Are pay monthly websites worth it? For most sole traders and small firms, yes, and the way to be sure takes about five minutes rather than an afternoon of comparing feature tables. There are three questions that settle it, and the monthly figure is only part of one of them.
Here is the answer first, then the reasoning.
Are Pay Monthly Websites Worth It? The Short Answer
Treat the fee the way you treat your insurance or your phone contract, as a running cost of trading rather than a purchase you have to find the cash for in one go, and the sums usually work. You get the site built, hosted and looked after for one figure a month, and after the twelve month minimum term the website is yours.
Where people get it wrong is comparing the monthly number against a build price and stopping there. The build is one line of what a monthly fee covers. The rest is the part that keeps costing money long after a one off invoice is paid.
What The Monthly Fee Covers
Everything the site needs to exist and stay online, in one payment:
- The build itself, written and put together for you.
- 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.
- Search setup done at build rather than sold back to you later.
- One small update a month on Professional and Premium, with further changes at £10 plus VAT each.
Our packages are £24.99, £39.99, £54.99 and £89.99 a month plus VAT, for one page, up to three, up to five and up to ten. Payment is two months upfront, covering your first and final month, then one payment a month after that.
Question One: What Job Is The Site Doing?
There are two honest answers and they point at different packages.
The first is confirmation. Your work comes through word of mouth and recommendations, and people look you up to check you are real before they ring. The site needs to say what you do, where you do it, and how to reach you. That is Starter or Essential, and it is a job a small site does completely.
The second is finding. You want the site to bring in work from people who have never heard your name. That needs a page for each main service and usually something on the areas you cover, because a page can only properly answer one search at a time. That is Professional or Premium.
Take a plumber covering four towns. If the diary is full from repeat customers and referrals, the site is there to confirm he is real and make him easy to ring, and a single page does that properly. If he wants boiler work from people searching in the next town over, that is a page for boilers, a page for bathrooms and something on the areas he covers. Same trade, same budget conversation, two different answers.
Most people know which of the two they are within about ten seconds, and it is the single biggest factor in whether a site earns its keep. It is also the first thing to settle, because are pay monthly websites worth it is really a question about which size you need rather than whether monthly is a sensible way to pay.
Question Two: Does The Fee Fit Your Quietest Month?
Not your best month, your quietest one. A cost that is comfortable in June and awkward in January is the wrong size, whatever it is buying.
This is the part a monthly arrangement is actually built for. A four figure build price comes out of reserves, and reserves are what get you through a slow quarter. A monthly figure comes out of trading, sits alongside the insurance and the fuel, and gets forecast like any other standing cost.
Are pay monthly websites worth it on this question alone? For a business with money sitting idle, it is a genuine choice. For most small firms invoicing at thirty days, the cashflow answer is the whole answer.
Question Three: Who Is Going To Keep It Current?
A website is not a thing you finish, which is the question people skip when they work out whether are pay monthly websites worth it. Prices change, you drop a service, you add a town, the mobile number on the contact page changes. Somebody has to make those changes, and the honest question is whether that somebody is going to be you.
If you enjoy that side of it, you have options and you will do fine with any of them. If the thought of logging in to change an opening time fills you with nothing but delay, a managed arrangement is worth what it costs, because the alternative is a site that slowly stops being true. A phone number nobody answers does more damage than no website at all.
The Numbers, Written Down Plainly
Across twelve months our packages come to £299.88 on Starter, £479.88 on Essential, £659.88 on Professional and £1,079.88 on Premium, all plus VAT.
Put those next to your own work rather than against another quote. A consultant billing £500 a day covers Professional with a day and a bit across the whole year. A tradesman whose average job is £250 needs two jobs to cover Starter. A tutor at £30 an hour needs ten hours.
Nobody can promise you those jobs, and anyone who does is guessing. Are pay monthly websites worth it is not a question anybody can answer with a promise about results. What you can judge is the size of the bet: how much extra work would this need to bring in before it has paid for itself, and does that number sound plausible for your trade and your area? For most small businesses the answer is one or two jobs a year, which is a low bar to clear.
How The Billing Works
Four lines, because this is where the real difference between quotes usually hides. Payment is two months upfront at sign up, covering your first month and your final month. After that it is one payment a month. There is no setup fee sitting underneath the monthly price, no separate hosting invoice later in the year and no renewal letter for the domain. Every price is shown excluding VAT, which is added at the checkout.
That is the whole of it. When people ask are pay monthly websites worth it, a fair part of the answer is simply knowing what will leave your account and when, which is easier to judge than a build price with the running costs still to come.
What Happens At The End Of The Twelve Months
The minimum term is twelve months. After that it runs month to month and you can stop with thirty days’ written notice.
And the website is yours. This is the part that decides whether are pay monthly websites worth it over the long run: after the twelve month minimum term full ownership passes to you, provided your account is up to date, and the domain stays with your business. That matters, because it is the question people most often forget to ask, and the answer decides whether twelve months of payments bought you something or rented it.
Are Pay Monthly Websites Worth It Next To A One Off Build?
Both are proper ways to buy a website. The difference is what sits inside the price.
With a one off build you pay for the design and the build, then the domain and the hosting are arranged alongside and renew on their own cycle, and changes later are quoted as they come. With a monthly package the build, the domain, the hosting, the certificate and the email are one figure, there is nothing large to find at the start beyond the two months upfront, the middle packages carry an update each month, and the site is yours at twelve months.
If you would rather pay for the build in one go, the traditional way, we can do that too. Just ask and we will price it for you.
Who Gets The Most Out Of It
Across the businesses we build for the pattern is consistent, and it is the clearest way to answer are pay monthly websites worth it for your own case. It suits you best if:
- You would rather keep cash in the business than hand over a lump sum in January.
- You do not want to be the person who remembers a renewal date.
- You want somebody to email when the number on the contact page changes.
- You are starting out, or starting again, and want to be online properly this month rather than next quarter.
- Your site needs to stay accurate, because your hours, prices or service areas actually change.
Anything not listed in the packages, a shop, a member login area or a booking system built to your own rules, just ask and we will quote for it separately.
Getting It Live
One setup form, about fifteen minutes. You tell us in plain English what you do, who you do it for and where, and we write the page copy from that. 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 are not handed a blank document, and you are not choosing templates or fonts.
So, Are Pay Monthly Websites Worth It?
For most small businesses, yes. Are pay monthly websites worth it for you comes down to those three questions: the site has a clear job, the fee is comfortable in your quietest month, and you would rather somebody else kept it current. If that is three yesses, the only remaining decision is which size you need.
Have a look at what each package includes, or tell us what your business does and we will say which one fits and what it would cost you a month.