Most conversations about website costs focus on the build. But the build is a one-off investment. The costs that matter for your business planning are the ones that come back every month and every year.
Here is an honest breakdown of what it actually costs to run a business website in 2026.
Domain registration
Your domain name is the address of your website. A .co.uk domain typically costs between £10 and £20 per year. A .com will be slightly more depending on the registrar you use.
This is your lowest ongoing cost, but it is worth setting up auto-renewal so your domain does not accidentally expire.
SSL certificate
An SSL certificate is what puts the padlock in the browser bar and the https in your web address. Without it, browsers will flag your site as not secure and Google will penalise you in search rankings.
Most reputable hosting providers include an SSL certificate at no extra charge. If yours does not, that is worth addressing.
Hosting
Hosting is where your website lives. Quality varies enormously at the lower end of the market, and cheap hosting often means slower load times, less reliable uptime, and minimal support when things go wrong.
For a WordPress website, managed shared hosting from a quality provider typically costs between £10 and £30 per month. Premium managed WordPress hosting can cost more, but the performance and support are significantly better.
Our Website Care Plans include standard shared hosting, so this cost is bundled into a single monthly figure rather than a separate invoice.
WordPress care plan
If your site runs on WordPress, a care plan covers the ongoing maintenance that keeps it working properly: security updates, plugin and theme updates, daily backups, security monitoring, and uptime monitoring.
Without this, your site is gradually accumulating risk. Outdated software is one of the most common reasons WordPress sites get hacked.
Our Essential Care plan is £34.99 per month and includes hosting, all updates, backups, monitoring, and fixing anything that updates break. Advanced Care at £59.99 adds change requests. Complete Care at £89.99 adds a quarterly strategy call, a Termageddon privacy policy, spam protection, and image optimisation.
Premium plugins
Many WordPress sites use a combination of free and paid plugins. Premium plugins typically charge an annual licence fee for continued updates and support. Depending on what your site needs, this could range from nothing to a few hundred pounds a year.
Common paid plugins include page builders, form tools, SEO tools, e-commerce platforms, and membership or booking systems. If your site relies on premium plugins, factor their renewal costs into your annual budget.
SEO and content
If you want your website to bring in new business rather than just exist, it needs content and it needs to be findable in search. This either takes your time or requires an investment in professional support.
A basic SEO setup and content strategy from a professional can range from a few hundred to several hundred pounds per month depending on the scope. Content alone, whether blog posts or page copy, is an additional cost if you are not writing it yourself.
Putting it together
For a straightforward small business WordPress site in 2026, a realistic annual cost breakdown looks something like this:
- Domain: £10 to £20 per year
- Care plan including hosting: from £420 per year (Essential Care at £34.99/month)
- Premium plugins: £0 to £300 per year depending on what your site uses
- SSL: usually included with hosting
That puts the realistic floor for running a well-maintained business website at around £450 per year, assuming no premium plugins and no professional content support.
Want a clearer picture for your specific site?
Get in touch with Matthew Temple Consulting and we can take a look at your current setup and give you an honest view of what it is costing you and what it should be costing you.
