Website Costs You Shouldn’t Forget to Budget For
[ This article was cross-posted to Bristol Creative Industries from my blog. ]
If you’re planning a new website it’s a good idea to be clear on what goes into the overall cost. The design and development are usually the main investment, but there are a few other bits and bobs you should be aware of. They’re not there to trip you up, but they are – if I’m honest – pretty boring and easy to forget when you’re caught up in colours, layouts and other shiny things.
In this post I’ll go over some of the extras you might not have thought about yet: things like your domain name, web hosting, and additional software so that you can work them into your budget from the beginning and avoid any surprises later on. I’ll also de-mystify some of the terminology and help you understand what it is that each thing is actually for.
Your domain is your online address – the bit that looks like yourbusiness.com. It’s often the first thing people see, and the one they’ll hopefully remember.
For simplicity, registering your domain through your web host (more on those in a sec) can make setup and management easier. But if you’re happy to split things up, I often recommend Cloudflare – they offer fair pricing (they sell at-cost), and I usually recommend implementing their free security and performance tools anyway.
A standard .com or .co.uk domain name will usually cost you between £10 and £20 per year. The “.com” or “.co.uk” bit at the end is the “top level domain” (TLD) and there are hundreds of them to choose from nowadays. Fancy a .pizza or .beer? Those can range from £20 to £1,000s depending on the TLD you want.
Also consider whether you might need to register multiple domains and have them redirect to a main one. For example, your business may trade under one name but be registered under another and you might want to secure both of those domains.
Once you’ve got your domain, you’ll need somewhere for your website to live. That’s what hosting is: it’s where all the code, images and content actually sit so visitors can load your site.
Hosting is usually renewed annually, and while there are loads of providers out there, they’re not all created equal.
My go-to recommendation? Krystal – they’re UK-based, powered by renewable energy, and their customer support has been consistently brilliant. I’ve trusted them with my own site and several client projects, and they’ve never let me down.
For a typical brochure-style WordPress site or small online shop, you can expect to pay between £60 and £300 per year, depending on the plan and performance you need.
Some hosting providers seem to make their sign-up processes intentionally convoluted, in an apparent attempt to trick people into signing up to add-on services they don’t need. Also avoid providers that offer the first year at a steep discount then ramp the costs up at renewal time.
The dark patterns used by some web hosting providers could be a whole blog post on their own, so I think I’ll leave hosting there. 😊 Talk to me if you want any help navigating hosting or domain registration.
One of the joys of WordPress is that so much of it is free. There are thousands of plugins that let your website do all sorts of clever things without spending a penny. But occasionally, you’ll need the premium version of a plugin – maybe to unlock more features, improve performance, or get access to support and updates.
If you need functionality such as event tickets, room bookings or fancy filtering, a premium plugin is often more cost-effective than having a bespoke solution built from scratch. Some common premium plugins on the sites I work on are Search and Filter Pro, ACF Pro and The Events Calendar. Not every site needs premium plugins, but they’re handy when you want something powerful, quickly.
They vary a lot but most premium WordPress plugins cost between £30 and £200. That usually includes updates and support for 12 months. If you don’t renew, the plugin will often still work, you just won’t get the latest features or security updates.
If you’d like a professional-looking email address like [email protected], you’ll need email hosting. Many web hosting plans include basic email hosting but the service is normally very basic and not particularly user-friendly. If it just isn’t cutting the mustard you might want to opt for a service like Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) or Microsoft 365. These also come with things like shared storage (One Drive, Google Drive) and collaborative document editing (Google Docs, Excel).
Dedicated email hosting typically comes in at around £50 to £120 per user per year, depending on the provider and the amount of storage you need.
Depending on your needs, there might be one or two other things to budget for:
Web design costs aren’t just about how your site looks – they’re also about the tools and services that keep it running smoothly, securely and professionally. None of these extra expenses are huge on their own, but they’re worth building into your budget so there are no surprises later.
If you’re planning a new site or giving an old one a makeover, I’m always happy to talk through your goals and help you make the most of your budget.
Drop me a message if you’d like to chat.
I’m Andrew Viney, a freelance website designer and developer based in Bristol. I specialise in creating effective, responsive, Google-optimised websites for individuals, businesses and non-profits.
You need to load content from reCAPTCHA to submit the form. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.
More Information
