Paying monthly for website design means nobody asks you for a lump sum at the start. Someone designs the site, builds it, hosts it and looks after it, and you pay a fixed amount every month for as long as you use it. For a small business site in the UK that usually sits somewhere between £40 and £200 a month, depending on size and on how much is bundled in.
The design is the part people get caught out on, because it behaves differently from a one off build. On a one off, you pay for the design once and the files are yours. On a monthly arrangement the design is part of a service, which is better in some ways and worse in others. This post puts the line exactly where it sits so you can decide which side of it you want to be on.
What are you actually paying for each month?
A monthly design fee is rarely just design. It is normally four things bundled together, and the reason it looks cheap next to an agency quote is that the design cost has been spread across a couple of years rather than charged on day one.
- The design and build itself, spread over the months rather than paid up front.
- Hosting and the technical bits, which means the server, the SSL certificate, the backups and the software updates.
- Changes, which is the big variable. Some providers include text and photo changes. Some charge by the hour. Ask before you sign, not after.
- Someone being responsible. When the contact form stops sending emails at half eight on a Tuesday, there is a number to ring and it is not your problem to diagnose.
That last one is worth more than it sounds. Most small business sites do not die dramatically. They quietly stop working, and nobody notices for four months because nobody owns them.
The thing to watch is which of the four are genuinely included and which are billed on top. Two providers can quote the same monthly figure and mean very different things by it, and the difference usually shows up in the second year rather than the first.
Who owns the design if you are paying monthly?
While you are renting, you are licensed to use the site rather than holding the files. The domain should still be registered in your business name, and your content, your photos and your words remain yours in every arrangement worth signing. What you do not hold is the built site itself.
That sounds worse than it usually is in practice, because most small business owners never touch the files anyway. But it matters in two situations: if you want to take the exact site to another host later, or if you want the website on your balance sheet as an asset. If either applies to you, either buy outright or pick a provider with a clear buyout route.
Ours is a flat twelve times the monthly price at any point. It is a separate one off payment and it is not reduced by the rent you have already paid, so buying out in month four costs the same as buying out in year four. That is deliberately simple, and it is the sort of thing to get in writing from anyone you deal with. We went through both sides of this properly in should you own your website or rent it.
What happens when you want the design changed?
This is where monthly and one off arrangements really part company, and it is worth being precise about the difference between two things people muddle together.
Content changes
A content change is words, prices, photos, opening hours, a new member of staff, a service you have stopped offering. On a good monthly arrangement these are included and unlimited, because the provider would rather you sent an email than let the site go stale. With us they are free for as long as you rent, and you send them however you like.
On a one off build, content changes are normally where the money quietly goes. Either you learn the content management system and do them yourself, or you pay a small fee each time, or you put it off. Most people put it off, which is how you end up with 2023 prices on a 2026 website.
Design changes
A design change is the layout, the colours, the structure. That is a different job and it takes real hours, so nobody sensible gives it away without limit. We include one design revision with the build: you see the design, you tell us what you want different, we change it. After that, the yearly redesign is the place for bigger changes.
If a provider tells you design changes are unlimited, ask what they mean and get the answer in writing. Usually it turns out to mean something narrower than it sounded, and finding that out in month two is a lot less annoying than finding it out in month nine.
What is a free yearly redesign actually worth?
Websites do not wear out, but they do date. Typography moves, the way people expect a site to behave on a phone moves, and your business changes shape. A site built in 2022 usually looks like a site built in 2022.
The going rate for a proper redesign of a small business site in the UK is roughly the same as the original build, because it is largely the same work. If your monthly fee includes a redesign every year, the way ours does, that is a meaningful part of what you are paying for. If it does not, you are on the same treadmill as everyone else: a good site, then a tired site, then an expensive decision.
Two honest caveats. Most businesses do not want a redesign every single year, and a redesign is not a rescue for a site that is failing because nobody can find it. If nobody is landing on the site at all, the answer is in getting found on Google when you only work locally, not in a new colour scheme.
When is a one off design fee the better buy?
Plenty of the time, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling. Buy the design outright if:
- You have the cash and you plan to keep the site a long time. Over five or six years, a one off build plus modest hosting is usually the cheaper arithmetic.
- You want it on the books. Some businesses want the website as an asset, and a rental is a running cost instead.
- You need something genuinely custom. A booking system that talks to your existing software, a members area, an unusual integration. Packaged monthly sites are built to a pattern and a real custom build is not.
- You already have someone technical. If your nephew genuinely does maintain sites for a living and genuinely will answer the phone, half the value of a monthly arrangement disappears.
Monthly suits the opposite case: you would rather not find a few thousand pounds this quarter, you have nobody in house, and you want the site to be somebody's job rather than your problem. There is more on how the model works in pay monthly websites and how they actually work.
The questions that expose a bad monthly deal
Not all monthly design arrangements are the same shape, and the differences are all in the contract rather than the sales page. Ask these six, in this order.
- What is the minimum term? Some are twelve, twenty four or thirty six months. Ours is not a long tie in: you pay the first three months up front to start, then cancel any month you like with a month's notice.
- What does it cost to leave, and what do I leave with? Get the buyout figure and whether it is fixed. Get the answer on the domain in the same email.
- Are content changes included, and is there a fair use limit? If there is a limit, ask for the number.
- How many design revisions come with the build? One is normal on a fixed price. More than one usually means it is priced in somewhere.
- Is hosting, SSL and email included or billed separately? Separate billing is not wrong, but it changes the comparison.
- Is there anything payable on top at the start? With us there is no setup fee, and the first three months up front is the whole of it.
There is a longer version of this list in ten things to check before you pay a web designer, and it is worth ten minutes whichever route you go down.
How does the arithmetic actually compare?
Do this on paper before you decide anything, because the answer flips depending on how long you keep the site. Take the one off quote, add hosting, add the domain, add a realistic figure for the changes you will want in a year, and multiply out over five years. Then take the monthly figure and multiply that out over the same five years.
On a three page site, a one off build at the lower end of the UK market plus modest hosting usually comes out cheaper over five or six years. Over two or three years the monthly route is normally ahead, because the design cost has not all landed yet and the maintenance is somebody else's job. Somewhere in the middle the two lines cross, and roughly where they cross depends on how much changing the site costs you each year.
The mistake is comparing the build quote against the monthly figure as though they cover the same ground. They do not. One of them includes next February's hosting invoice, the certificate renewal and the afternoon someone spends fixing the contact form, and one of them does not.
Does paying monthly get you a worse design?
Not inherently, but it does get you a different process. A monthly provider is building to a proven pattern rather than starting from a blank page, because that is what makes the price work. You will be shown something close to finished rather than three concepts on a mood board.
For most small businesses that is the right trade. The things that decide whether a small business site works are not conceptual: does it load fast on a phone, is the phone number obvious, does it say what you do and where, does it prove you are real. A pattern that gets those right beats a bespoke design that gets them wrong.
Where a monthly arrangement genuinely is the wrong answer is when the design is the product. A photographer, a designer, an architect, a high end restaurant. If someone is judging your taste by your website, pay for taste. Either way, you will get a better result if you turn up with a proper brief, which we covered in how to brief a web designer.
What this looks like with us
We design, build and run small business websites for a monthly fee. Starter is one page at £49, Essential is three pages at £79, Professional is five pages at £99 and Business is ten pages at £149, all per month and all excluding VAT. Online shops start at £99 a month. You pay the first three months up front to start and there is no setup fee.
Included in that: hosting, SSL, business email, an image gallery, an FAQ section, customer reviews, a floating call bar, a free .co.uk domain with a package and a redesign every year. One design revision comes with the build, and content changes stay unlimited and free. Cancel any month with a month's notice, or buy the site outright whenever you like for twelve times the monthly.
If you want a number for your own situation rather than a range, price up your website and it will tell you before you speak to anybody. And if the sums say buy it outright, buy it outright. That is a perfectly good answer and we would rather you heard it from us now than worked it out in a year.
