Monthly website fees: what you're actually paying for

A small-business website bill usually has five to eight lines: a builder plan or hosting, the domain, email, and then a handful of extras like privacy, security, backups, apps or a care plan. Some are essential, some duplicate each other, and some you may never use. Here is what each line actually buys, so you can tell a fair bill from a padded one.

Find every line first

Website charges are often spread over several companies and cards. Before judging any of them, collect them:

• Search your email for "invoice", "renewal" and "receipt" together with the names of your registrar, host, builder and designer.
• Look through a year of card and bank statements for small recurring charges with web-sounding names.
• Log in to each account and open its billing or subscriptions page.

Write each charge down with the company, what it is called, how often it bills and the yearly total. Many owners find something they forgot about.

The essentials

A builder plan or hosting

This is the rent for the computer your website lives on.

• On a builder (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy's builder and others), the plan covers the editor, the hosting and usually the security certificate, in one fee. Plan levels add features such as payments, bookings or more storage.
• On WordPress or a hand-built site, you pay a hosting company separately. Basic shared hosting is cheap; managed hosting, where the host handles updates and backups, costs more.

You need one of these. You do not need both: if you are paying a builder and a hosting company at the same time, one of them is probably left over from an old site. How much should website hosting cost? gives a sense of normal ranges.

The domain name

Your address, like yourbusiness.com, billed yearly by a registrar. It is usually one of the smaller lines. Keep it on auto-renew; losing it is far more expensive than paying for it.

Email on your domain

Mailboxes like [email protected], usually from Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, billed per person per month. Check two things:

• Are you paying for mailboxes nobody uses, such as a former employee's? Delete them, or turn them into free aliases or forwarding into an existing mailbox.
• Do you need a full mailbox for each address? Info@, sales@ and billing@ can often be aliases that land in one mailbox at no extra cost.

Extras that are often worth it

A security certificate (SSL)

This is what puts the padlock and "https" in front of your address. Almost every builder and decent host now includes one at no extra charge. If you see a separate SSL line, ask whether you really need it. Do you need to buy an SSL certificate? explains when a paid one makes sense, which for a small business is rarely.

Domain privacy

Hides your personal details from public domain records. Many registrars include it free; some charge yearly. Worth having if it is free or cheap; worth questioning if it is priced like a second domain.

Backups

Copies of your site you can restore if something goes wrong. Builders handle this themselves. For WordPress, backups are essential, and either the host or a plugin should do them.

Extras that are often padding

Security add-ons and "website protection"

Registrars and hosts sell malware scanning and firewalls as monthly extras. For a builder site, they are usually unnecessary because the builder handles security. For WordPress they can help, but check whether your host already includes similar protection.

SEO packages

Monthly "SEO" add-ons bundled with hosting or builders often amount to a dashboard of tips and an automatic submission to search engines, which Google does not need. Before paying for one, read what to ask before paying for SEO services.

Marketing email and social tools

Builders bundle email newsletters and social posting. Useful if you send newsletters; dead weight if you do not.

Apps and plugins

On Wix and similar builders, each app can carry its own monthly fee. On WordPress, premium plugins often have yearly licences. List them and ask of each one: when did a customer last benefit from this?

A care plan or retainer

Some designers charge a monthly fee for hosting, updates and a set amount of changes. Whether it is good value depends on what you get:

• Good value if it includes regular updates and backups (for WordPress), quick changes when you ask, and someone who answers the phone.
• Poor value if you have asked for two changes in a year and pay every month regardless, or if the plan does not say how many changes are included.

Ask for a list of what was done for you in the last six months. A care plan that cannot produce one is a subscription to reassurance.

Monthly or yearly billing

Most services charge less per month when you pay yearly. That is worth taking for things you are sure you will keep, like the domain and email. For a builder plan you might leave, the yearly saving can lock you in for the rest of the year. Some website services charge once for the site and then only a yearly fee for the domain and email; one-time payment vs monthly subscription weighs the two.

An afternoon audit

1. Make the list of every website charge, with yearly totals.
2. Mark each one essential, useful or unsure.
3. For every "unsure", ask the provider what would stop working if you cancelled.
4. Remove unused mailboxes, duplicate hosting and add-ons nobody can explain.
5. Turn on auto-renew for the domain and email, the two that must never lapse.
6. Put the renewal dates in your calendar for next year.

If the audit shows you paying every month for a site that is hard to change or looks dated, you can see your site rebuilt first and compare it with what the current bill buys you.