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Cost guide

What a Website Costs to Run

What a website costs to run is a shape, not a set of amounts. Learn the shape and you can read any provider's pricing page, ours included, and know what it says.

By AldoMedia · August 2026

What a website costs to run comes in two shapes, and only one repeats

A website costs money in two shapes. A short list bills you again and again for as long as the site exists. A longer list is paid once at the start. Nearly every unpleasant surprise comes from the first list, because those charges arrive on their own.

There are no figures on this page, deliberately: a number typed into an article goes stale within months, and the shape of the bill does not.

The four recurring costs

If something bills you for your website, it is almost certainly one of these four. If the first two still blur together, read domain name vs web hosting first.

A domain name, unavoidable. How registration works.
Web hosting, only if the site is files you own. What you are renting.
Email on your own domain, optional and usually wanted. Mailbox hosting or Microsoft 365.
An SSL certificate, which some hosting plans include and some do not. What the padlock proves.

The four recurring costs and what drives each one
	Do you need it	How it is billed	What moves the figure
Domain name	Always	Per year, per name	The extension, and whether it is a premium registration
Web hosting	Only if the site is files you own	Monthly or yearly, per plan	What the site does, not how many pages it has
Business email	Only for mail at your own name	Per mailbox, monthly or yearly	How many people need to send mail
SSL certificate	Always. Some plans include one, some do not	Per year, if bought separately	Validation level, and how many names it covers

Yearly, monthly, and what that does to cash flow

The domain is a yearly charge, and a small one, which is exactly why it gets forgotten. It lands once a year, often on a card that has since been replaced.

Hosting is offered monthly or yearly. A longer term is normally the lower rate, which is why it is presented first. What you give up is flexibility, with a company you have not tested yet. Paying monthly through the first term and moving to yearly later is sensible. Email is per mailbox per period, so it is the line that quietly grows.

Put every renewal date in one calendar with a reminder a fortnight ahead. Most emergencies we get called about are not technical faults. They are a lapsed renewal on an address nobody reads.

The most important sentence on any pricing page

The price you are shown is usually the introductory price. The price you will pay for years is the renewal price. That is normal across the whole industry, including us. It is not hidden, it is just not the number in the large type. The skill is finding the other one first.

Find the term the headline price applies to

Look for the words first year, first term, or an asterisk. A price with a term attached is introductory.
Read the small print under the price

The renewal figure is nearly always in the footnote. Disclosed, not advertised.
Put it in the cart before you decide

The order review screen usually spells the renewal terms out in full. Read it, then close the tab.
Separate the bundled items

A free domain for the first year and an included certificate are separate products with their own renewals.
Check the renewal screen after you buy

The account shows what will be charged and when. That is the figure for your calendar, not the one you just paid.

The cheapest line on the bill, and the most expensive thing to lose

A domain is the smallest recurring line on the bill and the only one that cannot be replaced, which makes it the wrong line to economise on. Domain name vs web hosting makes the replaceability argument in full.

So do not treat the domain as a purchase to optimise. Buy the obvious version of your trading name, turn automatic renewal on and stop thinking about it. Choosing a domain name is the better use of your time, and what happens when a domain expires covers recovery.

What actually changes the hosting figure

What makes the hosting line move is what the site does, not how big it is. Which plan that means is the hosting guide's subject, not this page's. Four things push the line up.

Software and a database. A site that builds every page on request asks more of a server than plain files do.
Payments. A store is a different workload, and the usual honest reason a plan moves up a tier.
Traffic that spikes. Steady traffic sits where it is. Peaks are what plans are really sized for.
Managed maintenance. Updates, staging and backups are convenience you buy, and they are billed on the hosting line.

What does not move it: the number of pages, adding a blog, or a few more photographs. Before buying a larger plan because the site feels slow, read whether shared hosting is enough. A slow site is usually the site, not the hardware, and a bigger plan does not fix it.

Email is priced per person, hosting is priced per site

Hosting is one charge no matter how many staff you have. Email is a charge per mailbox, so it is the only part of the bill that grows when you hire.

So count the people who need to send mail, not the addresses you want to receive at. A one person business usually needs one real mailbox. Addresses like info@ and sales@ can normally be aliases delivering into that mailbox rather than mailboxes of their own.

The other lever is the product: mailbox hosting and a full productivity subscription are priced very differently for the same job. Microsoft 365 for small business has the honest test for which one you need.

The one-off costs people forget

These appear on no hosting pricing page, and in the first year they usually dwarf the recurring four. Keep them in a separate column: they happen once.

Building the thing

Design and build, the largest single number, and nothing to do with hosting.
Content: photography, writing, entering product information.
A logo or brand work, if you do not have one.

AldoMedia builds sites at aldomedia.com. This site is the hosting side, and the two are billed separately.

Moving what already exists

Migrating a site from another host. The migration checklist shows what it involves.
Moving mailboxes with their history intact.
Recovering access to a domain somebody else set up. See taking over a website.

Extras worth paying for, and extras usually not

Some checkout add-ons are cheap relative to the problem they prevent. Others are just easy to sell.

Usually worth it

Domain privacy, which keeps your home address out of a public database.
A backup you have tested, the cheapest insurance on this list.
Email at your own name rather than a free consumer address.
Automatic renewal, a toggle in the account that prevents the worst outcome.

Usually leave it alone

A shelf of extra extensions of your name. One obvious defensive registration is plenty.
A higher validation certificate for a brochure site that takes no payments.
Search submission and marketing add-ons bolted onto a hosting order.
A larger plan bought to be safe, before anything has been slow.

How to compare two providers honestly

Compare renewal to renewal. Introductory against introductory tells you nothing about the next five years.
Compare the same term. A yearly rate beside a monthly rate is not a comparison.
Compare what is included, not what is advertised. Certificate, backups, mailboxes, migration help. The cheaper plan is often three separate charges.
Read the refund terms before you buy. Domains and subscriptions are treated differently almost everywhere. Ours are in the refund policy.
Ask who answers when something breaks. It is not on the pricing page, and it is the difference you will feel.

What to do next

Starting out, the order is: register the domain, decide whether you need hosting at all, then add email. The launch checklist walks through it in sequence.

If you already pay for a website and cannot say what the charges are for, gather the invoices, list what renews and when, and send us the list. We will tell you what each line is and which ones you can drop.

Frequently asked questions

Why does this article not list any prices?

Because a figure written into an article goes stale and misleads somebody. Introductory pricing, renewal pricing and taxes all change, per extension and per plan. Current figures live at the storefront, where they are right on the day you read them. The structure of the bill is the part that does not change.

What is the minimum a business has to pay for?

A domain name, and nothing else. Hosting is only needed if your website is a set of files that has to live somewhere. Email on your own name is a choice. An SSL certificate is needed either way, and some hosting plans include one while others do not, so check yours before you buy one separately.

Is it cheaper to pay yearly or monthly?

A longer term is normally the lower rate, which is why providers present it first. The trade is cash flow and commitment, because you are locked in with a company you may not have tested yet. Paying monthly for the first term and switching to yearly later is reasonable.

Does a bigger website cost more to host?

Not by page count, which is the assumption most people arrive with. A long brochure site and a short one sit on the same plan. What moves the figure is what the site does: whether it runs software and a database, whether it takes payments, and how much traffic arrives.

Which cost should I never let lapse?

The domain. A missed hosting bill takes the site offline, and you pay it and carry on. A missed domain renewal eventually releases the name to anybody who wants it. Turn on automatic renewal and keep the card and the contact address current.

Keep reading

Domain Name vs Web Hosting

The two lines people most often confuse, and how to tell which you are missing.

Read the guide

Web Hosting for Small Business

Choosing a plan by what the site does, and the upgrade path later.

Read the hosting guide

Hosting or a Website Builder

Where a builder subscription replaces the hosting line, and what you trade away.