There are two ordinary ways to get a website without paying for the whole thing on day one. The first is a website design payment plan, where a fixed price is split into instalments until the balance is cleared. The second is a monthly service, where one fee covers the build and everything the site needs to stay online. Both are honest ways to buy. They suit different businesses, and the difference is worth ten minutes of your time before you commit to either one.
What A Website Design Payment Plan Is
A website design payment plan is a price split into instalments. A designer quotes £2,400 for the build, you pay it over twelve or twenty-four months, and when the final payment clears the account is settled. There may be a deposit at the start, and there may be interest or an arrangement fee. The shape is always the same: a stated total, a stated number of payments, and an end date you can point at on a calendar.
The simplest test of a website design payment plan is whether the balance goes down. Ask in an email what you will owe after six payments. If the number is smaller than the one you started with, you are buying on instalments. If there is no balance because it is a monthly fee, you are buying a service, which is a different arrangement with different strengths.
One thing to add up separately: most instalment deals cover the build and stop there. Hosting, the domain renewal, the SSL certificate and somebody’s time to change a phone number on the contact page usually sit outside the agreement. None of that is hidden, but it does belong in the comparison, because it is the part that carries on after the final payment.
What A Monthly Service Covers Instead
A monthly service works the other way round to a website design payment plan: there is no total and no balance. You pay one fee and it covers the build, the domain, the hosting, the SSL certificate, email on your own domain and somebody to contact when you need something changed. That is what we sell, and how pay monthly websites work sets it out step by step.
Our packages run from £24.99 a month for a single page up to £89.99 a month for up to ten pages and your own blog, all plus VAT. Payment is two months upfront, covering your first month and your final month, then one payment a month after that. There is a twelve month minimum term, which is what holds the monthly price where it is, and after that it runs month to month with thirty days’ written notice to stop.
So a monthly service is not a website design payment plan with the word changed. There is nothing to settle and nothing to clear. You are paying for the site to exist and be looked after, in the same way you pay for insurance or your phone, and the commitment is twelve months rather than the length of a finance agreement.
Who Ends Up Owning The Website
This is the question most people reach last, whichever arrangement they are looking at, and it is the one worth reaching first.
With us the answer is plain. After the twelve month minimum term the website is yours, provided your account is up to date. The domain is registered as part of your package and stays with your business. We say so on the pay monthly website design page and it is in our terms, not tucked away in a conversation nobody wrote down.
With a website design payment plan, ownership normally passes when the balance is cleared, but it has to be written down to be real. Under UK law the person who creates commissioned work generally keeps the copyright unless they assign it in writing, which catches people out because it feels like the opposite of common sense. The government guidance on copyright is a short read and worth the five minutes.
Four things decide whether you actually walk away with something, whichever route you pick:
- Whose name is on the domain registration. Not who pays for it, who is listed as the registrant.
- Whether the site can be moved to another host, or whether it only runs on one company’s own system.
- Whether there is a written line saying copyright transfers to you, and at what point it does.
- What you are handed over on the day you leave: files, logins, the domain, or all three.
Get those four confirmed in writing and ownership means something. Any decent supplier will put them in an email in a couple of minutes, and a website design payment plan is no harder to check on this than a monthly service is.
The Case For Spreading The Cost
Most small business websites in the UK are quoted somewhere between £1,500 and £5,000 to build, which is the number a website design payment plan is designed to soften. For a business trading on thirty day invoices, finding that in one go is a cashflow decision rather than a pricing one, and that is the whole reason both of these arrangements exist.
A website design payment plan turns a build price into a monthly figure that gets paid out of trading rather than out of reserves. Spreading a cost over the period the thing earns for you is ordinary business practice. A monthly service does the same job for cashflow and also absorbs the running costs, so there is no second invoice for hosting arriving at an awkward moment in the year.
There is a tax angle worth raising with whoever does your return. Buying an asset on credit and paying a running cost are treated differently, and which is better depends on your numbers rather than on anything a web designer tells you. It is a fifteen minute conversation with your accountant, not a guess.
What Our Monthly Fee Actually Includes
Here is the whole of it, so you can hold it against any website design payment plan you are being offered:
- Your domain, registered and renewed as part of the price.
- Hosting and an SSL certificate, so browsers do not flag your site as insecure.
- Email on your own domain: a forwarder on Starter and Essential, a full mailbox on Professional and Premium.
- A site built for phones first, because that is where most people will see it.
- Search setup done at build rather than sold back to you later.
- One small update a month included on Professional and Premium, with extra changes at £10 plus VAT each.
Getting started is one setup form that takes about fifteen minutes. We aim to send your first draft within ten working days of having everything we need, and up to three review changes are included before it goes live. You do not write the copy, choose a template or pick fonts, and you do not log in and build anything yourself.
Which Arrangement Suits Your Business
A website design payment plan tends to suit you if you want the website on the books as an asset, you are comfortable arranging your own hosting and updates afterwards, and you are confident the business will still be trading for the full term. The debt runs to the end of the agreement whether you are using the site or not, so certainty matters.
A monthly service tends to suit you if you would rather the technical side was somebody else’s job, you want one predictable line on the bank statement, and you would like the option to stop after the minimum term with thirty days’ notice. It is also the easier starting point for a newer business that wants to be online properly this month rather than next quarter.
Two things we are straight about, because they save everyone time. The monthly packages are brochure websites. If you need a checkout and stock control, just ask and we will quote for it separately. And we embed the booking tool you already use at no extra cost, or quote separately for one built to your own rules.
Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign
Send these to anyone you are considering, us included, whether you are weighing up a website design payment plan or a monthly fee. They take a paragraph to answer.
- What will I have paid in total at the end, including any deposit and fees?
- Is the agreement with you, or with a separate finance company?
- Can I settle or cancel early, and what does that cost?
- Does the price include hosting and the domain, or are those billed separately?
- Who is listed as the domain registrant?
- When does ownership of the site pass to me, and is that in writing?
- What is included each month after the site goes live, and what costs extra?
- If I move to another provider in two years, what gets handed over?
Keep the replies. In two years neither of you will remember what was agreed on the phone, and a saved email settles it in thirty seconds.
Where To Start
If a website design payment plan is what you want, ask the eight questions above, get the ownership point in writing and do the multiplication on the total before you sign anything. It is a sound way to buy a website.
If you would rather have the whole thing handled for one monthly figure, with the site yours after twelve months, that is exactly what we do. Have a look at our packages and what each one includes, or tell us what your business does and we will say which size fits and what it would cost you a month.
And if you would rather pay for the build in one go, the traditional way, we can do that as well. Ask when you get in touch and we will price it for you.