What does a website actually cost to run each year?
The short answer
For a small business, the recurring cost is usually modest: a domain in the low tens, hosting from very little to a few hundred, and a platform subscription if you use one. The cost that is rarely quoted and frequently largest is changes — if every price update goes through someone else, that becomes the biggest line in your website budget.
On this page
The bills you expect
The domain. An annual fee, typically in the low tens. Country domains and premium names cost more. Watch the renewal rate rather than the first-year price — introductory pricing can renew at several times the headline.
Hosting. Anywhere from a few dollars a month for shared hosting to considerably more for managed. For a small business site, cheap hosting is genuinely sufficient — the constraint on your site's speed is almost always your images, not your server.
A platform subscription, if you use a builder or a managed service. Usually includes hosting, certificates and maintenance, which makes the comparison less like-for-like than it first appears.
The bills people forget
The SSL certificate, if it is not included. It usually is, and free options exist. If someone charges you an annual fee for basic SSL, ask why.
Email. Frequently separate from hosting, and priced per mailbox. Easy to forget until you add a member of staff.
Plugins and apps. On extensible platforms this is the line that creeps. Four or five paid add-ons can exceed the base subscription without anyone noticing, because each was small when it was added.
Booking or ordering software, if separate — sometimes a flat fee, often a percentage of each transaction. The percentage version is the one to model annually, because it scales with your success.
Backups, if not included.
The bill nobody quotes for
What does it cost to change something?
Twenty small changes a year is a conservative estimate for most businesses — prices, hours, a dish removed, a seasonal notice, a member of staff.
- If you do it yourself: zero, and it takes a minute.
- If it goes through a developer: at typical hourly rates, twenty small changes can quietly become the largest single line in your annual website cost.
This is why a cheaper build you cannot edit is frequently the more expensive option by the second year — and why it never appears in a comparison. It is not a bill anyone sends you; it is a bill you discover.
What a realistic year looks like
Rather than quoting numbers that vary by market, here is the shape:
A do-it-yourself builder. One subscription covering hosting, certificate and updates. Plus the domain. Changes are free because you make them. This is the cheapest total for most small businesses, and the trade is that the design and the maintenance work are yours.
A custom site you can edit. Domain, hosting, and either a platform fee or a support arrangement. Changes free for content, quoted for structure. Middle cost, and it removes the largest hidden line.
A custom site you cannot edit. Domain and hosting look cheap. Then every change is billable, and by year two the total is often the highest of the three despite the lowest visible costs.
The questions to ask before signing anything
- What is the total annual cost, including everything?
- What is the renewal price, not the first-year price?
- What is included, and what is billed separately?
- What does it cost me to change a price, and how long does it take?
- If I stop paying, what happens — and what do I keep?
The fourth one is the question that actually determines your yearly spend, and it is the one least often asked.
The change question, answered
The fourth question in that list is the one this article keeps circling, so here is a direct answer rather than another reason to ask it.
On a developer-maintained site, a change costs a message, a quote and a wait — a modest sum and a few days, times however many changes a year you genuinely need. On a builder, a change costs your own time, which is free right up until it is not. Both are real answers and neither is wrong.
Helm's answer is that content changes cost nothing and take a minute, because you make them yourself: text, images, prices, menus, opening hours, and the SEO title and description on each page. Structural work still involves us, and it should. The point is that the routine changes — which are most of them — stop appearing on the bill at all. That is what this article is really about. Not the subscription, but the accumulated cost of everything you left wrong because fixing it was a whole undertaking.