Paying monthly for a website: what you actually get

There is a growing offer of websites on subscription: no investment up front, a fixed monthly fee, hosting and maintenance included. For some business owners that is exactly right. For others it is the most expensive way to have a website. The difference sits in three questions that rarely appear on the offer page.

1. Whose site is it when you stop?

This is the most important question and the hardest to get answered. With most subscriptions you rent the site: stop paying and it goes offline, leaving you with nothing. No files, no code, sometimes not even the copy in a usable form.

That is not a crime, it is a business model. But it does mean that after three years of paying you start from zero if you want to leave, and that your negotiating position weakens every year. Ask it explicitly: on leaving, do I get the files, the domain and the database?

2. What is in the monthly fee?

Two very different things are both called 'per month'. Monthly maintenance on a site that is yours is simply a service. A site that only exists while you keep paying is something else. They often appear in the same table.

• Hosting and updates: a real cost that belongs to any site.
• Build cost spread out: you still pay for the build, in instalments and usually with a surcharge.
• Changes: sometimes a few per year included, often with a limit you discover by exceeding it.
• Licences for themes or plugins: gone the moment the subscription stops.

3. What does it cost over three years?

Do the sum once and the discussion is over. A hundred euros a month is three thousand six hundred over three years, and you still do not own a site. A one-off build plus hosting and maintenance often lands in the same range for an ordinary business site, with the difference that you own something at the end.

For a very small site a subscription can work out cheaper over three years. That is the honest outcome and it does not change because I do it differently.

A monthly fee is not expensive or cheap. It is a way to pay. The question is what you are left with when you stop.

Why I do not offer it

I sell the build once at a fixed price, and maintenance separately for a fixed yearly fee you can cancel each year. Code, domain and hosting are in your name from day one. The reason is simple: I want you to stay because it works, not because leaving costs you your website.

What that maintenance covers is on maintenance and support. How pricing works is on pricing, and what a website track includes on website development.

If you are in a subscription now

First ask what you get on leaving. If you are locked into the platform, switching is a rebuild rather than a migration; that is doable, but expect the copy and the design to come along and the technology not to. At the very least, make sure the domain is registered in your own name, even if you change nothing else. It is the one part you cannot buy back later.