How much does it cost to run a small business website per month in the UK?

A basic small business website in the UK costs between £5 and £30 per month to run. That covers hosting (£3-10/month), a domain name (£10-15/year, so about £1/month), and email (free to £5/month). SSL certificates are free with most modern hosts. If you're paying more than £30/month for a simple brochure site, you're likely overpaying.

Should I pay for a website maintenance contract?

It depends what's included. A WordPress site with plugins genuinely needs regular updates — once a month at minimum — and that has real value at £30-50/month. But many maintenance contracts charge £100-200/month for work that takes 15 minutes. Ask your provider exactly what they do each month and how long it takes. If they can't give you a straight answer, that tells you something.

Do I need to pay for SSL on my website?

No. Almost every hosting provider now includes free SSL certificates through Let's Encrypt. If your web developer or hosting company is charging you separately for SSL — typically £50-100/year — you're paying for something that should be included. The only exception is if you need an Extended Validation (EV) certificate, which most small businesses don't.

Is paying for an SEO retainer worth it for a small business?

For most small local businesses, no. SEO retainers typically cost £300-1,000/month, and many agencies do very little for that money. If your business serves a local area, you'll get more value from a one-off SEO setup (proper page titles, Google Business Profile, local keywords) than from a monthly retainer. Retainers make more sense for e-commerce sites or businesses competing nationally for high-value search terms.

How much should web hosting cost for a small business in the UK?

Shared hosting for a small business website should cost between £3 and £10 per month. Providers like Krystal, 20i, and Ionos offer solid UK-based hosting in this range. If you're paying £20-50/month for a basic brochure site, you're either on a plan you don't need or your provider is overcharging. VPS hosting (£10-30/month) is only necessary if your site gets significant traffic or runs complex applications.

What website costs can I cut without hurting my business?

The easiest costs to cut are: paid SSL certificates (switch to free Let's Encrypt), premium backup plugins (most hosts include backups), separate security monitoring services (a good host handles this), and overpriced email (use Google Workspace at £5/month instead of your host's £10/month email). Many businesses also pay for SEO tools and retainers they don't need. A one-off SEO audit is usually better value than an ongoing retainer.

Business

What Your Website Actually Costs You Every Month (And What It Should)

A plain-English breakdown of every monthly cost involved in running a small business website in the UK — with real numbers, so you can spot overcharges immediately.

Nicholas Hartnell · 16 March 2026 · 10 min read

I audit a lot of small business websites. One thing that comes up again and again is how much people are paying to keep their site running — and how little they're getting for it. Some businesses spend £15 a month. Others spend £300. The site quality is often identical.

Here's what every cost actually is, what it should cost, and where you're probably being overcharged.

Domain name: £10–15 per year

Your domain name (e.g. yourbusiness.co.uk) needs renewing every year. A .co.uk domain costs about £10–15 per year. A .com is similar, sometimes a couple of pounds more.

That's roughly £1 per month. It's the cheapest part of running a website.

Where the overcharges happen: Some web designers register your domain under their own account, then charge you £30–50 per year for "domain management." That's a markup of 200–400% for doing nothing. Your domain should be registered in your name, on your account, at a registrar like Namecheap, 123 Reg, or Cloudflare. You should have the login details.

Red flag: If you don't know the login details for your domain registrar, you don't control your own website address. Fix that before anything else.

Hosting: £3–50 per month

This is where your website files live. The price range is wide because there are different types of hosting, and most small businesses are on the wrong one.

Shared hosting (£3–10/month) — Your site shares a server with hundreds of other sites. Fine for a brochure site that gets a few hundred visitors a month. Providers like Krystal, 20i, and Ionos offer solid UK-based shared hosting from about £3/month.

Managed WordPress hosting (£10–30/month) — A step up. The host handles WordPress updates, security, and performance tuning. Worth it if you run a WordPress site and don't want to think about the technical side. 20i and Krystal both offer this.

VPS hosting (£10–30/month) — Your own virtual server. More power, more control. Only necessary if your site gets serious traffic or runs something more complex than WordPress.

Dedicated server (£50+/month) — An entire physical server just for you. If you need this, you already know you need it. Most small businesses absolutely don't.

What you should pay: If you run a standard small business site with a few pages and a contact form, £3–10 per month for shared hosting is all you need. If you're paying £30+ for a site that gets under 1,000 visitors a month, you're overpaying.

SSL certificate: £0

SSL is what puts the padlock icon in the browser bar and makes your site HTTPS instead of HTTP. Every website needs it. Without it, Chrome literally warns visitors that your site is "not secure."

The good news: it's free. Almost every hosting provider now includes SSL through Let's Encrypt at no extra charge. It auto-renews. You don't need to think about it.

Where the overcharges happen: Some agencies and hosts still charge £50–100 per year for an SSL certificate. Unless you need an Extended Validation (EV) certificate — which shows your company name in the address bar and is only relevant for banks and large e-commerce sites — you should be paying nothing. If someone is billing you for SSL, ask them why it isn't free.

Email: £0–5 per month

Business email (e.g. hello@yourbusiness.co.uk) usually comes from one of three places:

Your hosting provider — Most shared hosting plans include email. It works, but it's basic. Spam filtering is hit-and-miss, and storage is limited. Free with your hosting.
Google Workspace — £5/month per user. Professional Gmail interface, 30GB storage, good spam filtering, integrates with Google Drive and Calendar. The standard choice for most small businesses.
Microsoft 365 — £5/month per user. Outlook, OneDrive, the full Office suite. Better if you're already a Microsoft shop.

Where the overcharges happen: Some web agencies charge £10–15 per mailbox per month for email hosting that's worse than a £5/month Google Workspace account. If you're paying your web designer for email, check what you're actually getting. You can almost certainly move to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 and save money while getting a better service.

Plugins and subscriptions: £0–50 per month

If you run a WordPress site, you probably have plugins. Some are free, some aren't. Here's what's typical:

Security plugin (Wordfence, Sucuri) — Free versions are usually enough. Premium is £80–100/year.
Backup plugin (UpdraftPlus) — Free version works fine. Premium is about £60/year.
SEO plugin (Yoast, Rank Math) — Free versions do the job for most sites. Premium is £80–100/year.
Page builder (Elementor Pro) — £50–60/year for one site.
Forms (Gravity Forms, WPForms) — £30–60/year.

The honest truth: Most small business WordPress sites need zero paid plugins. The free versions of Wordfence, UpdraftPlus, and Rank Math will do everything a brochure site needs. If someone has set you up with five premium plugins at £50–100 each per year, ask whether the free versions would do the same job. Usually they will.

Non-WordPress sites built with custom code, static site generators, or platforms like Squarespace and Wix have their own subscription costs baked into the platform fee. Squarespace runs £13–35/month. Wix is £13–30/month. These include hosting, so don't pay for hosting separately if you're on one of these.

Maintenance contracts: £0–200 per month

This is where the biggest overcharges happen in the industry.

A WordPress site does genuinely need maintenance. WordPress core, your theme, and your plugins all release updates. Some updates fix security holes. If you ignore them for months, you're asking for trouble.

What maintenance actually involves:

Updating WordPress core, themes, and plugins (15–30 minutes/month)
Checking the site still works after updates (5 minutes)
Reviewing uptime and security logs (5–10 minutes)
Running a backup before and after (automated, takes zero time)

That's about 30–45 minutes of work per month for a standard site. At a reasonable hourly rate of £50–75, that's £25–55 per month of real value.

Where the overcharges happen: Agencies commonly charge £100–200 per month for "website maintenance" that amounts to clicking "Update All" once a month. Some charge even more and include vague line items like "performance monitoring" or "security scanning" — things that are either automated or take seconds.

What a fair maintenance contract looks like:

£30–50/month — Monthly updates, backups, uptime monitoring, a brief report
£50–100/month — All of the above plus 1–2 hours of content changes or minor tweaks
£100+/month — Only justified if your site is complex (e-commerce, membership site, custom functionality) or you need quick-response support

Ask this question: "Can you tell me exactly what you did on my site last month and how long it took?" If they can't answer clearly, you're paying for a contract, not a service.

SEO retainers: £0–1,000 per month

SEO retainers are the most oversold service in the small business web world.

Typical pricing: £300–1,000 per month for ongoing SEO work. Some agencies charge even more.

What you actually need depends on your business:

Local business serving a specific area (plumber in Sudbury, hairdresser in Colchester) — You need a one-off SEO setup, not a monthly retainer. Get your page titles right, set up Google Business Profile, add local keywords to your content, get listed in local directories. That's a one-time job worth £200–500. Monthly retainers for local SEO are almost never worth it.

E-commerce or nationally competitive business — You might genuinely benefit from ongoing SEO work: content creation, link building, technical audits. But even then, ask for a monthly report showing exactly what was done and what results it produced. If the report is full of jargon and short on specifics, the work probably isn't happening.

The warning signs of a bad SEO retainer:

They can't tell you which keywords they're targeting
They send reports full of graphs but no clear actions taken
Your search rankings haven't changed after 6 months
They won't tell you exactly what they do each month
They guaranteed you page-one rankings (nobody honest promises that)

Backup services: £0

Your hosting provider should include automated backups. Krystal, 20i, SiteGround, and most reputable UK hosts include daily backups in their standard plans.

If your host doesn't include backups, switch hosts. It's not worth paying separately for a backup service when it should be built in.

Where the overcharges happen: Some agencies charge £10–30/month for "backup management." In most cases, that means they've installed a free backup plugin and it runs automatically. You're paying for something that takes zero ongoing effort.

The real monthly cost: a summary

Cost	What you should pay	Common overcharge
Domain name	£1/month (£10–15/year)	£3–5/month
Hosting	£3–10/month	£20–50/month
SSL	£0 (free with hosting)	£5–10/month
Email	£0–5/month	£10–15/month
Plugins	£0–10/month	£20–50/month
Maintenance	£0–50/month	£100–200/month
SEO	£0 (one-off setup instead)	£300–1,000/month
Backups	£0 (included with hosting)	£10–30/month
Total	£5–75/month	£470–1,360/month

A standard small business brochure website should cost you somewhere between £5 and £30 per month to run. Add a fair maintenance contract and you're at £35–75/month. That's it.

If you're paying more than £100/month for a basic site, something is wrong. Either you're on services you don't need, or someone is charging you well above market rate.

What to do if you're overpaying

Get your domain login details. Make sure the domain is registered in your name. If it isn't, transfer it.
Check your hosting plan. Look at what you're paying and what you're getting. If it's shared hosting at £30+/month, shop around.
Check for SSL charges. If anyone is billing you for SSL, ask them to switch to Let's Encrypt (free) or find a host that includes it.
Audit your email costs. If you're paying more than £5/user/month, compare with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
Ask your maintenance provider what they actually do. Request a list of specific actions taken last month and how long each took.
Question your SEO retainer. Ask for specific keywords, specific actions, and specific results. If the answers are vague, the work probably is too.

The bottom line: Running a small business website in the UK shouldn't cost you more than a decent mobile phone contract. If it does, you're paying for someone else's profit margin, not for better performance or security.

Not sure if you're overpaying?

We'll review what you're spending on your website and tell you honestly what you need and what you don't. No obligation, no jargon — just straight answers.

Get a Free Cost Review

← Back to StagHill Software