Money
What a website really costs in a year
People ask what a website costs and get quoted a build price. The build is the part that ends. Here is the part that does not.
Itemised, for a small business site of a few pages.
Domain name — $12 to $25 a year
This is the one bill you must never miss. Put it on auto-renew, on a card that will not expire, with an email address you will still be reading in three years. Ignore the renewal quotes of $70 and up; that is a markup, not a price.
Hosting — $0 to $300 a year
Wider than people expect. A small static site can be hosted free on modern platforms, properly and fast. A WordPress site needs real hosting, typically $8 to $25 a month. Squarespace and Wix bundle hosting into a plan of roughly $200 to $400 a year.
Business email — $0 to $85 a year
Not the same as hosting. Getting you@yourbusiness.com usually means Google Workspace or similar, around $7 a month. Worth it. A Gmail address on a printed sign costs you more than $84 of credibility a year.
SSL certificate — $0
The padlock. It is free now and has been for years. If someone is charging you for it, ask why.
Changes — $0 to $600 a year
The honest variable. If you can edit the site yourself, nothing. If you cannot, you are either paying per change or paying a monthly retainer. This is the line that quietly becomes the biggest one.
What it adds up to
A small static site you can edit yourself: $12 to $110 a year, essentially the domain and maybe email. A platform site: $250 to $500 a year, forever. A WordPress site with someone maintaining it: $400 to $1,200 a year.
None of these is wrong. But over five years the difference between the first and the third is a few thousand dollars, and the choice is usually made in ten minutes at the start of a project without anyone doing this arithmetic out loud.