Most of the quotes small-business owners show me list one number: the price of the build. It's usually the biggest number. It's rarely the only one, though, and the rest of the bills tend to arrive one at a time, months after launch, when nobody planned for them.
Before you compare two quotes, find out what each one leaves out. Here's what I walk clients through.
The bills that come after launch
- Domain. You renew it every year. The first year is often discounted, and the renewal price can be higher. Make sure it's registered in your name, not your developer's.
- Hosting. This is a monthly or yearly fee, unless it's already included in a platform subscription. Ask what tier the quote assumes. The cheapest plan may not cover your traffic or your storage.
- Payment processing. If you sell online, every sale costs you a percentage plus a fixed fee. Stripe's standard card rate is 2.9% plus 30 cents per successful charge, and disputes cost extra, according to Freemius's breakdown of Stripe fees. On a $40 mug, that comes to about $1.46. Over a year of orders, it adds up.
- Email. A professional address at your own domain usually means a paid per-person subscription. If three people need inboxes, you pay three times.
- Plugins, themes and apps. Booking tools, form builders and shipping calculators often bill yearly. A site built on five paid add-ons comes with five renewal dates.
- Upkeep. Software updates, security patches, broken links, a new price list, a holiday banner. Someone has to do this work. If it's you, it costs time. If it's your developer, ask for the rate now.
How to compare quotes fairly
Ask every developer to fill in the same table: build cost, then every recurring cost for the first twelve months, with who pays it and when it renews. A cheap build with lots of paid add-ons can cost more by month twelve than a pricier build with fewer moving parts.
Also ask who owns each account. If your domain, hosting and payment account are under your own login, you can switch developers without starting over.
When I build a storefront or booking system, I try to keep the recurring list short and write it down before any work starts. That's not a sales trick. A short list is just easier for an owner to budget for and less likely to break.
The real price of a website is the build plus twelve months of renewals, so add them up before you sign.
