How Much Does It Cost to Keep a Website Running?

The total cost of ownership for a website is higher than most business owners expect when they first launch. Here is an honest breakdown of what you are actually paying for.

Hosting runs $20-200/month depending on the platform. Cheap shared hosting is risky: slow, more vulnerable to outages. A managed platform like Vercel or WP Engine runs $20-50/month for most small business sites and provides meaningfully better performance and uptime.

Domain registration is $12-20/year. That is the address itself.

SSL certificate is free on most modern hosting platforms via Let's Encrypt. If someone tries to charge you $100/year for SSL, that is outdated.

Software updates are labor, not a subscription. If you are doing them yourself, the cost is your time. If you are paying someone, this is $50-150/month or part of a maintenance retainer.

Content updates are also labor. Small changes like hours, a staff bio, a new photo take 30-60 minutes if you do them yourself. If you pay hourly, that is $50-100 per update.

Monitoring and security tools run $0-50/month depending on what you set up.

Add it up for a typical small business site: you are realistically at $100-250/month all-in when things are working normally.

At Freedman Systems, the retainer covers hosting on Vercel, all maintenance work, content updates, and security monitoring, scoped to your site after a quick audit. No surprises.

See what is included at freedmansystems.com.