How much does a website cost per month?

How much does a website cost per month? For a local business, between $0 and about $200, and the honest middle is $17 to $50. The spread is not really about the website. It is about how much of the work you are doing yourself.

The monthly cost of each option

Read that table twice, because the interesting column is not the price. It is the last one. Every option that is cheap per month is cheap because you are the one doing the work, and every option where somebody else does it costs more per month or a great deal more upfront.

What "running cost" actually includes

When people ask what it costs to run a website, they usually have one number in mind and there are four.

• Hosting. Bundled into a builder subscription. Separately, roughly $5 to $30 a month depending on what you buy.
• The domain. Usually $20 to $40 a year. Builders often include it free for the first year only, so it appears in year two and surprises people.
• An SSL certificate. The padlock. Included nearly everywhere now, and if somebody is charging you separately for it, ask why.
• A business email address. Your name at your own domain rather than a gmail address. Typically $6 to $7 a month per mailbox if bought on its own.

Add those up on a builder and a realistic all in figure for a small local site is $25 to $40 a month, not the $17 on the pricing page.

Why the monthly price is not monthly

This one is worth checking before you sign anything. Most builders advertise a monthly price that is only available if you pay for a year in advance.

When you compare options, compare the same thing: what leaves your account this month, and what leaves it every month after.

What maintaining a website really means

Maintenance sounds technical. For a local business it almost never is. It is a list of small, boring, unavoidable jobs.

• Your prices went up and the site still shows the old ones
• You added a service, or stopped offering one
• Winter hours are different from summer hours
• You changed your phone number and it is still on three pages
• A photo of a job you are proud of, that should be on the front page

None of that is hard. All of it takes a Tuesday evening you would rather spend elsewhere, and the cost of skipping it is not zero. A site that is eighteen months out of date is not neutral. It actively misinforms the person deciding whether to call you.

Agencies price this as a retainer, $200 to $500 a month, and for a business of a certain size that is fair. For a two truck operation it is not.

Do you actually own it?

This is the question people ask last and should ask first, because it decides what your monthly payment is really buying.

The domain. If it is registered in your name, you own it and you can take it anywhere. If your builder or your web guy registered it under their account, leaving gets awkward at exactly the moment you want it to be easy. Ask whose name is on it.

The site itself. A site built in a builder does not move. The content is yours, the design is not, and switching platforms means rebuilding. That is not a scandal, it is how they all work, but it means the monthly fee is rent rather than a mortgage.

Your customer list. The one that genuinely matters. If enquiries live in an email inbox, they are yours but unusable. If they live in a system, make sure you can export them.

What $47 a month covers

Ours is $47 a month, billed monthly, with no setup fee and no contract. It is worth being specific about what that does and does not include, because vague is how people end up disappointed.

You get the website built for you, your photos, your services and your prices, with your own domain on it and hosting included. A CRM behind the forms, so every enquiry is saved with a name and a number instead of arriving as an email you might miss. An alert the second one lands, by email, text or Telegram. Basic analytics. And 8 changes a month: you text what needs changing and we do it, which is the maintenance list above taken off your Tuesday evening.

What it does not include is a booking calendar, automations, an AI that replies to your leads, or Google review management. Those sit on higher plans. We would rather tell you that on this page than after you have paid.

The comparison that matters is not $17 against $47. It is $17 plus your weekend plus the risk it never gets finished, against $47 and it is simply handled.

Questions people ask

How much does it cost to run a website per month?

On a builder, realistically $25 to $40 a month once you include hosting, the domain and a business email address. The advertised plan price is usually just the hosting part.

How much does website maintenance cost?

Nothing, if you do it. $200 to $500 a month on an agency retainer. Somewhere in between on a managed plan where changes are included, which is how ours works.

Is there a website with no monthly fee?

Free builder plans exist and are genuinely free, but you cannot put your own domain on them. For a business that wants to look established, the domain is the point.

Do I have to pay for a year upfront?

On most builders the advertised monthly price requires it. Not everywhere. Ask before you compare two numbers that are not the same kind of number.

The short version

A website costs $0 a month if you accept somebody else's brand in your web address, $25 to $40 all in on a builder you run yourself, $200 to $500 on an agency retainer, and $47 to $200 on a managed plan where the work is not yours.

Pick the row where the last column says who you want doing the work. Then check two things before you sign: whether that monthly price needs a year upfront, and whose name the domain is in.