How many UK businesses don't have a website?
It depends which businesses you count. Established firms mostly have a website. Brand new ones mostly don't, and that gap is where a lot of web design work comes from. Here are the official figures for the first group and our own weekly count for the second.
New companies: our weekly figure
89% of clean new UK companies had no website we could find.
That includes 3% with a domain registered but nothing working on it yet, such as a "coming soon" page.
Companies incorporated 17–23 Oct 2026, from the Companies House register. Updated every hour.
"Clean" means we've struck out the companies that were never going to trade from their own premises: shells, holding companies, SPVs and companies registered in bulk at formation-agent addresses. Counting those would push the figure even higher and tell you nothing useful.
How we measure it
For every clean new company, we take its name, remove words like "Limited", and try the .co.uk, .com and .uk domains. If one loads, we check the page actually belongs to that business, by looking for its name or postcode. A company only counts as having a website if we find a working site that's clearly its own.
That method has limits, and it's worth being straight about them. A business that trades under a different name, uses an unusual domain, or only has a Facebook page will count as having no website we could find. So treat our figure as an upper bound. The true share of new companies with no website at all is a little lower, but not by much: most new companies really don't have one in their first week.
By town
The same figure for the towns with the most new companies this week. Towns with fewer than 20 clean new companies are left out, because a percentage of a handful doesn't mean much.
| Town | Clean new companies | No website we could find |
|---|---|---|
| London | 1,254 | 88% |
| Birmingham | 268 | 91% |
| Manchester | 292 | 90% |
| Glasgow | 140 | 86% |
| Leicester | 97 | 87% |
| Liverpool | 97 | 90% |
| Leeds | 87 | 88% |
| Bristol | 99 | 91% |
| Nottingham | 98 | 90% |
| Wolverhampton | 93 | 86% |
| Ilford | 79 | 84% |
| Bradford | 74 | 89% |
Incorporations in the last 7 days, by registered post town. Updated every hour.
Established businesses: the official figures
The Office for National Statistics measured website use in its E-commerce and ICT activity survey. For 2019, published in February 2021, it found that 81.4% of businesses with 10 to 49 employees had a website, compared with 96.9% of businesses with 1,000 or more. So roughly one small business in five had no website.
Two things to bear in mind. Those are the most recent ONS figures we could find, so they're several years old. And they cover businesses with 10 or more staff. Most of the UK's estimated 5.69 million private sector businesses, according to the government's business population estimates for 2025, are much smaller than that, and smaller businesses are less likely to have a site.
What it means if you build websites
The two figures together tell a simple story. Most businesses get a website eventually, and most don't have one when they start. The window between those two points is short, a few weeks to a few months, and it's when a founder is choosing suppliers anyway.
That's why new companies make better leads than established businesses without a site. An owner who has traded for ten years without a website has usually decided against one. A founder ten days in just hasn't got to it yet. Our guides on finding businesses without websites and finding web design clients among new businesses cover how to reach them, and our web designer feed lists them for your area every morning.
Using these figures
You're welcome to quote them. Please credit Firstfile, link to this page and give the week the figure covers, because it changes as new companies register.
Questions people ask
What share of small UK businesses have a website?
The most recent ONS figures we could find, for 2019, say 81.4% of businesses with 10 to 49 employees had a website, and 96.9% of businesses with 1,000 or more. Most UK businesses are smaller than 10 people, and those aren't covered by that headline figure.
How do you check whether a new company has a website?
We take each new company's name, remove words like "Limited", and try the .co.uk, .com and .uk domains. If one loads, we check the page actually belongs to that business. A business using a different domain, or only a social media page, counts as having no website we could find, so our figure is an upper bound.
Can I quote your figures?
Yes. Please credit Firstfile and link to this page, and give the week the figure covers. It's updated every hour from the live register.