Independent digital studio · since 2016
Your website is live: now what? Domain, hosting, updates, security, licenses. Here are all the recurring costs of a business website, how much they really weigh and where it pays to invest so you don't pay more later.
MBMarco BagiacchiFounder of Nalu and web developer
When people talk about the price of a website, they almost always mean the cost of the project: design, development, content. But a website isn't something you buy once and leave on a shelf. It's more like a shop: to stay open it needs an address, a space and someone to keep it tidy and protect it.
The recurring costs of a website fall into two families. Fixed costs keep it online and working: domain, hosting, any licenses, maintenance. Variable costs make it grow: content, SEO, campaigns, new features. The first are essential, the second depend on your goals.
Knowing them from the start lets you judge a quote properly and avoid the most common surprise: a website that's cheap at launch and becomes expensive over the years, because nobody talked about what happens afterwards.
The real cost of a website is measured in years, not on launch day.
Before going into detail, here is an overview of the items that make up the annual cost of a business website. The figures are indicative and depend on technical choices and the size of the site.
| Item | Type | Order of magnitude |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Fixed | A few euros a year for common extensions such as .com; more for special extensions. |
| Hosting | Fixed | From a few dozen to a few hundred euros a year. |
| Business email | Fixed | Often included in hosting; dedicated services charge per mailbox. |
| SSL certificate | Fixed | Often free and included in hosting. |
| Licenses and plugins | Fixed or none | From zero to a few hundred euros, depending on the tools used. |
| Maintenance | Fixed | With us from €30 a month (basic) or €80 a month (evolving), excl. VAT. |
| SEO and content | Variable | With us, ongoing SEO starts at €400 a month, excl. VAT. |
| Ad campaigns | Variable | A budget of your choice, plus management if needed. |
For a showcase website or a medium-sized business website, fixed costs usually stay modest. The variable items, on the other hand, are the ones that can make the difference between a website that stands still and one that brings in more and more customers.
The domain is the name people use to find your website, for example yourcompany.com. It's registered for one year (or more) and has to be renewed when it expires. The cost is low for the most common extensions and higher for special or highly sought-after ones.
Check today who your domain is registered to and when it expires. It takes a few minutes with your registrar's service, and it saves you from one of the nastiest surprises a website can face.
Hosting is the space on a server where your website's files, database and often your mailboxes are stored. It's one of the items that most affects the speed and reliability of your website, and therefore the visitor experience and your rankings.
| Type | Who it's for | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | Showcase websites and small business websites | Inexpensive; performance is good enough if the provider is a quality one. |
| Managed hosting for CMSs | WordPress websites and blogs with medium traffic | Optimized, often with backups and updates included. |
| Virtual private server (VPS) or cloud | E-commerce stores, web apps, high-traffic websites | More powerful and configurable; requires management skills. |
| Platform with hosting included | Stores on platforms like Shopify | Hosting included in the platform subscription. |
Choosing the cheapest hosting there is turns out to be a false economy if the website becomes slow or goes offline often. For a business website, a few dozen euros more a year pays for itself many times over in speed and peace of mind.
Mailboxes on your own domain (for example info@yourcompany.com) look professional and are essential for a business. They can be included in your hosting or run through dedicated services.
| Solution | Advantages | Limitations |
|---|---|---|
| Included in hosting | Low or no cost, a single point of management. | Storage and features are sometimes limited. |
| Dedicated service | Calendars, shared documents, plenty of storage, high reliability. | A monthly cost per mailbox. |
For a freelancer or small business, email included in hosting is often enough. For larger teams that share calendars and documents, a dedicated service can be more convenient. The key is to separate email and website when growth calls for it: if you change hosting, you don't want to risk losing your mail.
Many websites rely on third-party tools: premium themes, plugins with advanced features, services for forms, bookings and newsletters. Some are free, others require an annual subscription.
It's an item that tends to grow quietly. Every plugin added to solve a problem brings a cost, an update to manage and a potential security weak spot. That's why, when we design a website, we prefer to use only the tools that are truly needed.
If there's one item you shouldn't skimp on, it's maintenance. A website is made of software: CMS, plugins, libraries, server. All of it gets constant updates, often to fix security holes. A website that isn't updated becomes, over time, slower, less compatible with browsers and more vulnerable to attacks.
CMS, plugins and components updated regularly, after checking they don't cause problems.
Regular copies of the site and database, stored in a separate place and quick to restore.
Monitoring, protection against unwanted access, checks for malware and suspicious activity.
Checks that the website is online and fast, with alerts if something goes wrong.
Content changes, fixes and improvements: in the evolving plans, with dedicated hours.
| Plan | What it includes | From |
|---|---|---|
| Basic maintenance | Updates, backups and monitoring. | €30 a month |
| Ongoing development | Plus hours dedicated to changes, content and improvements. | €80 a month |
| One-off job | Slow site, errors or malware: we step in and fix it. | 90 € |
To understand the value of maintenance, it helps to look at what happens without it. These are situations we see often, and they cost far more than years of small monthly fees.
In all these cases, emergency work costs more, takes time and loses you customers in the meantime. Regular maintenance is, to all intents and purposes, an insurance policy.
Even if "nobody touches" your website, it needs maintenance. Security updates don't depend on how often you change the content, but on how the software your site is built on evolves.
Security is the main reason a website needs constant care. Websites are almost always attacked automatically: programs that scan the web looking for outdated software, weak passwords or misconfigurations. You don't have to be a famous company to become a target: one door left open is enough.
A protected website relies on a few habits, repeated over time. Timely updates, strong and different passwords for every login, two-factor authentication for administrators, access limited to those who need it, backups kept separate from the main server. On top of that come protection tools that filter suspicious traffic and flag unusual activity.
When something goes wrong, the cost isn't just technical. A compromised website can send spam, show unwanted content or be flagged as dangerous by browsers, with damage to your image that lasts longer than the fix itself. Investing a few euros a month in prevention is, proportionally, one of the best-value expenses in your whole digital budget.
Loading speed isn't a technical whim. A slow website loses visitors, especially on smartphones, and Google counts the loading experience among a page's quality signals. Keeping a website fast over time has a cost, but letting it slow down costs even more.
As the months go by, websites tend to get heavier: images uploaded without optimization, plugins added and never removed, third-party scripts, databases filling up with useless data. Careful maintenance includes this cleanup work too, which brings the website back to its day-one performance.
A fast website isn't just more pleasant: it converts more, because visitors find what they're looking for right away instead of leaving the page while it loads.
The recurring costs of a website also include those linked to privacy and cookie rules. They aren't huge items, but you need to plan for them: an up-to-date privacy policy, a system to manage cookie consent where needed, and a periodic review of both when the tools used on the site change.
Many cookie management solutions offer a free plan for low-traffic websites and a subscription for larger sites or those with special needs. Alternatively, carefully configuring analytics and marketing tools lets you reduce the cookies that require consent.
Every time you add a tool to the website (a map, an embedded video, an ad pixel, a chat), check whether it sets cookies and whether the privacy policy needs updating. It's one of the things good maintenance keeps an eye on.
The items covered so far keep the website online and healthy. But a website that stays the same for years rarely brings growing results. Variable costs are what turn a website from a static shop window into a sales tool.
New pages, articles, optimizations, rank tracking: this is the work that grows your Google traffic over time. With us, an SEO audit starts at €350 and ongoing SEO at €400 a month (excl. VAT).
Google Ads and Meta Ads bring immediate, measurable visits. The cost is made up of the ad budget, which you decide, and any professional campaign management.
A new section, a service page, a booking system: updating the website as the business's needs change keeps it useful and current.
Learn moreHow much SEO costs: prices, timing and results↗There's one item that never appears on an invoice but can weigh more than all the others put together: who really owns the website. Domain, hosting, analytics accounts, Google Business Profile, plugin licenses: if they're registered to your provider, the day you want to change partner you may discover you don't control what you paid for.
Recovering a domain registered to someone else, rebuilding a website whose files you don't have, or starting your analytics from scratch because the account isn't yours are common situations, and costly in time and money. Preventing them costs nothing: just ask, from the start, for everything to be registered to you or your company, and keep the list of logins somewhere safe.
To make it all more concrete, here are three typical profiles. The figures are indicative and meant to give an order of magnitude; every website has its own specifics.
| Profile | Main items | Annual order of magnitude |
|---|---|---|
| Freelancer with a showcase website | Domain, shared hosting, email included, basic maintenance. | A few hundred euros |
| Small business with a custom website | Domain, managed hosting, dedicated email, evolving maintenance. | From a few hundred to over a thousand euros |
| Growing company | The items above plus ongoing SEO and campaigns. | Several thousand euros, depending on goals |
The difference between the profiles isn't just spending, but goals. The freelancer wants a website that always works; the growing company wants a website that brings in more customers every month, and invests accordingly.
You can optimize a website's costs, as long as you don't cut the wrong things. Here's where you can really save.
Backups, security updates and domain renewal. These are the three items where saving money can cost you more in a single day than everything you saved over years.
Whether you're considering a new website or want to get the one you have in order, these questions help you get a clear picture of the costs.
A serious provider answers these questions without hesitation and gives you, in writing, the list of services and expiry dates. It's a sign of transparency and a guarantee for you.
Once a year, set aside half an hour for this check. It will help you avoid surprises and understand where to invest.
A well-maintained website costs little, works better and lasts longer. And when it's time to grow it, it starts from solid foundations instead of problems to fix.
The questions we're asked most often on this topic. If yours isn't here, write to us.
For a typical business website, domain, hosting and email cost from a few dozen to a few hundred euros a year. On top of that comes maintenance, which with us starts at €30 a month (excl. VAT).
For the most common extensions, such as .com, renewal costs a few euros a year. Special extensions or highly sought-after domains can cost more.
It isn't a legal requirement, but it's essential for security, speed and reliability. A website that isn't updated becomes vulnerable and more expensive to fix.
The website and email stop working. After a grace period, the domain can become available again and be registered by someone else.
Yes, with a planned migration: copying the files and database, setting up the new server, updating the domain. It's best done with a professional to avoid downtime.
Basic maintenance includes updates, backups and monitoring; evolving maintenance adds dedicated hours for changes, content and improvements. For urgent problems there's one-off support, from €90 (excl. VAT).
From a few hundred to tens of thousands of euros: the figures you find online are so different they tell you nothing. This guide explains what the price depends on, what different types of website cost and how to read a quote without surprises.
For many freelancers and small businesses a showcase website is the smartest choice: a few pages, done well, that present who you are and bring in inquiries. Here's how much it costs, what it should include and how to tell whether it's what you need.
It's one of the first questions anyone asks when they need a website, an online store or a campaign. There's no answer that's right for everyone: there's the right choice for your project. Here's how to find it, with the pros and cons of each route.
Tell us about your project: the assistant prepares the brief in two minutes, then a person from the team replies. No automatic quotes.
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