How do I cancel a website contract in the UK? The three sentences that decide it, and the 14 days you do not have
Almost everyone trying to get out of a website contract starts by counting to fourteen. Fourteen days is the cooling-off period, it is real, and for a tradesman who bought the site for his business it almost certainly does not apply. The law that creates it protects consumers, and a UK sole trader buying a website for the trade is buying as a business.
That sounds like bad news and it is mostly useful news. It means the way out is written in your contract rather than in an Act of Parliament, so you can read it tonight. It usually comes down to three sentences: how long you are tied in, how much notice you have to give and in what form, and what you owe if you leave before the end.
Find those three and the rest is a date in the diary, the domain in your own name, and one letter sent the right way.
By giving the notice your contract asks for, in the form it asks for, before the date it names. A tradesman who bought a website for his business is not a consumer, so the 14-day cooling-off period in UK consumer law does not apply. Your exit is the minimum term, the notice clause and any early exit charge, which run from nothing to 80% of what is left.
Why the 14-day cooling-off period is not yours
The 14-day right to cancel a service belongs to consumers, and both the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 define a consumer as an individual acting for purposes wholly or mainly outside their trade, business, craft or profession. A website bought for your trade business is inside it.
The wording is identical in both. Section 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 defines a consumer as "an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside that individual's trade, business, craft or profession". The fourteen days themselves sit in regulation 30 of the 2013 Regulations, where for a service "the cancellation period ends at the end of 14 days after the day on which the contract is entered into". Citizens Advice describes the same right, in its consumer section, for "a service you've arranged online, over the phone or by mail-order".
The one argument people reach for
Section 2(4) puts the burden on the seller: a trader claiming you were not acting as a consumer "must prove it". On a website that carries your trading name, your Gas Safe number and your phone line, that proof is the website. Do not build a plan on it.
Six UK providers, six different ways out
On 11 September 2026 I read the published exit terms of six UK companies that sell websites to trades. The notice they ask for runs from none at all to 30 days in writing, and one charges 80% of the outstanding charges to leave early.
| Provider | Tied in for | Notice, and how | Leave early and you pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yell, Amplify with website | 12-month initial period, then monthly | By phone, 14 days before the period ends | 80% of the outstanding charges, plus VAT and third-party costs |
| Ubie Websites | Set on your registration form, not published | 30 days in writing, by email, after the minimum | The rest of the minimum term's fees, less costs they save |
| Digital Tradies | Rolling monthly unless a fixed term is specified | 30 days in writing | No refund for the current billing period |
| BUILT for Trades | No minimum on a website plan | Email, call or message; ends with the billing period | Nothing, and a full refund if unhappy in the first 90 days |
| BoostMyTrade | "No contract" | Stops at the end of the billing period | "No cancellation fee" |
| One Base Media | "No contracts" on pay monthly | Not stated on the pay monthly page | Not stated |
| Sitework, mine | Three months, then rolling | In writing; ends with the paid period | Nothing, but inside twelve months the site comes offline unless we agree a handover |
Two things jump out. First, "cancel any time" and "30 days in writing" are different offers, and a provider can print the first on its pricing page and the second in section 8 of its terms. Neither is dishonest, but only one of them decides your last payment. Second, the two rows with a real exit charge are the two where the minimum term does the selling. Yell is the extreme because it is not selling a website at all, which is why a Yell website has no price of its own.
Mine is in the table on purpose. Three months minimum is a tie-in, and if you leave inside the first year the hosted site goes offline unless we agree a handover. That is the clause I would want a customer to read before signing, so it is here too.
What leaving early actually costs, worked through
Leaving Yell's Amplify four payments into its twelve-month initial period costs £1,913.60 before VAT under clause 19.4 of Yell's advertising terms, and the service stops the day you leave.
Ending a Yell Amplify plan after four payments
| Published entry price | £299 a month |
| Payments already made | 4, so £1,196 |
| Payments still outstanding | 8, so £2,392 |
| Clause 19.4 charge, 80% of outstanding | £1,913.60 |
| On top | VAT and any third-party costs |
| Service you get for it | None. "We will cease to provide the Services" |
Worked from the published entry price and the clause wording, not from anybody's invoice. Your order form sets your real dates and figures.
The clause is candid about why: the initial period and its charges "have been set having regard to the cost of providing the Services". It also says any advertisement Yell created "shall not be transferrable to you when terminated during any part of the Initial Period". Whether that covers your site is a question for your own order form, and worth asking before you ring.
For scale, £1,913.60 is more than most trades should pay for a year of website, and what a plumber's website should cost sets out why. Ubie's version is softer on paper, the remaining fees "less any costs we reasonably save", and that phrase is your lever: ask them in writing what the saved costs are.
Stopping the Direct Debit is not cancelling
Cancelling the Direct Debit stops the collection, not the contract, and on some terms it makes things worse: Yell's clause 19.4 treats a missed instalment in the initial period as you ending the agreement, which brings the 80% charge with it.
The Direct Debit Guarantee says you can cancel "at any time by simply contacting your bank or building society", and it gives a full refund "if an error is made in the payment". An error. Wanting out of a contract is not one, so the debt carries on and arrives as an invoice, then a letter. Stop the payment after the notice has taken effect, never instead of it.
When a business buyer can still get out early
Without a cooling-off period there are three routes: hit the notice date exactly, negotiate an exit in writing, or challenge a standard term under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977. Only the first is simple.
Hit the notice date exactly
Most people who get stuck for another month did not lack a right, they missed a date. Yell's clause 19.6 asks for notice "14 days prior to expiry of the Initial Period or end of the then current Service Month", and late notice takes effect "as of the end of the next Service Month". Count back from the anniversary on your order form, put the date in your phone, and give notice a week before it.
Ask for the exit in writing
A provider losing a customer in month five would often rather take a smaller sum now than chase a larger one. Put an offer in an email: the month you want to finish, what you will pay, and that you want the domain released. The worst answer is the clause you already had.
Standard terms still have to be reasonable
Where you signed a provider's own printed terms, section 3 of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 applies when one party "deals on the other's written standard terms of business", and a term letting the provider deliver something "substantially different from that which was reasonably expected of him" must meet "the requirement of reasonableness". Section 11 puts the job of proving that on the provider: "It is for those claiming that a contract term or notice satisfies the requirement of reasonableness to show that it does."
Read the right guidance. Most of what turns up in a search for unfair terms is the CMA's guidance, and the CMA's own short guide opens by saying the Consumer Rights Act 2015 "sets out the law on the use of unfair contract terms in consumer contracts". It is not about you. The 1977 Act is, and it covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with Scotland under its own part. Arguing that a clause is unreasonable is a solicitor's job, not a web designer's, and not a letter to write on your own.
Get the domain out before you send the notice
A notice can switch a site off before the domain is safe, so find out whose name the registration is in first. Ubie's terms, for example, hold the domain in its own registrar account for the whole minimum term.
Terms run from that to BUILT's free transfer within 60 days of cancelling, and £40 plus VAT after. Ring the registrar named in the domain record, confirm the registrant, and ask for the transfer code before the service ends. If nobody at the old company is answering, the full route is in transferring a domain when your designer will not reply.
The notice to send, line by line
One notice, sent the way the contract says, then confirmed by email the same day. A phone call with no written record is the most common reason an exit date gets argued about later.
- 1. Your name, your business name, the account number and the service exactly as it is named on the order form.
- 2. One plain sentence: you are giving notice to end the agreement under the clause, quoting its number.
- 3. The date you believe the agreement ends, worked from that clause, so any disagreement surfaces now.
- 4. A request for the domain transfer code, or confirmation that the domain is already in your name.
- 5. A request for the final amount owed, itemised, and confirmation that no further payment will be taken after it.
- 6. A request to confirm receipt and the end date in writing within seven days.
If the contract says notice is by phone, as Yell's does, ring first, note the time and the name of whoever took it, and send the email straight after. Keep everything in one folder. If the reply disputes the end date, that is the moment to pay a solicitor for an hour, not six weeks later.
Where my own terms sit
Sitework's terms are a three-month minimum, then rolling, cancelled in writing at the end of the paid period, with the site and the domain transferred to you at twelve months with no exit fee.
The catch is the one in the table: leave inside the first year and the hosted site comes offline unless we agree a handover. I would rather you read that here than find it later. What that buys a single trade, a bathroom fitter for example, is laid out on the websites for bathroom fitters page.
My end of it: a free mockup of your actual business before you cancel anything or pay anyone, so you are never without a site in between. No deposit and no build fee, then £50 every four weeks covering the site, hosting, the domain, SSL, backups and unlimited small edits.