A calculator on a desk next to an open laptop, suggesting a monthly cost being worked out

Web Design

What Is a Pay Monthly Website?

A plain English explanation of the model, what should be included for the money, and the three things worth checking before you sign anything.

By Robert Dicks18 May 20266 min read

A pay monthly website is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of paying a few thousand pounds up front to have a site built, you pay a fixed amount each month, and that covers the build and the running of it for as long as you stay.

The idea is not new. It is how most businesses already pay for their phones, their accounting software and their vans. What is worth understanding is what should be inside that monthly figure, because the term gets used for two quite different things.

The two things people mean by pay monthly

Instalments on a build

The same one off build, split across twelve or twenty four payments. Once it is paid off, the upkeep is yours. This is finance, and there is nothing wrong with it as long as you know that is what it is.

A managed subscription

No build invoice at all. The monthly fee covers the design, the hosting, the security and the ongoing changes, and keeps covering them. This is what we do, and what the rest of this article is about.

The way to tell them apart is to ask what happens in month twenty five. If the payments stop and the site is yours to maintain, it was instalments. If the service carries on, it is a subscription.

What should be in the monthly price

A fair managed plan should cover all of this without extra invoices appearing:

The design and build of the site itself, written and put together for you.
Your domain name, registered in your name.
Hosting, with the SSL certificate that puts the padlock in the address bar.
Security patching, backups and uptime monitoring.
A set amount of content change time each month, for prices, hours, photos and new services.
Basic SEO setup so the pages are structured for search from the start.
Somebody to ring when you need something.

For reference, ours is £74 a month for the Starter plan, which covers up to five pages, with additional pages at £50 each. Professional is £249 a month and adds Google Business Profile management, on page SEO, one to two blog posts a month and booking and CRM systems. Business is £649 a month. The full list is on our web design prices page.

What it costs in the UK generally

Across the UK market, managed pay monthly plans for small business sites tend to sit somewhere between about £50 and £250 a month depending on the size of the site and how much ongoing work is included. Anything much below that usually means a template with no support attached, and it is worth asking what the cheap end actually buys.

Compare that with a one off build, which UK price guides put at roughly £500 to £3,000 with a freelancer and £2,000 to £6,000 with a regional agency, before hosting, domain, SSL and changes are added. You can compare the two with your own figures using our website cost calculator.

Three things to check before you sign

1Is there a minimum term? Twelve and twenty four month initial terms are common in this market. Ours is month to month with no exit fee, but assume a term exists until someone tells you otherwise.
2Whose name is the domain in? It should be yours. A designer holding your domain is the single biggest risk in any arrangement like this.
3What do you get if you leave? Ask specifically whether you receive the website files. We hand over the files and transfer the domain, and you should expect that answer in writing from anyone.

Who it suits

Pay monthly tends to work well for sole traders and small firms who need to look credible quickly and would rather not tie up capital, for trades whose money is already committed to tools, materials and vehicles, and for anyone who knows they will never get round to maintaining a site themselves.

It suits you less well if you have the money spare and someone able to look after the site, in which case buying outright may cost a little less over five years. We have set out both sums in pay monthly web design versus upfront.

How long it takes

With us, most sites go live within 7 to 14 days of us receiving your text, photos and logo. The content is almost always the bottleneck rather than the building, which is why we write it with you rather than waiting for you to send it over.

If you want something simple online faster and cheaper than that, our quick, low cost website page covers that route, and our Wales pages cover where we work.

Thinking about a pay monthly website?

Tell us what you need and we will give you a clear monthly figure with nothing hidden behind it.