What does a website cost to run?

When comparing quotes, most people look at the amount for the build. What comes back every year is often further down or missing entirely. Over the years it can add up to more than the difference between two quotes.

What determines the one-off price of a website is covered in the article What does a website cost?. This one is about the time afterwards: which items come up, who bills them and what to look out for. I do not quote other providers' prices, because they change and vary widely between packages.

The domain is your address on the internet, such as yourbusiness.ch. It is renewed every year with a registrar; the .ch ending is administered by the SWITCH foundation, and you register through a registrar of your choice. Further endings or spellings each cost extra.

More important than the amount is the holder. The domain should be registered to your business, not to the agency or a private individual who may no longer be reachable in a few years. Otherwise your address, and your email with it, depends on someone else.

Hosting is the storage your website is served from. What it costs depends mainly on what the website does. A website made of pre-generated pages needs little. A website with booking, customer accounts or a shop also needs a database and functions on the server, and that shows in the hosting.

Ask whether the certificate for the encrypted connection (HTTPS) and regular backups are included, and where the data is stored. With a website builder, hosting is usually part of the subscription; you pay for it either way, even if it is not listed separately on the bill.

Addresses like info@yourbusiness.ch run through an email service that is not necessarily the same provider as the hosting. Many services charge per mailbox, so it is worth asking who really needs their own mailbox and where forwarding is enough.

If the website sends emails itself, such as booking confirmations or reminders, a separate sending service is often added. Its cost depends on the number of emails.

Software ages. Content management systems, plugins and libraries receive security updates, and leaving them alone risks a vulnerable website. With some systems this is a monthly task, with others less frequent; but someone has to do it and then check that everything still works.

The legal texts do not stand still either. When a service is added, such as a map, a booking tool or analytics, the privacy policy has to follow. What belongs in it is covered in the article Website and data protection.

Depending on the website, further ongoing items are added. Not every website needs them, but they belong in the calculation when they apply.

With me, support means updates, small changes, checking that everything runs and asking whether processes still fit your business. It can be cancelled monthly, has no minimum term, and in your client area you can see which minutes went into which work.

I set up hosting and domain directly with the provider in your name and with your own payment method. These third-party costs therefore do not run through my invoice, and you can switch at any time. More on the page Pricing.

With these questions you can see in any quote what will come your way after launch.

How I build websites is described under Websites with booking.