Everybody talks about what a website costs to build. Almost nobody talks about what it costs every year after that. Which is a shame, because that is the number you actually live with.
This is a breakdown of the annual cost. Without figures, because prices vary by provider, but with what to watch on every line.
What you always pay
The domain. Annually, usually a small amount. The cheapest item on the list and the one you must never let lapse. Turn on auto renewal and check that the contact email on it still works. An expired domain is the worst problem on this page.
Hosting. From very little to a real monthly bill, depending on the site. A static site hosts for almost nothing. A shop with a database and an admin costs more.
The certificate. Most hosts now include it automatically and free. If somebody bills it separately, ask why.
What you almost always pay, even when nobody planned for it
Updates. This is the line quotes love to leave out, and it turns up later anyway.
A site running on a content management system needs updates for security. Not for new features. An un-updated site with an admin panel is a target within a year and a problem within two.
A static site with no admin has almost none of this cost, which is one reason it is sometimes the better choice even though it sounds old fashioned.
Small changes. A price, opening hours, a new service, swapping a photo. Over a year this adds up to more than you expect. Agree up front whether you will do it yourself or pay for it, for example as part of website maintenance.
Backups. Whether your host makes them, how often, and above all whether anybody has ever restored one. A backup nobody has restored is an assumption.
What you pay only if you use it
- Email on your domain. Sometimes bundled with hosting, sometimes separate.
- Analytics. Free at the basic level, paid if you want your data outside the big providers.
- A booking or ordering system, if you use somebody else's. Usually a monthly fee or a cut of transactions.
- Licensed fonts and stock photos, if the site uses them. Some licences are annual rather than perpetual. This one catches a lot of people out at audit time.
Where saving makes sense
Choose the technology to match how often you will change the site. If you edit text twice a year, you do not need an expensive admin and its maintenance.
Do not buy hosting sized for traffic you do not have. Moving up is easy at any point.
Cancel what you do not use. After two years of operation, almost everybody is paying for at least one service they forgot about.
Where saving backfires
On the domain and its renewal. See above.
On backups. The gap between "we have backups" and "we restored a backup" becomes obvious on the worst possible day.
On updates. A skipped update is not a saved cost. It is a deferred cost with interest.
The question to ask right away
Before you accept the site, ask: what happens if I do not contact you for a year?
A good answer is that the site keeps running, you hold every login, and you know what needs renewing and when.
A bad answer is that nobody has ever tried.
How I do it
The domain, hosting and code are yours from the start and registered to you, not to me. I always separate one off costs from annual ones, because otherwise the annual ones surface a year later and feel like a hidden fee.
If you want a site with the lowest possible running cost, say so at the beginning. It changes how I build it. And if you already have a site and need someone to look after it, tell me what it runs on in the enquiry form.