Most guides tell you what it costs to build a website. Far fewer explain what you pay after it goes live, and that is the part that catches people out. A website is not a one-off purchase like a shop sign. It is closer to a shop unit: there is rent (hosting), a lock on the door (SSL and security), a landlord who wants the lease renewed (your domain) and someone who needs to keep the place in good repair (maintenance).
If you want to budget properly, the monthly running cost matters just as much as the build price. This guide breaks down what a small business WordPress website typically costs to keep online each month in the UK, where the money goes, what you can safely cut and what you should not. If you are also weighing up the build itself, see how much a website costs in the UK.
The short answer
For a small business WordPress site, expect roughly £21 to £25 a month just to keep it online (a domain plus hosting with SSL). Once you add proper maintenance, the total is more like £100 to £175 a month. Premium plugins and ongoing content or SEO work come on top if you need them.
| Setup | Maintenance | Total per month | Total per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain and hosting with SSL only | None | £21 – £25 | £255 – £295 |
| Domain, hosting with SSL + Basic Care | £80/month | £101 – £105 | £1,215 – £1,255 |
| Domain, hosting with SSL + Business Plus | £150/month | £171 – £175 | £2,055 – £2,095 |
The totals include the domain and hosting with SSL, which is why they are higher than the maintenance price on its own. These figures use my own prices, correct as of October 2026, and assume a domain at £10–£50 a year and hosting with SSL at £245 a year, with the yearly costs spread across twelve months. Other providers will charge differently, so treat this as a worked example rather than a market average. In practice you will usually pay hosting with SSL and the domain once a year, and maintenance every month.
Website is like a shop unit
Why the monthly cost matters more than the build price
A website that costs £2,000 to build but is never looked after can end up costing you far more than one that costs £3,000 and is properly maintained. The reasons are practical rather than theoretical:
- Software goes out of date. WordPress, your theme and every plugin release updates, many of them security fixes. A site that is not updated slowly becomes easier to break into.
- Things stop working quietly. A contact form that stops sending emails or a booking button that fails will not announce itself. You find out when enquiries dry up.
- Recovery is expensive. Cleaning up a hacked site or rebuilding after a failed update usually costs more, in money and in lost enquiries, than a year of maintenance would have.
Budgeting for the running costs from day one stops the website becoming something you dread touching. It also makes it easier to compare quotes, because you can see the whole cost of owning the site, not just the headline price of the build.
What you actually pay for each month
Here is every cost that normally sits behind a small business WordPress website, in plain English.
Domain name: about £10 to £50 a year
Your domain is your web address, for example yourbusiness.co.uk. The price depends on the extension (.co.uk is usually cheaper than some of the newer endings) and on the company you register it with. It is the smallest cost on the list, but it is also the one you cannot afford to forget. If a domain expires, your website and your business email can disappear until it is renewed, and in the worst case someone else can register the name.
Two practical points. First, make sure the domain is registered in your name or your company’s name, not only in your web designer’s. Second, check whether auto-renewal is switched on and whether the renewal price is different from the first-year price.
Hosting with SSL: £245 a year (about £20 a month)
Hosting is the server that stores your website and delivers it to visitors, and SSL is the certificate that keeps the connection to it secure. My hosting with SSL comes to £245 a year. You will find far cheaper shared hosting, with plans from a few pounds a month, and far more expensive managed WordPress hosting, which can run from around £20 to £80 or more a month.
An SSL certificate encrypts the connection between your visitors and your website. It is what puts the padlock in the browser and turns your address from http to https. Browsers warn visitors away from sites without one, and Google treats secure sites as the standard, so every business website needs it.
What matters is not the price on its own but what you get for it. When you compare hosting, look at:
- Speed and server location. A UK server is better for UK visitors and for local search.
- Backups. Are they included, how often do they run, and who restores them if something goes wrong?
- Support. Can you speak to a person who knows WordPress, or only to a chatbot?
- Uptime. Cheap hosting that goes down regularly costs you more than it saves.
- SSL. Check that the certificate is part of the price you are quoted, so you are not paying for it twice.
If you want to see how the big providers compare, there is a separate guide to the best WordPress hosting in the UK.
Hosting with SSL
Premium plugins and themes: roughly £100 to £600 a year
WordPress itself is free, and many plugins are free too. But the tools that do the heavy lifting on business sites, such as advanced forms, booking systems, SEO suites, page builders and e-commerce extensions, often come with an annual licence. Licences stop updating when they lapse, which is a security problem as well as a feature problem.
A simple brochure site might need none of these. A site with bookings, memberships or a shop will almost certainly need several. Ask for a list of every paid plugin on your site, what it costs and when it renews, so there are no surprises.
Maintenance: £80 to £150 a month
Maintenance is the work that keeps a WordPress site healthy after launch. It is the highest recurring cost on the list, and the one people most often try to skip. A proper plan covers:
- Core, plugin and theme updates, tested before they go live.
- Daily backups, stored in more than one place.
- Security monitoring, with malware scans and alerts.
- Uptime monitoring, so someone knows when the site goes down.
My Basic Care plan is £80 a month and covers updates, daily backups and security scans. Business Plus is £150 a month and adds SEO tweaks and priority support. Larger sites with very high traffic are priced individually with a tailored service level. You can see the details on the website maintenance page.
Website maintenance monthly
Emergency fixes and extra support
Most maintenance plans cover prevention. If something breaks badly, such as a payment gateway failure or a crashed checkout, the question is whether the fix is included, billed by the hour or covered by priority support. This is one of the most useful things to ask before you sign anything, and it is explained further in the questions list below.
Content updates and SEO (optional)
Keeping your site accurate and visible is a separate job from keeping it running. New pages, updated services, fresh blog posts and local SEO improvements are not part of basic maintenance with most providers. A realistic range for ongoing SEO and content work is anywhere from a few hundred pounds a year to several thousand, depending on how competitive your market is and how much you want done. Treat it as an investment decision, not an automatic cost.
Realistic monthly totals
Putting the figures together, here is what different setups look like using my current prices, once the yearly costs are spread across twelve months. The domain is shown at its range of £10–£50 a year.
| Setup | Total per month | Total per year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain, hosting with SSL | £21 – £25 | £255 – £295 | No maintenance |
| Domain, hosting with SSL + Basic Care | £101 – £105 | £1,215 – £1,255 | Updates, backups, scans |
| Domain, hosting with SSL + Business Plus | £171 – £175 | £2,055 – £2,095 | Adds SEO tweaks, priority support |
| Domain, hosting with SSL + Basic Care + premium plugins | about £110 – £155 | £1,315 – £1,855 | Plugin licences £100–£600/yr |
| Domain, hosting with SSL + Business Plus + premium plugins | about £180 – £225 | £2,155 – £2,695 | Plugin licences £100–£600/yr |
These are budgets for a typical small business site. A busy online shop, a membership site or a site with heavy traffic will cost more to host and look after, and will need a custom quote.
Three example websites
Numbers are easier to understand with real situations. These are illustrative examples using the prices above.
1. A local tradesperson with a simple brochure site
Five to eight pages, a contact form and a few photos. No bookings, no shop, no paid plugins. This site needs a domain and hosting with SSL (£255–£295 a year), and for most owners the Basic Care plan at £80 a month is enough to keep it safe. That comes to roughly £1,215–£1,255 a year, or about £101–£105 a month. Many small sites of this type are happy at this level.
2. A local service business with a blog and online booking
A clinic, salon or consultancy that publishes regularly and takes appointments online. The booking plugin and perhaps an SEO tool carry annual licences, so allow £100–£600 a year for plugins. Because the site is part of how this business wins customers, the extra SEO tweaks and priority support in Business Plus (£150 a month) are worth considering. Total: roughly £2,155–£2,695 a year, or about £180–£225 a month.
3. A small WooCommerce shop
An online shop has more that can go wrong, including payments, stock, checkout and customer data, and a failed checkout costs you sales directly. Hosting and maintenance needs are higher, and plugin licences are common. Start from the Business Plus level and expect a custom conversation about hosting and support. The right question is not “what is the cheapest plan” but “what does an hour of downtime cost me?”
Do you really need maintenance?
You can run a WordPress site without a maintenance plan, but you take the work and the risk on yourself. Skipped updates leave known security holes open. Updates done carelessly, without a backup, can break the site. And when something fails on a Saturday morning, someone has to fix it.
Think of it like servicing a car. You can often get away without it for a while, but the repair bill when something finally gives way is usually bigger than the service would have been. A maintenance plan puts a fixed monthly price on that risk.
If you prefer to do the work yourself, the WordPress website maintenance guide explains what to check and how often.
Be wary of very cheap deals. A plan that costs £20 a month and skips sandbox testing and proper backups is not a bargain, because the first real problem will cost far more than the saving.
What “monthly WordPress support” includes
When people search for monthly support, they usually want three things: updates and backups handled for them, someone to call when something breaks, and a little time each month to make changes. Here is how the two plans compare:
| Included | Basic Care (£80/month) | Business Plus (£150/month) |
|---|---|---|
| Core, plugin and theme updates | Yes | Yes |
| Daily backups | Yes | Yes |
| Security scans | Yes | Yes |
| SEO tweaks | No | Yes |
| Priority support | No | Yes |
For larger sites with high traffic, there is a custom option with a tailored service level. The full explanation of what each plan covers is on the WordPress maintenance plans page.
Can you pay for the whole website monthly instead?
Yes. If you would rather avoid a large upfront bill, a monthly package spreads the cost of the build, hosting, domain and ongoing support into a single predictable payment. My monthly packages come in three sizes:
| Package | Monthly | Website pages (max) | Support (hours/month) | First year total* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bronze | £120 | 10 | 1 | £1,939 |
| Silver | £150 | 20 | 2 | £2,299 |
| Gold | £180 | 30 | 3 | £2,659 |
* Twelve monthly payments plus the one-off £499 activation fee. All packages run on a 12-month contract and include hosting, domain registration, business email accounts and logo options.
See the monthly website packages for the full list of what each tier includes.
A monthly package suits businesses that prefer predictable payments and want the website, hosting and support handled together. If you would rather own everything outright and pay the build cost once, a one-off project with separate running costs is usually cheaper over a long period. Neither is better in every case; it depends on your cash flow and how long you plan to keep the site.
Monthly package vs upfront cost
Website builders versus WordPress: how the monthly costs compare
DIY website builders such as Squarespace or Wix are usually charged as a subscription, typically in the region of £10 to £35 a month, and hosting, security and software updates are handled for you. That makes the monthly cost lower on paper, but there are trade-offs: you build and manage the site yourself, you are limited by the platform’s features, and you cannot take the site elsewhere easily.
WordPress with a designer or developer costs more each month but gives you a custom site, full ownership and room to grow. For a business that depends on its website to win customers, the extra control is often worth the price. For a very simple site with a tight budget and plenty of your own time, a builder can be a sensible starting point.
Hidden costs and renewals to watch
Most surprises on a website bill come from renewals and small print rather than the headline price. Look out for:
- Renewal prices. Domains and hosting with SSL are often cheaper in year one than at renewal.
- Plugin and theme licences. They renew annually, and a lapsed licence means no more updates.
- Contract length. Monthly packages usually run for twelve months. Check the exit terms before you commit.
- Extra hours. Find out what happens if you use more support time than your plan includes.
- Who owns what. Make sure your domain, hosting login and site files belong to you, so you can move if you ever need to.
How to keep your monthly costs down
- Check what is bundled. Hosting that already includes SSL, backups and support saves you paying for them twice.
- Only buy plugins you use. Every extra plugin is a licence to renew and a piece of software to keep updated.
- Pick the right maintenance level. A simple brochure site rarely needs the same cover as a busy shop.
- Pay yearly where it saves money. Domains and hosting with SSL are normally billed annually anyway.
- Ask for a written breakdown. Any good provider can list what you pay for and why.
Questions to ask before you sign
Use these when you compare quotes from any web designer, freelancer or agency:
- What exactly is included in the monthly fee, and what is billed separately?
- Are backups included, how often do they run, and how quickly can you restore one?
- Is emergency support covered, or charged by the hour?
- Who owns the domain, the hosting account and the website files?
- What is the contract length and how do I cancel?
- Which paid plugins does my site use and what do they cost to renew?
- Who will actually do the work on my site?
Questions before you sign
Frequently asked questions
How much does a website cost per month in the UK?
For a small business WordPress site, expect around £21 to £25 a month for a domain and hosting with SSL, and about £100 to £175 a month once maintenance is included. Shops, membership sites and high-traffic sites cost more.
Is website hosting the same as maintenance?
No. Hosting keeps your website online. Maintenance keeps it updated, backed up and secure. You need both.
Do I have to pay for a website monthly?
No. Domain and hosting with SSL are usually billed yearly, and a build can be a one-off cost. Monthly packages exist for businesses that prefer to spread the cost.
What happens if I do not maintain my WordPress site?
Outdated plugins and themes are a common way for sites to break or be hacked, which can mean downtime, lost enquiries and a clean-up bill that is bigger than the cost of maintenance.
Can I cancel a monthly maintenance plan?
It depends on the provider. Maintenance plans can be cancelled with notice, while monthly website packages usually run on a 12-month contract. Always read the terms before you agree.
Is a monthly package cheaper than paying for the website upfront?
Not necessarily. A monthly package spreads the cost and bundles hosting and support, which helps cash flow, but over several years a one-off build with separate running costs can work out cheaper. Compare the total over the period you plan to keep the site.
Do I need to renew my domain every year?
Yes. A domain is rented, not owned outright, and it must be renewed on time, or you can lose the address and your business email with it.
Want a clear monthly price for your site?
If you would like a straight answer on what your website will cost to run, take a look at my website maintenance services or the monthly website packages, or get in touch for a free, no-obligation quote.
With over two decades of web design and development expertise, I craft bespoke WordPress solutions at FallingBrick, delivering visually striking, high-performing websites optimised for user experience and SEO.
