Why Most Brighton Agencies Quote Three Times What They Should

I’m going to put my professional judgement on the line in this post. Some of you will agree. Some of you will think I’m bitter. A few of you might be the agencies I’m talking about, in which case — hi.

I’ve spent the last decade as a freelance WordPress designer in Sussex. In that time I’ve quoted against probably 200 Brighton-based agencies. I’ve seen the proposals. I’ve seen the invoices clients show me when they want a second opinion. I’ve seen the websites those invoices produced.

The pattern is consistent. Most Brighton agencies are quoting two to three times what the work is worth, and the reasons aren’t the ones they tell you about.

The numbers I keep seeing

To make this concrete, here are quotes I’ve seen Brighton businesses receive in the last 12 months for projects I would have priced very differently.

• Local accountant, 8 pages, no ecommerce. Agency quote: £9,800. My equivalent quote: £1,800.
• Independent estate agent, 12 pages, basic property listing functionality. Agency quote: £14,500. My equivalent quote: £3,500.
• Charity, 10 pages, donation integration. Agency quote: £11,000. My equivalent: £2,500.
• Tradesperson, 6 pages, brochure site. Agency quote: £6,200. My equivalent: £1,200.
• Coaching consultant, 8 pages with online booking. Agency quote: £8,400. My equivalent: £2,200.

The pattern across all five is roughly 4x the freelance price for what looks, on inspection, like the same scope of work.

Now, agencies will tell you the difference is quality, process, account management, “design thinking”, and the safety of dealing with a registered limited company rather than a person. Some of that is real. None of it accounts for a 4x multiplier.

Where the money actually goes

I’ve worked with people from several of the Brighton agencies I’m referring to. I’ve seen invoices because clients sometimes show me. I know roughly what their cost structure is. Here’s the honest breakdown of what their client is paying for.

Office rent in central Brighton

A serviced office for a 10-person agency in North Laine or Hove will run you £2,500 to £4,000 a month. Add desks, internet, kitchen, the lot. That’s £30,000 to £50,000 a year that has to come out of project margins.

If you’re paying £9,800 for a website from a Brighton agency, somewhere in the region of £1,500 to £2,000 of that is paying for the office you’ll never visit.

Account management overhead

Agencies sell you on the idea that having an account manager means you don’t have to talk to “the technical people”. What it actually means is your project has two layers of communication — your AM talks to the producer, the producer talks to the designers, and your feedback gets refracted through both before anyone acts on it.

This costs money in two ways. First, the AM is salaried, and that salary is allocated across the projects they manage. Second, the additional overhead of communication means projects take longer, which means more billable hours.

For a typical small business website, the AM layer adds £1,000 to £2,000 to the price for very little that the client actually values. I have never had a client tell me they wished there was a middle layer between us.

Design system overhead

Bigger agencies build design systems. Component libraries. Brand guideline documents. Pattern libraries that get reused across projects. This is genuinely valuable work for an enterprise client building a 200-page site that needs to scale and stay consistent.

For a small business with 8 pages, it’s overhead that gets billed to the client even though the system is mostly used to make future projects more efficient. You’re paying for the agency’s R&D, in other words.

Director margin

Agencies have founders, directors, and senior creatives whose names go on the website but whose hands rarely touch your project after the first kickoff. Their salaries — £80k to £150k each — get absorbed into project margins.

The freelancer doesn’t have this problem. The person quoting you is the person who’ll be doing the work.

The pitch tax

Agencies spend a lot of money pitching for work they don’t win. Big proposals, custom decks, day-long client workshops, design exploration sessions. All of it is funded by the projects they do win.

If an agency wins one in three pitches, the projects that close are paying for the two that didn’t. That’s roughly a 33% uplift on every quote you receive.

What you’re not getting that you might think you are

Agencies sell against freelancers by implying that the freelancer experience is risky, lower quality, or somehow second-tier. Some of this is fair. A lot of it is theatre.

Things agencies often imply they offer that freelancers also offer:

• Insurance and indemnity. Most freelancers have professional indemnity insurance. I do. Ask before assuming we don’t.
• Continuity of service. The agency might survive longer than a freelancer in the abstract, but the actual designer you signed up with often leaves the agency before your project ships. Your “continuity” is a different person.
• Process. Yes, agencies have process diagrams. So do good freelancers. The diagram doesn’t matter. What matters is whether the work gets delivered on time and to brief.
• Multidisciplinary teams. Sounds great until you realise that for a small business website, you don’t need a copywriter, a UX researcher, a content strategist, an account manager, and a project manager. You need one good person who can do most of those jobs to a reasonable standard.

Things agencies do offer that freelancers genuinely don’t:

• Bigger team for very large or complex projects. If you’re building a 200-page enterprise site or a complex web app, an agency is the right answer.
• Specialist skills (motion design, brand strategy, illustration) under one roof. If you need all three for one project, agency makes sense.
• The reassurance of dealing with a limited company with multiple stakeholders. For risk-averse procurement processes (some larger organisations), this is a real benefit.

For a typical small business website — six to twelve pages, a service business, a small budget — none of these advantages outweigh the price difference.

When an agency is the right call

I want to be clear that I’m not saying every Brighton agency is overcharging or that nobody should ever use one. There are genuinely good agencies in the city and there are projects where they’re the right fit.

You should consider an agency over a freelancer when:

• Your budget is £15,000 or above. At that level you’re getting genuine multidisciplinary work and the agency model justifies itself.
• You need brand strategy, brand identity, and web design as one connected piece of work. Most freelancers don’t do all three to a high standard. Most agencies do.
• Your project is unusually complex — bespoke functionality, integrations with enterprise software, accessibility requirements that need a specialist.
• You work in a procurement-heavy industry (public sector, healthcare, finance) where the buying process favours agencies with formal accreditations and contractual structures.
• You’d rather pay more to remove yourself from the project entirely. Some business owners value being able to hand the brief to an account manager and not see it again until launch. That service has a cost and the cost is the agency multiplier.

Outside of those situations, you’re probably overpaying.

What to do if you’ve been quoted by a Brighton agency

This is the practical bit. If you’ve got an agency quote in front of you and you’re not sure whether you’re being taken for a ride, here’s how to sense-check it.

1. Ask what the breakdown is

A reputable agency will be willing to break the quote into design hours, build hours, project management, and post-launch support. If they refuse, that’s a signal. If they break it down and the project management line is more than 15% of the total, that’s another signal.

2. Ask who’ll be doing the work

Get names. Get to meet them. The senior creatives whose work is in the pitch deck are not always the people who’ll be on your project. Ask explicitly: “Will [Senior Designer Name] be designing the site themselves?” If the answer is “no, but our team will be working closely with their oversight”, that’s worth knowing.

3. Get a second quote from a freelancer

If only as a sanity check. Send me the brief or any other Sussex-based freelance designer. We’ll quote in 48 hours. If our number is half theirs and the scope is identical, you’ll know what you’re paying for.

I’m happy to do this even if you don’t end up using me. I’d rather you make an informed decision than feel cornered into a price you’re not comfortable with.

4. Ask about ongoing costs after launch

Some agencies bake their margin into ongoing retainers — hosting, maintenance, support. Get clear on what you’re committed to after the build. A £6,000 build that locks you into a £400 a month retainer is a different product than a £6,000 one-off.

Why I’m publishing this

Calling out the industry in public isn’t great for my agency relationships. I’ve worked with people from a couple of the Brighton agencies I’m criticising, and I’ll probably get the cold shoulder at the next industry event.

I think it’s worth it. Small businesses in Sussex are getting overcharged routinely, and most of them don’t have the experience to spot it. The people writing the quotes know what they’re doing — pricing isn’t an accident — and the resulting market is one where freelancers are presumed cheap and inferior, agencies are presumed safe and superior, and neither of those things is automatically true.

If you’re a Brighton business owner reading this, the takeaway is simple. Get more than one quote. Ask what’s in the number. Don’t accept “trust us” as an answer about pricing.

If you’d like a freelance perspective on a quote you’ve already received, send it over via the contact page. I’ll give you an honest read on whether the work justifies the price.

If you want a deeper dive on what a sensibly priced project actually contains, I’ve broken one down in the anatomy of a £1,500 website. Worth reading before you sign anything.