Every proposal you receive prices the build. Almost none price the running of it, which is the number that keeps appearing long after the project is closed.

It is rarely dramatic, and it is rarely zero. Here is what a website actually costs once it is live, and which of those costs are decisions rather than facts.

The small, predictable ones

Domain, hosting and certificates are the easy part, and for most business sites they are a minor line. Platform fees sit alongside them: a hosted platform charges a monthly subscription, a self-hosted one trades that for a server you are responsible for.

Neither is obviously cheaper. Self-hosting looks cheaper until you price the hours that keep it patched.

Maintenance, which is not optional

This is the line most underestimated, and it varies enormously by platform.

• A self-hosted CMS needs core, theme and plugin updates on a schedule. Skipped, they stop being a chore and become a security incident. Someone has to own this, and if nobody does, the site quietly becomes a liability.
• A hosted platform absorbs most of that in the subscription. You are paying for it either way; the question is whether it is a bill or a person's afternoon.
• A custom build has no updates to apply but a dependency tree that ages, and eventually a framework version that forces work.

The one nobody quotes: your own hours

The genuine ongoing cost of most websites is people. Publishing content, updating prices, adding a team member, swapping a campaign banner, fixing a formatting mistake, answering the enquiries the site generates.

If those tasks need a developer, they are slow and billed. If your team can do them, they are fast and invisible — which is why the question "who updates this in eighteen months" is worth more at the start of a project than any feature comparison.

A site your marketing person can edit is meaningfully cheaper to run than one your agency has to touch, even when it cost more to build.

Content is the recurring cost

A website that never changes stops earning attention. Whatever cadence you commit to — a case study a quarter, a monthly article, seasonal campaign pages — that is a real, recurring cost in someone's time or somebody's invoice.

It is also the cost most often promised and least often delivered, because it is the one with no deadline. Be honest at the start about what you will actually sustain. A site designed around monthly publishing that then publishes nothing looks worse than one that never promised it.

Tools and the quiet subscriptions

Analytics, forms, email, booking, chat, a CRM connection. Each is modest, each renews, and collectively they are frequently larger than the hosting. Worth a list and an annual review, because they accumulate without anyone deciding to accumulate them.

What to budget for, honestly

• Fixed and small: domain, hosting or platform subscription, certificates.
• Fixed and easily forgotten: the stack of tool subscriptions.
• Variable and usually underestimated: maintenance, especially on a self-hosted CMS.
• The real number: the hours your team spends keeping it current, plus whatever content cadence you commit to.

None of this argues against any particular platform. It argues for asking the running-cost question during the build, when it can still change the decision, rather than at the first renewal.

We cover how we scope and what a project costs in the questions we get asked most, and there are companion pieces on what a website costs in Dubai and choosing a platform you will not regret.