The short answer
A UK recruitment agency should pay for a site in six separately priced lines: the brochure pages, the job listings, the applicant flow, the link to its applicant tracking system, the advert rules built into the posting form, and ownership with exit terms. The first line is the cheapest. The job listings and the applicant flow are where quotes diverge, and where the monthly charges hide.
Key takeaways
- A recruitment site is not a brochure with a vacancies page. It publishes adverts that carry legal content rules.
- Ask every supplier to split the build from the monthly charges, and to state the exit terms.
- Compare three years of cost, because recurring lines are usually missing from the headline price.
- The posting form should make a compliant advert the easy one for a consultant to publish.
- If the firm's tracking system already publishes job pages, the right spend may be small.
A UK recruitment agency that advertises a job is doing something a law firm or an accountancy practice never does on its website. The Recruitment and Employment Confederation's guidance on advertising says the Conduct Regulations require each advert to give the agency's full name and to say whether the job is temporary or permanent. A site that publishes vacancies is therefore publishing regulated content every day, and the person who builds it has to know that. Most quotes for recruitment websites price the pages and say nothing about the adverts. This article prices the part they leave out.
What a recruitment site has that a brochure site does not
A brochure site shows what the firm does, while a recruitment site also operates a small publishing business on the firm's behalf. Vacancies go up and come down. Candidates upload CVs. A consultant who is rushing can publish an advert that leaves out the location. None of that exists on a site for a practice that sells advice, which is why a quote written for one sector does not transfer to the other. Pricing guides written for an accountancy practice or a law firm cover a different kind of site; the six lines below are the ones a recruiter adds.
| Line | What it covers | Ask the supplier | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Brochure pages | Home and sector pages | How many pages, and who writes them? | Copy assumed but not priced |
| 2. Job listings | Vacancy pages and filters | Built here, bought in or fed from our system? | A monthly fee that is not on the quote |
| 3. Applicant flow | Apply form and CV upload | Where do applications land, and who can see them? | CVs emailed to one inbox |
| 4. Tracking system link | Feed or integration with the firm's existing system | Which system, and who fixes it when it breaks? | “Integration” with no named system |
| 5. Advert rules | Required fields in the posting form | Can a consultant publish without the agency's name or the job type? | Free-text box and nothing else |
| 6. Ownership and exit | Domain, code, content and candidate data | What do we receive if we leave, and in what format? | Silence on exit terms |
Where the quotes diverge
The job listings line is where one quote becomes twice another, because it can be built once or rented monthly. A supplier can build a vacancy system into the site for a fixed fee or rent a hosted job board by the month, and a third route pulls listings from the firm's own tracking system through a feed. The build is dearer on day one and cheaper over time, and the rental reverses that. A feed from the firm's system sits between them and depends on how well that system behaves. Each is legitimate. What is not legitimate is a quote that does not say which one it is. The checks we run on a specialist before introducing one to a firm are set out on our page for recruitment agencies.
| Line | Quote A | Quote B |
|---|---|---|
| Headline price | £9,000 “all in” | £9,000 in two lines |
| Build, pages and apply form | Not split out | £7,200 |
| Job listings set-up | Not split out | £1,800 |
| Monthly job board and hosting | Unstated: ask | £105 a month, £3,780 over 36 months |
| Known cost over three years | £9,000 plus an unknown | £12,780 |
The 36 months are a convention, not a rule. A recruitment site usually needs rebuilding sooner or later, so three years is long enough to expose a monthly charge and short enough to stay realistic. Put the firm's own quotes in the table and add a row for anything a supplier says is “included” until it names it.
What the advert has to say
The posting form is the place a site can make a compliant advert automatic, and the place a cheap build usually does not. The REC guidance, which summarises the Conduct Regulations, says an advert has to give the full name of the agency or employment business and say whether the job is temporary or permanent. Where a rate of pay is shown, it adds, the advert has to state the nature of the work, the location and the minimum experience or training needed to earn it. The government's overview of the Conduct Regulations is the starting point for what applies to a given firm, and a partner should read the current regulation rather than rely on this summary.
What follows for the quote is practical. If those items are required fields in the posting form, a consultant cannot publish an advert that leaves them out, and the firm does not depend on memory at five on a Friday. If the form is a single free-text box, compliance depends on whoever is typing. Ask the supplier to show the form, then ask what happens when a required field is empty. A builder who has made recruitment sites before will answer at once.
Candidate data and the applicant flow
Every CV a site collects is personal data, so the applicant flow is a data decision before it is a design one. The firm decides why candidate details are collected and how they are used, which in most arrangements makes it responsible for them, while the builder or the platform host acts as a supplier. That has a price consequence. A flow that stores applications in the firm's own system costs more to connect than one that emails them to a shared inbox, and the inbox costs more later, when a candidate asks for their details to be deleted and nobody knows which of fourteen mailboxes holds them.
Ask in writing where applications are stored and how a deletion request is carried out. Nothing in the answers needs legal drafting. It needs a supplier who has thought about it, and the answers belong in the contract as well as the call.
What the search engine reads on a vacancy page
A vacancy page can carry structured data so that Google can read the job, and a supplier should say whether it does. Google publishes documentation on job posting markup, and it is the supplier's job to read the current version, since the required properties are theirs to implement. The question for the quote is whether each vacancy page produces the markup automatically and whether an expired vacancy is taken down or marked as closed. A site that leaves filled jobs live sends candidates to roles that no longer exist, which costs the firm goodwill and does the supplier no harm at all.
A made-up firm, priced
Run the scorecard on one firm and the winning quote is often not the largest or the smallest. Take a UK recruitment agency of eighteen people, invented for this example, placing office staff and finance temps. It already uses a tracking system that can publish a vacancy feed. Line 4 is therefore short work, and line 2 should be a feed from that system and not a second board built from scratch. The partner asks two suppliers for the six lines. One quotes a full vacancy build at about twice the other, with no mention of the feed. The other prices the feed, shows the posting form and states the monthly charge.
The second may not be the cheapest on day one, but it is the one whose three-year figure the partner can write down. That is the useful result: not a bargain, but a number that survives the first invoice. If the partner also wants a view on whether the existing site is salvageable before choosing, the checks in whether a paid audit is worth it take a partner an afternoon.
Who updates the site once it is live
A site that needs a developer to change a vacancy has priced the supplier in, not the consultant. Decide before signing who adds and removes jobs, and who keeps the brochure pages current. If a partner expects a marketing hire to do it, the hours-based sum in when a firm should stop outsourcing marketing applies: work out the hours before comparing the retainer with a salary. Vacancy maintenance is routine work and does not need an agency, but it does need an owner, and a site with no owner drifts into the state in which advert rules are broken by accident.
What to check ninety days after launch
A new recruitment site has worked when vacancies stay current and applications reach the right place. Set the number of live vacancies on the site beside the number the consultants believe are open. Submit a test application and follow it to wherever it lands. Publish a test advert with the required fields blank and confirm the form refuses it. Then check that the monthly charges on the first three invoices match the quote line for line. A mismatch at this stage is cheap to correct and hard to correct in month eighteen.
Before you sign anything
Want the six lines checked against a quote?
Free to your firm. The agency pays us, and only if the relationship works, so we have no reason to favour the dearer supplier.
Get a recommendationWhen not to buy a new site
Do not rebuild when the current site works and the real fault is in one place. If the pages are sound and the trouble is a slow vacancy update or an application form that loses candidates, a fix to that one line costs a fraction of a new build. If the firm's tracking system already publishes good job pages, a brochure refresh may be all that is needed. And if the firm cannot yet say what a new site is meant to change, such as more registrations or fewer unsuitable applicants, the first spend should be on deciding that. For how we introduce one specialist when a firm does need one, see how it works.
Frequently asked questions
What recruitment agency partners ask about a new site.
Does a recruitment agency need its own job board?
Not always. If the firm already runs an applicant tracking system that publishes job pages, a second board duplicates work and creates two places to keep current. A site that only needs to show live vacancies can often take a feed from the system it has. Ask what the existing system can already do before paying for a build.
What must a UK recruitment agency's job advert say?
The Recruitment and Employment Confederation's guidance on the Conduct Regulations says an advert must give the agency's full name and say whether the job is temporary or permanent. Where a rate of pay appears it must also state the nature of the work, the location and the minimum experience needed. Read the current regulation before relying on this summary.
Who owns the candidate data a new site collects?
In most arrangements the agency decides why and how the data is used, which makes it the controller, and a builder or platform host is a supplier acting for it. Ask the supplier in writing where applications are stored and how a deletion request is carried out. The firm is accountable, not the builder.
Why does a recruitment website quote look cheap?
Usually because the recurring lines are missing. A job board feed, hosting and support are often billed monthly and left off the headline figure. Ask for the build and the monthly charges as separate lines, then compare three years of cost, not the first invoice.
Should a recruitment agency redesign or fix its current site?
Fix it when the pages are sound and the problem is one part, such as slow vacancy updates or an application form that loses candidates. A rebuild is justified when the platform cannot do what the firm needs or the firm cannot get its data out. A short audit of the current site settles which.
Sources and useful reading
- Recruitment and Employment Confederation, legal guide: advertising and marketing, for the advert content requirements under the Conduct Regulations.
- gov.uk, overview of the Conduct Regulations 2003, for the regulations that apply to employment agencies and employment businesses.
- Google Search Central, job posting structured data, for the markup a vacancy page can carry.
This article is commercial decision support and is not legal advice. The scorecard is our suggestion, not a standard. Both tables are invented to show the method and quote no supplier. The advert requirements are summarised from the REC guidance, not from the regulation itself, so read the current regulation before relying on them. Sources were located on 17 October 2026.