What it really costs to keep a website alive

01

The fixed bills everyone pays

Every website, however it is built, has the same few renewals. A domain name is roughly ₹800 to ₹1,500 a year. Shared hosting for a small business site is roughly ₹2,500 to ₹5,000 a year. An SSL certificate (the padlock) is free with most good hosts. Business email is optional, from nothing to about ₹1,800 a year per mailbox. Together that is usually ₹4,000 to ₹8,000 a year, paid to those companies directly, not to your designer.

What to check: the renewal price, not the first-year price. See the callout below.

If you need hosting, I set most small business sites up on Hostinger. That is my referral link: if you sign up through it, I may earn a commission or credit at no extra cost to you. The renewal-price advice below applies to Hostinger too, so check it at checkout.

02

A static site: almost nothing else

A static site is a set of finished pages sitting on a server. There is no admin panel, no database and no plugins, so there is nothing to update and very little to hack. Once it is built, it keeps working until you want to change something. The yearly cost is the fixed bills above, plus whatever edits you ask for. For a business whose site says the same thing month after month — services, prices, location, contact — this is the cheapest site to own.

The trade-off: you cannot log in and edit it yourself. Each change goes through your designer.

03

A WordPress site: updates are the real cost

WordPress lets you edit your own pages, which is why people choose it. The price of that freedom is software that needs looking after. WordPress itself, the theme and every plugin release updates through the year, and most hacked WordPress sites trace back to a plugin nobody updated. Someone has to apply updates, take backups, and check the site still works afterwards. You can do it yourself in about half an hour a month, or pay someone. My own WordPress maintenance is ₹2,500 a month for updates, backups, security checks and up to an hour of small edits.

Also budget for: any paid plugins or a premium theme licence, which renew yearly like the domain.

04

Content changes: the cost people forget

Maintenance keeps a site running. It does not keep it current. New prices, a new branch, fresh photos, a festival offer, a team member who left — these are edits, and they are usually where the real yearly spend goes. Small text and photo changes are quick. A new page or a redesigned section is a small project and is quoted like one. If your business changes often, that is a strong reason to choose a site you can edit yourself.

05

The cost of not maintaining it

The expensive bills are the ones you did not plan for. A lapsed domain takes your email down with your website, and getting it back costs far more than renewing it would have. A hacked WordPress site can be flagged by Google and browsers until it is cleaned up. And a contact form that quietly stopped sending enquiries costs you customers without anyone noticing. A few minutes a month of checking prevents all three.

The ₹1 domain problem

Domain and hosting companies compete on the first-year price. You will see domains offered for ₹1 and hosting at a low monthly rate, but only if you pay for several years upfront. At renewal, the normal price applies, and it is often two to three times the offer. Your site did not get more expensive. You are just paying the real price for the first time.

Compare renewal prices, not offer prices. The offer lasts one year; the renewal lasts as long as your business.

Every provider lists its renewal price somewhere on the checkout page, often in small print. Note it down along with the renewal date, and turn on auto-renew with a card that will not expire before then.

Please confirm what the maintenance fee covers: 1. How often you update the software and plugins. 2. How often backups are taken, and where they are stored. 3. How many hours of edits are included each month. 4. Whether domain and hosting renewals are included or billed separately. 5. What happens, and what it costs, if the site is hacked.

Do I need to pay for maintenance on a static website?

Not a monthly fee. A static site has no plugins or software to update, so the only fixed costs are the domain and hosting renewals. You pay for an edit when you need one.

What happens if I forget to renew my domain?

The website and any email on that domain stop working. Most registrars give a short grace period to renew at the normal price, then a recovery period at a much higher fee. After that, the domain can be bought by anyone.

What should a website maintenance (AMC) quote include?

It should list exactly what is covered: software and plugin updates, how often backups are taken and where they are kept, security monitoring, how many hours of edits per month, and whether domain and hosting renewals are included or billed separately.