What a website costs to run
Hosting and a domain come to £77 to £241 a year for a small business site in the UK. The bill only has two published prices in it. Everything else people warn you about is either free now, or it is somebody's time, and time is the part no quote includes.
Read off UK vendor pages · July 2026
What the bill is actually made of.
Hosting
£5.75 to £19 a month
Domain
a .co.uk, at renewal
SSL
included by both hosts
Every year, before anyone touches the site
£77 to £241
The whole bill, in two lines
Shared hosting from a UK host runs £5.75 to £19 a month. A .co.uk domain renews at £7.99 to £12.83 a year.That is £77 to £241 a year, and it is the entire unavoidable cost of keeping a small business site online.Everything else is optional, free, or somebody's time.
What hosting and a domain cost
| Host | Plan | Per month | What it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fasthosts | Start | £5.75 | A brochure site with modest traffic. |
| Krystal | Amethyst | £7.00 | The same job, on a UK host with a better reputation. |
| Fasthosts | Mid tier | £13.75 | More storage and headroom than most small sites use. |
| Krystal | Emerald | £19.00 | A busy small business site. The realistic ceiling. |
Krystal sells four tiers above Emerald, up to £97 a month.Those are for complex or high-traffic sites and quoting them here would be dishonest, because a five page site for a local business will never need one.
The renewal is the part that catches people
Fasthosts advertises £1 a month. That is the price for 3 months, after which it becomes £5.75. Domains run the same play: £1 for the first year, £12.83 every year after.Neither is a trick, and both are easy to miss.
The same site, two years running
£1 a month for 3 months, £1 domain
the same hosting, the same domain
Nothing changed except the discount ending. Budget on year two, not year one.
What you are told to pay for and should not
- An SSL certificate. Free, and both hosts above include one. Anyone charging a line item for HTTPS in 2026 is charging you for something they got for nothing.
- A website builder subscription on top of hosting. You are paying for one or the other, not both. If your site is on Wix or Squarespace, that subscription is your hosting.
- Premium support you have not needed yet. Entry plans include support. Buy the upgrade the first time you actually wait too long for an answer, not before.
Maintenance is the cost with no price
Somebody has to keep the platform patched. That has no list price anywhere, because it is time rather than a product, which is exactly why it falls off every quote and every comparison table including the ones above.It is also why sites get hacked eighteen months after launch.
A managed monthly plan rolls hosting, support and patching into one number. The two on page one of UK search are £59 and £79 a month.Against £77 to £241 a year of raw hosting, you are paying roughly ten times the infrastructure cost, and the difference is somebody else carrying it.For a business with nobody technical in it, that is often money well spent.
Read what the plan includes before you sign. Hosting and support are normal in those numbers.Ownership of the site itself often is not.
Common questions
What is the average cost of owning a website?
For a small business site in the UK, £77 to £241 a year covers the two things that have a published price: shared hosting at £5.75 to £19 a month, and a .co.uk domain renewing at £7.99 to £12.83. An SSL certificate is free and included by both hosts checked. What that figure does not cover is maintenance, because keeping a platform patched is time rather than a product and has no list price. If you would rather not do it yourself, a managed plan bundles hosting, support and patching from about £59 to £79 a month, which is roughly ten times the raw infrastructure cost and buys you somebody else carrying the risk.
How much does a website cost per month in the UK?
Between £5.75 and £19 a month for hosting, plus a pound or so a month for the domain when you spread the annual renewal across the year. Be careful comparing advertised monthly prices: Fasthosts leads with £1 a month, which applies for 3 months before reverting to £5.75. Krystal does not run an intro offer, so its £7 entry price is the price you keep paying. Compare renewal against renewal or you are not comparing anything.
Do I have to pay for an SSL certificate?
No. SSL certificates have been free since Let’s Encrypt made them so, and both UK hosts checked here include one on their entry plans. If a host or an agency puts HTTPS on your invoice as a separate charge, they are billing you for something that cost them nothing. It is a reasonable thing to query, and the answer tells you a lot about how the rest of the bill was put together.
Is a managed monthly plan worth it?
It depends whether you want to be the person who patches the platform. The raw cost of hosting and a domain is £77 to £241 a year. A managed plan at £59 to £79 a month is roughly ten times that, and the gap is not the servers, it is somebody being responsible for the thing staying up and staying patched. For a business with no technical person, that is often money well spent. The thing to check before signing is ownership: hosting and support are normally included, and ownership of the site itself frequently is not, which means leaving the plan can mean leaving the site behind.