What a website actually costs to run for a year

When people compare website quotes they compare build prices. It is the wrong number to focus on, because it is the only one you pay once.

Here is what a small business site genuinely costs to keep running for a year, whoever builds it.

The unavoidable bits

• Domain — roughly €10 to €40 a year depending on the extension. A .pt costs more than a .com.
• Hosting — anywhere from €40 a year for something shared and slow to several hundred for something that stays up when you get busy.
• SSL certificate — free if your host issues one properly, or €50 to €100 a year if someone is selling you one you did not need.
• Backups — often quietly not included. Ask.

The bits people forget

• Updates. A WordPress site left alone for a year is not the same site — it is an unpatched one. Somebody has to do this monthly.
• Small changes. Prices, opening hours, a new member of staff, a seasonal notice. Individually trivial. Charged at an hourly rate by someone who has to reload the whole project to make them, less so.
• Someone answering. This is the one with no line item and the highest real cost. When the contact form silently stops sending, how long is it broken before you find out?

Adding it up

Done separately and properly, you are usually looking at €300 to €800 a year before anybody has changed a word on the site. Done cheaply, you are looking at less money and a site that degrades.

Our plans fold all of it into one monthly figure, which is either good value or simply a different way of slicing the same cost depending on how you look at it. We would rather you did the sum yourself — the numbers are on the plans page and there is nothing hidden underneath them.