When people ask what a website costs, they almost always mean the price of making it. But that’s only the first payment. A website costs money every year it stays up, and that part rarely shows up in the quote.
Here I compare what it costs to keep a small business website running for five years: the kind with a home page, a services page, some photos and a way to get in touch. First made with WordPress, which is the most common choice. Then as a static site, which is how I make them. The prices are Spanish, because that’s where my clients are.
Two ways to serve a page
Think of a restaurant menu.
WordPress is a cook who writes the menu out by hand every time a customer walks in. It checks the database, picks the template, puts the pieces together and hands it over. It works, but it needs a server running all the time, and someone has to pay for that server and look after it.
A static site is the printed menu. The pages are made once, and the server only has to hand them out. There’s no database and nothing to assemble on each visit.
For a business that doesn’t sell online, the two sites look the same to a visitor. The difference is in what you pay behind the scenes.
What you pay with WordPress
Hosting. WordPress needs a server with PHP and a database. In Spain, shared hosting is advertised at €1–3 a month, but that’s the first-year price. On renewal it goes up to €5–16 a month, depending on the company. Some providers keep the same price, and they’re worth choosing, but many don’t.
The theme and paid plugins. Many WordPress sites are made with a visual page builder like Elementor Pro, which costs about $60 a year. On top of that there are often paid plugins for backups, caching or forms, each with its own yearly fee. Stop paying and they stop getting updates.
Updates. WordPress, the theme and every plugin release updates several times a month. Many of them are security fixes. A site that isn’t updated ends up hacked, and cleaning it up costs more than keeping it maintained would have. Either you do it yourself or you pay someone: maintenance for a small site in Spain costs €50–150 a month.
What you pay with a static site
The domain, same as with WordPress: €10–20 a year for a .es, and a bit more for domains like .gal.
Hosting, which is usually free. Services like Cloudflare Pages or Netlify host small static sites at no cost, because all they have to do is hand out files.
Updates, which the site doesn’t need to stay secure. There’s no database to attack, no login page, and no plugins going out of date. You only pay for the changes you want to make.
Five years, in numbers
These are rough figures, before IVA, for a small site with no shop.
| Over five years | WordPress | Static site |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | €300–800 | €0 |
| Domain | €50–75 | €50–75 |
| Paid page builder | €250–300 | €0 |
| Updates, if you pay for them | €3,000–9,000 | €0 |
The last row is the one that matters most. Plenty of people don’t pay it, because they update the site themselves, or because they never update it at all. The first costs time. The second, sooner or later, costs a nasty surprise.
Three real sites
Here are three sites I made. All three are static and hosted on Netlify’s free plan. This is what they cost each year:
| Site | Domain per year | Hosting | Updates |
|---|---|---|---|
| rizoma.gal | €38.49 | €0 | €0 |
| learnverba.app | €20.21 ($22.99) | €0 | €0 |
| linguastecidas.es | €17.57 ($19.99) | €0 | €0 |
The domain is the only fixed cost, and it depends on the ending: a .gal costs more than twice as much as a .es. Even so, the most expensive of the three, rizoma.gal, adds up to €192.45 over five years. With WordPress, five years of hosting alone would cost more.
So what’s the catch?
A static site isn’t right for everything. If you sell online, run a members’ area, or have several people publishing every day, WordPress or something like it is still the right tool. I cover that in another post.
The other common question is whether you can change your opening hours or prices yourself. Yes: a static site can have a simple editor, no code needed. Here’s how it works.
What you can do today
Find your last hosting invoice and look at the renewal price, not the offer price. Add what you pay for plugins and maintenance. Multiply by five.
If the total surprises you, that’s not your fault. Hardly anyone works it out. And if you’d like me to go through what you’re paying for your website with you, get in touch.