The quote for building a website is only half the picture. Once the site is live there are bills that come round every year, and they are the part people are rarely told about clearly. Some are unavoidable, some depend on how the site was built, and a few are simply padding.
This guide goes through website running costs one at a time, with the price ranges we typically see in the UK at the time of writing. Your own figures will vary, but you will know what each line on an invoice is for and whether it looks reasonable.
The costs every website has
Domain name
Your domain is your address on the internet, such as yourbusiness.co.uk. You rent it by the year from a registrar. A .co.uk or .com usually costs somewhere between £10 and £20 a year to renew. Watch for cheap first-year offers that renew at a much higher price, and for add-ons you did not ask for.
The domain should be registered in your name or your company’s name, in an account you can log in to. If your designer registered it for you, ask for it to be transferred. Whoever controls the domain controls the website and your email, which is why it pays to know who owns each part of your website.
Hosting
Hosting is the computer your website lives on. For a small business site, shared hosting from a reputable UK provider is typically £5 to £15 a month. Managed WordPress hosting, where the provider also handles speed, backups and security, tends to run from £20 to £40 a month.
Very cheap hosting usually means your site shares a crowded server, which is one of the most common reasons a website feels slow. Hosting is not the place to save the last few pounds.
Security certificate
The padlock in the browser comes from an SSL certificate. Certificates from Let’s Encrypt are free and most good hosts install and renew them automatically. If you are being charged a yearly fee for a basic certificate on a simple brochure website, it is fair to ask why.
Costs that depend on how the site was built
- Premium themes and plugins. WordPress itself is free, but many sites rely on paid extras: a page builder, a forms plugin, a booking system. Licences commonly cost between £30 and £150 a year each. Ask which ones your site uses and who holds the licence.
- Website builder subscriptions. With platforms such as Wix, Squarespace or Shopify you pay a monthly fee that covers hosting and software together. It is simple, but it never stops, and you cannot take the site elsewhere.
- Business email. Addresses at your own domain are sometimes included with hosting. A proper mailbox from Google or Microsoft is usually around £5 to £10 per person per month, and is generally more reliable.
- Online shop fees. If you take payments, the payment provider keeps a small share of each sale. That is a cost of selling, not of the website, but it belongs in your budget.
Maintenance: the cost people skip
A website is software, and software needs looking after. WordPress, its theme and its plugins release updates regularly, many of them security fixes. A site left untouched for a year is far more likely to break or be hacked than one that is kept current.
Someone needs to apply updates, check the site still works afterwards, keep backups and make sure the forms still deliver. You have three options.
- Do it yourself. Free, apart from your time. Realistic if you are comfortable logging in monthly and know what to do when an update goes wrong.
- Pay as you go. Call someone when there is a problem. Cheap in a good year, expensive in a bad one, and problems tend to be found by customers first.
- A care plan. A fixed fee for updates, backups, checks and small changes. Our own website care plans start from £39 a month.
None of these is wrong. The mistake is choosing none of them and assuming a website looks after itself.
What a typical small business site costs per year
For a WordPress brochure website of five to ten pages, a realistic yearly budget looks something like this.
| Item | Typical yearly cost | Can you avoid it? |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | £10–£20 | No |
| Hosting | £60–£180 (shared) or £240–£480 (managed) | No |
| Security certificate | Usually free | Should cost nothing on most hosts |
| Premium plugin or theme licences | £0–£300 | Depends on the build |
| Business email | £60–£120 per mailbox | Sometimes included with hosting |
| Maintenance | Your time, or a care plan | Not safely |
So a simple site that you maintain yourself can cost under £200 a year to run, while the same site on managed hosting with licences, mailboxes and a care plan will be several hundred pounds more. An online shop or a site with bookings and integrations sits higher again.
Questions that prevent surprise bills
Ask these before you agree to a build, or put them to your current supplier if you are not sure what you are paying for.
- What will I pay each year after launch, itemised?
- Are the domain and hosting in my name, and do I have the logins?
- Which paid licences does the site use, and do they renew in my name or yours?
- What do renewals cost after any introductory price ends?
- If I stop paying you, what do I keep?
A supplier who answers these readily is one you can plan around. If the answers are slow or unclear, the costs usually are too.
Where it is reasonable to save
Use the free security certificate. Avoid paying for plugins that duplicate each other. Take an annual hosting plan if it is cheaper and you are happy with the provider. Learn to make small text changes yourself.
Be wary of saving on hosting quality, backups or updates. Those are the savings that turn into a lost weekend and an emergency invoice.
If you are budgeting for a new site, our website packages show the build price up front, and we will tell you the expected yearly costs before you commit to anything.