a phone, often standing on the same street, deciding whether to walk in. Optimise for that moment.
A pub website in the UK costs £400 to £1,200 from a freelance hand-coded developer with a Supporter Credit (£800 to £1,600 standard), £2,000 to £6,000 from a small hospitality agency, or £15 to £30 per month on Wix or Squarespace, which adds up to £900 to £1,800 over five years without you ever owning the code. For a free trade pub already paying rent, rates, and brewery contracts, a one-off freelance build pays for itself in saved platform fees inside 18 months.
Yes, for any pub serving food at peak hours (Friday and Saturday night, Sunday lunch). Without an online booking option, walk-ins are filtered for you by whoever does have one. The included widget routes bookings straight to your kitchen inbox or printer, no per-cover commission, no third-party checkout. If you genuinely take walk-ins only, the homepage swaps in a "currently quiet, currently busy, fully booked" indicator instead.
Yes, on the £800 Standard tier and above. A single password-protected editor lets the manager change a dish, mark something 86'd, add tomorrow's quiz, or push the kitchen hours an hour later. Updates from a phone in under a minute. Changes go live in about 30 seconds. No developer needed for ongoing changes, ever.
Brewery and pubco templates are designed for the brewery, not for your pub. They tend to be generic, slow, packed with brand assets, and offer little local SEO advantage because every tied pub on the same template fights for the same keywords. A hand-coded pub website with your name, your address, and your menu marked up in LocalBusiness schema will outrank a brewery template in local search nine times out of ten.
Yes. Every build ships BarOrPub schema, opening hours marked up in JSON-LD so Google can show them in the snippet, the address linked to your Google Business Profile, and 97 to 100 PageSpeed scores. Combined that gives you the best technical foundation possible for ranking on "pub near me", "sunday roast near me", and "[town] pub with [room hire / live music / dog friendly]" in your area.
3 spots available this month
Send me a quick brief about your pub and what you want the site to do. I will reply within 24 hours with a quote and a timeline.
I only take on 3 new clients per month. Apply now to secure your spot.