Hosting, Domain, Maintenance: What a Website Really Costs per Year
Development is a one-time cost, but a site lives for years and has a yearly budget. Good news: the mandatory part is $25–60 a year — everything else is optional. Bad news: many studios turn "everything else" into a mandatory subscription. Let's count honestly.
Mandatory costs: what the site can't run without
| Item | Cost | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | $10–20/yr | .com, .ua or .dev — paid to the registrar |
| Hosting | $0–15/mo | static sites host from $0 |
| SSL certificate | $0 | Let's Encrypt is free — never pay for it |
Minimum total: about $25–60 a year for a card site or a landing page. If someone bills you $100+ "for SSL and domain maintenance" — that's a markup out of thin air.
Optional costs: what "care" is and who needs it
Care is content edits, monitoring, backups, security updates. Who needs it: sites that change often (promos, products, news) or run on platforms that demand regular updates (WordPress with plugins is exactly that case). Who doesn't: a landing page you don't touch for months lives happily with no subscription.
Our care plan is $20/mo and you can cancel anytime — the site and code are yours forever. For $40/mo you get care with content: up to 15 SEO articles a month for the blog, which isn't an expense but an investment in free traffic — see how that works in the FrezaLviv case.
Red flags in monthly fees
- "Mandatory support" or the site gets switched off — you don't own the site, you rent it
- Hosting only with the vendor at $30–50/mo — the market price of such hosting is $5–10
- A monthly "CMS license" fee — WordPress and most modern CMSs are free
- You may leave, but the site "can't move" — a sign you were deliberately locked in
The test is simple: ask "what happens if I stop paying?" If the answer is "the site disappears" — you are not the owner.
What to budget per year?
A landing page or card site you don't change: $25–60/yr — domain and hosting only. A living, growing site: domain + hosting + care $20–40/mo = $265–540/yr, with the content part coming back as traffic. For comparison: a builder site costs $120–360/yr in rent — and still isn't yours. More on that in our builder vs developer comparison.