Websites without the monthly bill.

£12 a month sounds like nothing. That is the point of pricing things at £12 a month. But a website is not a gym habit — it is three pages of words that mostly do not change. Here is the honest maths on monthly website fees, and when they are (and are not) worth paying.

The three-year maths

A typical builder plan with a connected domain runs £12–£25 a month once the first-year discount ends. Call it £15: that is £180 a year, £540 over three years — for software you also had to spend your own evenings wrestling. And after three years you do not own anything more than you did on day one. The subscription is not buying you a better site; it is renting you access to your own.

What the monthly fee is actually for

Builders are real businesses with real costs — but the plan you are on mostly pays for things a simple local business never uses: online stores, booking engines, member areas, "premium blocks". If your site's job is be found, look legit, get the call, you are paying every month for features designed for someone else.

When monthly genuinely makes sense

Fair is fair: if you run an online shop, take bookings, or change your site weekly, a subscription platform earns its keep — and if you need quotes, payments and job management, that is a different tool again (that is what ServicePay is for). This guide is about the plain marketing site that most local businesses need — where the monthly model quietly overcharges.

What a fair ongoing cost looks like

Websites do have two honest running costs: hosting and your domain renewal. For a simple site that should be roughly £50–£150 a year, all in — not £40 a month with a "maintenance" retainer for a site nobody has touched since spring. And whatever you pay, the domain must be registered in your name so you can leave whenever you like.

The pay-once alternative

Our model is deliberately boring: £149 once to have a real person write and build your three pages, your .co.uk registered in your name, and your first year included — then a small annual renewal for hosting and the domain. No lock-in, no upsell ladder, and you can edit the everyday stuff yourself without paying anyone a monthly fee for the privilege. Do the maths for your own case — that is all we ask.