There are three realistic ways to get a school website: build it free on Google Sites in an evening, use a website builder for $100–300 a year, or commission a custom site — from £800 for a landing page and from £3 500 for a full website with a CMS and a news section. The right choice depends less on budget than on the job: a state school needs transparency and documents, a private school needs a site that convinces parents to enrol.
In 2026, the website is the first thing parents see. Before attending an open day, they google the school, look at photos, read the news feed and check whether the page is even alive. A site last updated two years ago hurts the school more than having none at all.
This guide is an honest breakdown: when a free site is genuinely enough, when a school needs a proper one, which sections are non-negotiable, who will keep the content fresh, and what it all costs.
Free school websites: the honest version
Let's start with the truth: yes, a free school website is a real option, and for some schools it is the right one. Free tools are not automatically «unprofessional» — they have legitimate use cases.
Google Sites
Google Sites is the simplest route. An IT teacher can assemble a site in one evening: pages, photos, embedded Google Docs for policies, contact forms. Hosting is free, there is nothing to hack and almost nothing to maintain.
- Pros: $0, simplicity, and native integration with Google Workspace for Education, which many schools already use.
- Cons: a template look, an address like sites.google.com/view/school (a custom domain is possible but needs setup), and weak SEO — these sites rarely rank for «school + town» searches.
Website builders (Wix, Squarespace, WordPress.com)
A builder costs $100–300 a year for a plan with a custom domain. It looks tidier than Google Sites and offers education templates. But someone at the school has to master the tool, and after a year or two these sites tend to sprawl: everyone who adds a page does it their own way.
When free is enough: a small school or club that needs a contact card online; a temporary first-year solution; a project with no budget at all. If that is you — use Google Sites and save the money. Come back to this article when the website becomes the bottleneck.
When a school needs a proper website
How do you create a school website that works rather than merely exists? Start by naming the job it does. State and private schools have fundamentally different jobs.
State schools: transparency and documents
For a state school, the website is first of all a transparency requirement. Regulations oblige schools to publish their statutes, licences, budgets and financial reports, admission rules and governance structure — plus news, timetables and announcements for parents. What matters here is not design flair but order: documents are easy to find, news is easy to add, and the site works on a phone.
- A single «Transparency» section holding every mandatory document.
- A news feed that is actually updated — the main signal that the school is alive.
- Clear structure: a parent finds the timetable or a teacher's contact in two clicks.
Private schools: a website that sells enrolment
A private school competes for pupils, and its website is a salesperson. Parents compare 3–5 schools, and nobody commits $2 000–10 000 a year based on a generic builder template. Different rules apply: a strong homepage, fees published without «call us to find out», accreditation in plain sight, real photos instead of stock, alumni results, parent testimonials and a prominent open-day booking form.
Structurally this is a classic corporate website: 10–20 pages, a CMS, news, forms. For focused campaigns — Year 1 admissions, a summer camp, preparatory courses — a dedicated landing page with ads pointed at it works best. We are a Ukrainian studio working with clients across Europe — European quality at sensible rates.
Essential sections of a school website
Whether you build free or go custom, the structure must answer the same parent questions. The minimum set of sections:
| Section | What it contains | Critical for |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage | Who you are, what makes you different, top news, contacts | Everyone |
| About the school | History, team, accreditation, photos of the campus | Private — decisive |
| News | Events, announcements, pupil achievements | Everyone — proof of life |
| Documents / Transparency | Statutes, licences, budgets, reports, admission rules | State schools — legal requirement |
| Admissions | Terms, fees, steps, application or open-day booking form | Private — the sales page |
| For parents | Timetable, meals, clubs, teacher contacts | Everyone |
| Contacts | Address, map, phones, messengers, enquiry form | Everyone |
The classic mistake is building the site «about the administration»: orders, reports, a half-page welcome letter from the head. Parents look for something else: the timetable, the fees, how to apply, what the children eat and who teaches them. Structure the site around parents' questions, not the org chart.
Who updates the site: a CMS instead of a developer
What schools fear most is not the price but the upkeep: «we'll build a site and then nobody will maintain it». A proper admin panel solves this. In a modern custom site, content is edited through a dashboard: adding a news item feels like posting on social media. Text, photos, a Publish button — 10–15 minutes.
An IT teacher, a secretary or a deputy head can handle it without writing a line of code. We showed exactly what this looks like in how a website admin panel works.
- News and announcements — added by any staff member with editor access.
- Documents — uploaded as files into the right section.
- The technical side (updates, security, backups) is covered by studio support from £200/month or ad hoc from £40/hour.
Online schools and selling courses
A separate case: a school or a teacher wants a website for online courses — selling education over the internet. That is no longer a brochure site but a platform: course pages, online payments, gated access to lessons after purchase, student accounts, CRM and email integrations.
We treat these as their own category — websites for courses and online schools. Typical budgets: a course sales landing page from £800, an online-school website with a course catalogue and payments from £3 500, a full platform with student accounts and custom logic from £6 000.
A live example is the Aleko course website: a page that sells a training programme with a clear «who it's for, what's inside, what it costs» structure and an enrolment form. That is what a minimum viable course-selling tool looks like.
What a school website costs in 2026
Here is everything in one table. Market ranges are wider, but these are the real figures our studio works with:
| Criterion | Free (Google Sites) | Website builder | Custom-built |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | $0 | $100–300/year | landing from £800, school site from £3 500 |
| Design | Template, instantly recognisable | Template with tweaks | Bespoke, built for the school |
| Custom domain | Extra setup | On paid plans | Yes, included |
| SEO and speed | Weak | Average | Full control, fast site |
| Who updates it | Whoever built it | Whoever learned the builder | Any staff member via the CMS |
| Best for | Clubs, a contact card, zero budget | Small school with a hands-on admin | State school with legal requirements, private school, online school |
What moves the custom price: page count, multilingual content, integrations (online payments, CRM, timetables) — a typical integration costs £200–500, complex ones £1 000–3 000. Timelines: a landing page takes 2–3 weeks, a school website 4–8 weeks. If the school needs to be found on Google for searches like «private school + town», budget for SEO from £300/month.
Where to start: a one-week plan
- Name the job: transparency for a state school, selling enrolment for a private one, selling courses for an online school.
- List the sections from the table above and gather the content: texts, documents, real photos.
- No budget? Build a Google Site this week — a live imperfect site beats a perfect imaginary one.
- If the site must bring in pupils — price it in the calculator and see how we build corporate websites.
- Assign someone to own the news feed — without that, any website dies within six months.
