Cheap pay monthly websites are usually cheap for a reason, and the reason is almost never the design. It is the page limit, the length of the contract, the notice period, the cost of changes, and who ends up owning the domain. A low headline figure can still be good value for a small business, but only once you know what sits underneath it. Here is what to check before you agree to anything.
What does "cheap pay monthly website design" usually mean?
The low end of the market is a mix of three different things wearing the same label. Knowing which one you are being offered tells you most of what you need to know.
The first is a self build platform with a monthly subscription. You get the software and you do the work. That can be genuinely cheap and, for some people, genuinely fine. The second is a template shop, where a designer drops your logo and text into an existing layout and charges a small monthly fee for hosting and the occasional tweak. The third is a proper rented website, where somebody designs it for you, hosts it, supports it, and keeps changing it for as long as you pay.
All three can quote a small number per month. Only one of them includes somebody doing the work. If you are weighing these up against each other, our piece on comparing the four ways to get a website built lays out the options side by side.
The six things a low monthly price usually leaves out
1. The page limit, and what counts as a page
Very low prices nearly always come with a tight page cap. That is fair enough, as long as you know the cap before you start writing your content. The problem is that "page" is defined differently by different providers. Some count a blog as one page no matter how many posts it holds. Others count every post. Some count a landing page for each town you cover, which is exactly the sort of page a local business actually wants.
Ask what a page means in their system, and what an extra one costs once you are live. If adding a page is expensive or requires a tier upgrade, a four page starter site can get costly fast.
2. The contract length
This is the big one. A lot of cheap monthly deals are only cheap because you have committed for twelve, twenty four or thirty six months. The monthly figure is a finance payment in disguise. Multiply it out before you compare it to anything. A low monthly fee over three years is not a cheap website, it is an expensive website paid slowly.
3. Exit fees and the cost of leaving
Separate from the contract term, some providers charge a release fee, a transfer fee or a final balancing payment when you go. Others simply switch the site off and keep the files. Neither is dishonest if it is written down, but it is rarely on the pricing page. Ask directly: if I cancel in month seven, what do I pay and what do I take with me?
4. Who owns the domain
Plenty of cheap deals include a free domain, which is fine, but check whose name is on the registration. If the provider registers it to their own company, moving away later means asking them to release it. Most will. Some charge for it. A few drag their heels. Your domain is the one asset you really cannot afford to lose, because it carries your email and every link anyone has ever made to you. Our guide on choosing a domain name covers what to look for.
5. What a change costs
A cheap monthly fee often buys you hosting and nothing else. Change your opening hours, swap a photo, update a price, and you are into hourly billing or a support ticket queue. For a business that changes prices once a year this barely matters. For a trade putting up new job photos every month, it matters a lot. Ask what is included, what is billed, and how long a small change normally takes.
6. Email, SSL and the running bits
Hosting, an SSL certificate and business email are sometimes extras rather than inclusions. Individually they are small. Added together they can double a very low headline price. If you want to understand what you are actually paying for behind the scenes, website hosting explained without the jargon is a short read.
How to tell a cheap deal from a false economy
Price alone will not tell you. The test is whether the cheap thing still does the job in eighteen months. Run through this list before you commit:
- Total cost over three years. Monthly fee times 36, plus any up front charge, plus any annual charges. Compare that number, not the monthly one.
- The notice period. One month is reasonable. Twelve months is a contract pretending to be flexible.
- What happens to the site if you stop paying. With rented sites it comes down, which is the deal. Make sure you know that going in.
- Who holds the domain registration. Your name, your email address on the record, ideally.
- Whether you can edit it yourself. A simple editor you can actually use saves money every single month.
- What the support actually is. A person who answers, or a form that generates a ticket number.
- Whether the design gets refreshed. A site that is never touched will look dated in three years whatever you paid.
- Mobile speed. Cheap template sites are often heavy. A slow website costs you work whether it cost you £20 a month or £2,000 up front.
If a provider answers all eight of those clearly and the number still looks low, you have probably found a decent deal. If they get vague on two or three, that is where the money is hiding.
When the cheap option is genuinely the right answer
We rent websites for a living, and there are still plenty of people who should not rent one from us or anyone else.
If you are testing an idea and you are not sure the business will exist next year, build something yourself on a free or near free platform. Spend nothing. Find out if the phone rings. If you are a one person operation who gets every job through word of mouth and a local Facebook group, a single tidy page with your number, your area and some photos is enough, and you can do that yourself in a weekend.
If you enjoy fiddling with software and you have the evenings free, a self build platform will cost you less than any designed site. The trade is your time, and whether you will keep it updated once the novelty wears off. We wrote seven honest ways to spend less on a website for exactly this situation, and most of them do not involve paying us.
Where cheap stops being sensible is when the website is doing real work: taking bookings, carrying a product catalogue, convincing someone to trust you with ten thousand pounds of building work, or competing against five other firms in your town who all have decent sites.
Where our pricing sits, and what it includes
We are not the cheapest monthly number you will find, and we would rather say that plainly. Starter is £49 a month for up to 5 pages, Essential £79 for up to 10, Professional £99 for up to 15, and Business £149 for up to 25. All exclude VAT. Extra pages are £10 a month each, or five for £40 a month.
What sits under those numbers: hosting, SSL, business email, a free .co.uk domain, the Nova editor so you can change things yourself, an image gallery, FAQ section, customer reviews, a floating call bar, a service area map, and a free redesign every year. AI copywriting and AI image creation are included at no extra cost, and you can supply your own words and photos instead or mix the two. A blog is included on every tier except Starter, where it is £10 a month.
There is no setup fee. You pay the first three months up front to start, then monthly from month four. There is no contract and no exit fee: cancel any month with a month's notice. One design revision is included, and content changes (words, prices, photos) are unlimited and free. If you would rather own it outright, that is a separate one off price list starting at £588 for a single page Starter, and you can buy at the start or years later for the same figure.
If you want to see what your own site would come to, you can price up your website in a couple of minutes without talking to anybody.
What to do before you say yes to anything
Get two or three quotes and ask every one of them the same questions from the list above. Write the answers down. Differences in what is included explain most of the gap between quotes, which is the point of why UK website quotes vary so much.
Then work out what you actually need before anyone tries to sell you a tier. Four good pages that say what you do, where you do it, what it costs and how to get hold of you will beat fifteen thin ones. Our guide to briefing a web designer will save you money with any provider, cheap or not, because a clear brief means fewer rounds of changes.
Frequently asked questions
Is a £20 a month website any good?
It can be, if it is a self build platform and you are doing the work yourself. At that price nobody is designing anything for you or making changes on your behalf. Check whether hosting, email and SSL are included or extra, and check the contract length. A low figure tied to a three year term is not really a low figure.
Can I move a cheap pay monthly website to another provider?
Usually not the site itself. Most rented and template sites are built on the provider's own system, so the design stays with them when you leave. What you should always be able to take is your domain name and your content, which is why it matters that the domain is registered in your name. Ask before you sign, not after.
Why do some providers charge a setup fee as well as a monthly fee?
The design work all happens at the start, so some providers bill for it separately. That is a reasonable model when the figure is stated clearly on the quote, and you should add it to your three year total. RentAWeb has no setup fee. We take the first three months up front before design work starts, then it is monthly from month four.
Does a cheaper website rank worse on Google?
Price is not a ranking factor. What tends to matter is whether the pages load quickly, work properly on a phone, and answer the questions people are actually searching. A cheap site that does those things well can do better than an expensive one that does not. Our piece on getting found on Google when you only work locally goes into the practical side.
Should I rent or just buy a website outright?
Rent if you want the cost spread, the maintenance handled and the flexibility to stop. Buy if you want the asset on your books and you are comfortable arranging hosting and updates afterwards. There is no universally right answer, which is why we wrote a whole post on whether to own your website or rent it.
The short version
A cheap monthly price is only cheap if the total over three years is low, the notice period is short, the domain is yours and small changes do not cost extra. Check those four things and you will spot a false economy in about five minutes. RentAWeb rents small business websites from £49 a month excluding VAT, with no setup fee, no contract and a month's notice, built and supported remotely by phone, email and video. If that suits, rent a website. If a weekend and a free platform suits you better, do that instead.
