For most UK small businesses, running a website costs somewhere between about £10 and £60 a month once you add up hosting, the domain, email, backups and the odd bit of help. A fully managed website, where someone else builds it, hosts it and keeps it current, is usually £40 to £150 a month. Our own packages start at £49 a month plus VAT for up to five pages. The spread is wide because the monthly bill is really several small bills stacked together.
What is actually in a monthly website bill?
When someone asks how much a website costs per month, they often picture one tidy direct debit. In practice, a typical website has four or five separate payments going out, some monthly, some annually, some once every three years when you forget and the domain nearly lapses.
Here is what sits inside the number, before anyone talks about design.
- Hosting. The computer your site lives on, billed monthly or yearly.
- Domain name. Your address, billed yearly, sometimes for two years at a time.
- Business email. Usually charged per mailbox, per month.
- SSL certificate. The padlock. Often free now, sometimes still charged.
- Software updates. On WordPress and similar systems, somebody has to apply them.
- Backups. Either included, a plugin, or a separate service.
- Support and changes. The cost of getting a phone number changed or a page added.
- Add ons. Booking systems, forms, galleries, shop plugins, each with their own fee.
Every one of those is small on its own. Together they are the reason your card statement shows four website related payments and you are not quite sure what two of them are for.
The line items, one at a time
Hosting
Basic shared hosting from a UK provider is cheap, typically a few pounds a month if you pay for a year up front, more if you pay monthly. Managed or higher performance hosting costs more, often in the low tens of pounds a month. The cheap end is genuinely fine for a five page brochure site with modest traffic. It becomes a false economy when the server is slow and your pages crawl, which is a real cost even though it never appears on a bill. We wrote about that in why a slow website costs you work, and there is a plain English explanation of what you are renting in website hosting explained without the jargon.
Watch the renewal price. Introductory hosting deals are often priced for the first year only and step up noticeably at renewal.
The domain name
A .co.uk is the cheapest common option and usually renews for a modest sum each year. A .com costs a bit more. Niche endings vary a lot, and some are priced low for the first year then renew much higher, so check the renewal figure rather than the headline. Spread across twelve months, a domain is pennies a month, but it is the one bill you cannot afford to miss. If you are still picking yours, choosing a domain name: what matters and what doesn't covers the decisions that actually matter.
Business email
This is the line that surprises people. Mainstream business email is usually priced per user per month, so three people on the team means three fees. Some hosting plans include basic mailboxes at no extra cost. If you only need two or three addresses and do not need shared calendars and cloud storage, the included option is often enough.
SSL certificate
The padlock in the browser bar. Free certificates are now standard and perfectly adequate for a normal business site. If you are being charged a yearly fee for a basic certificate, ask why. There are paid certificates with extra validation, but a plumber's website does not need one.
Updates and security
If your site runs on WordPress, there is a stream of updates for the core software, the theme and every plugin. Skip them for a year and you have a problem waiting. Someone has to apply them and check nothing broke afterwards, and that is either your Sunday evening or a paid maintenance plan. The real cost of a "free" WordPress website goes into what that work involves.
Backups
Some hosts include daily backups. Some include them but make restoring one a paid job. Some include nothing. A backup you have never tested restoring is not really a backup. Ask your host two questions: how often, and how do I get a copy back.
Support and changes
The genuinely variable one. Independent designers and agencies commonly bill small changes at an hourly rate, or sell a retainer covering a set number of hours. A five minute price change is rarely billed at five minutes. Retainers vary enormously in what they include, which is why we pulled it apart in what website maintenance actually costs in the UK.
How much does a website cost per month if you run it yourself?
Say you have a WordPress site built for you as a one off, and you handle the running of it. A realistic monthly total might look like modest hosting, a domain spread over the year, one or two mailboxes, free SSL, and a couple of paid plugins for forms or a booking calendar. That often lands somewhere in the region of £15 to £40 a month, depending mostly on email and plugins.
What is not in that figure is your time. Updates, a broken contact form, a hosting migration when the cheap plan gets slow, chasing a renewal invoice you did not recognise. If you enjoy that sort of thing, the DIY route is genuinely the cheapest way to run a website and we will not pretend otherwise. If you do not, the time is real money and you should count it.
What about website builders and all in one platforms?
Subscription builders bundle hosting, SSL and the editor into one monthly fee, usually with the domain free for the first year. Business tier plans on the well known platforms generally sit in the low tens of pounds a month, more for shop features, and email is usually extra.
That is honest value if you are happy to build and maintain the site yourself. You are paying for the tools, not for anyone's time. The moment you want someone to design it properly, write it, structure it and keep it up to date, you are back to paying for a person. Comparing the four ways to get a website built sets the options side by side.
What does one all in monthly fee cover?
The rented, fully managed model rolls the lot into a single figure: design, build, hosting, SSL, domain, email, the editor, changes and support. Our own pricing, all plus VAT, works by page count:
- Starter, up to 5 pages, £49 a month.
- Essential, up to 10 pages, £79 a month.
- Professional, up to 15 pages, £99 a month.
- Business, up to 25 pages, £149 a month.
Extra pages are £10 a month each, or five for £40 a month. A service area map is on every tier. A blog is included everywhere except Starter, where it is £10 a month. Online bookings and a price calculator are included on Business and are £20 and £25 a month respectively on the other tiers. A .co.uk domain is free with a package. AI copywriting and AI image creation are included at no cost, and you can supply your own words and photos instead, or mix the two.
There is no setup fee. You pay the first three months up front to start, then monthly from month four, and there is no contract, so you can cancel any month with a month's notice. One design revision is included; content changes such as words, prices and photos are unlimited and free. Shops are priced by product count, which pay monthly online shops: how the pricing works explains properly. You can price up your website in a couple of minutes without speaking to anyone.
Which works out cheaper over five years?
Over a long stretch, paying once and running the site yourself is usually the lower cash total, as long as nothing needs rebuilding. The catch is that websites do need rebuilding. A site built today will look dated in four or five years, and the redesign is another lump sum.
Renting spreads everything and includes a free redesign every year, so the site does not drift into looking old. The tradeoff is that you do not own the site while you rent. If owning matters, you can buy outright at the start or at any point later: Starter with up to 5 pages is £1,188, Essential up to 10 pages £1,788, Professional up to 15 pages £2,388, Business up to 25 pages £2,988, all plus VAT. That is a separate one off payment, not reduced by rent already paid, and after it hosting, support and the Nova editor are £250 a year or £30 a month. The full argument is in should you own your website or rent it?
Where monthly costs quietly creep up
A few things to check on your own bills before you assume the total is what you think it is.
- Renewal pricing. First year hosting and domain deals usually step up. Find the renewal figure.
- Per user email. Adding two staff adds two monthly fees, every month, forever.
- Plugin subscriptions. Booking systems, forms and galleries often renew annually on a card you have forgotten about.
- Hourly change fees. Six small edits a year at an hourly minimum adds up to more than most maintenance plans.
- VAT. Nearly all of these prices are quoted excluding it. Ours are too.
If the goal is to spend less rather than to understand the bill, seven honest ways to spend less on a website has the practical moves, and affordable is not the same as cheap covers where cutting costs actually hurts.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cheaper to pay yearly for hosting?
Usually, yes. Most hosts discount an annual payment compared with twelve monthly ones, sometimes significantly. The tradeoff is that you commit for a year and refunds are rare after the first month or so. If you are confident in the host, pay annually. If you are testing them, pay monthly for a few months first.
Do I still pay monthly if nobody visits my website?
Yes. Hosting, the domain and email are fixed costs whether you get a hundred enquiries or none. That is worth knowing before you build a twenty page site you have no plan for. A smaller, well targeted site costs less to run and is easier to keep current.
Can I move my website to a cheaper host later?
Normally yes, if you own the files and the domain is registered in your name. Moving a standard WordPress site between hosts is routine work. Sites built on proprietary builders or rented platforms generally cannot be moved, which is a fair reason to ask about ownership before you sign up anywhere.
Does a monthly fee include changes to the words on my site?
It depends entirely on the provider, so ask. Some retainers cover a set number of hours and bill beyond that. On our packages, content changes such as words, prices and photos are unlimited and free, and you can also edit the site yourself in the Nova editor whenever you like.
The short version
A website's monthly cost is not one number, it is five or six small ones. Hosting, domain, email, SSL, backups, updates and support each have a price, and the cheapest version of each is often fine for a small business that is willing to manage them. The reason managed monthly packages cost more is the person attached to them.
RentAWeb builds and runs small business websites for one monthly fee, from £49 a month plus VAT for up to five pages, with hosting, SSL, business email, a free .co.uk domain, unlimited content changes and a free redesign every year included. No setup fee and no contract. Everything is done remotely, by phone, email and video, and you can see who you would be dealing with or just look at what a rented website costs before you decide anything.
