When I tell business owners my pricing is one-time — no subscription, no monthly fee — I can see the silent question forming: “Okay… but what will I actually pay every month? There’s always something.”
It’s the right question. The market has trained you to ask it, because almost everyone in this industry hides a recurring charge somewhere. So here is the complete list — the real recurring costs, the optional ones, and the fake ones you’re probably paying today.
The two real recurring costs
1. Your domain: ~₹800–1,500 per year. The name itself — yourbusiness.com — is rented annually from a registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Hostinger). Nobody on earth can sell you a domain “forever”; a lifetime-domain offer is a lie by definition. Some fancy extensions cost more, but a normal .com/.in sits in this range.
2. Hosting: ₹0 for most small-business websites — genuinely. The websites I build run on platforms like Netlify with backends on services like Supabase, whose free tiers comfortably serve a typical business site’s traffic. This isn’t a trial or a trick; it’s how modern infrastructure is priced — you pay when you’re big, and by the time you’re big enough to pay, hosting bills are a rounding error next to the business it brings you. A high-traffic platform or heavy storage needs (thousands of photos, video) can push you into paid tiers — usually a few hundred rupees a month, and I’ll tell you before the build if your project is heading there.
That’s the whole list. Domain yearly, hosting mostly zero. Everything below is either optional or shouldn’t exist.
The optional costs — real, but only if you want them
- Professional email (
you@yourbusiness.com): free via Zoho Mail’s basic plan, or ~₹160/user/month on Google Workspace if you live in Gmail. Optional but recommended — invoices from a Gmail address cost you trust. - Payment gateway fees: if your site takes payments, the gateway takes its ~2% per transaction. That’s a cost of selling, not of the website — you’d pay it on a payment link or card machine too. (Links vs integration, explained honestly.)
- Third-party services your business chooses: SMS/OTP credits, a live data feed, a booking engine. These exist only if your website does something that consumes them — and they’re billed by the provider to your account, at cost, transparently.
The fake costs — what the market bills you anyway
Now the commentary. Here’s what I keep seeing on invoices when business owners show me what they currently pay:
The “maintenance” retainer: ₹500–₹3,000/month for nothing. For a static business website, there is no monthly maintenance. Nothing rusts. No oil change. The honest version of maintenance is “you’ll occasionally want changes, pay per change or keep a retainer if changes are frequent” — a choice, agreed upfront. The dishonest version is a mandatory monthly fee for an activity that does not exist. Ask your agency exactly what they did last month. Specifically. Watch what happens.
The hosting markup. Agencies commonly resell ~₹100/month hosting at ₹500–1,000/month, bundled vaguely into that maintenance fee. You can’t see it because the invoice says “hosting & maintenance” as one line. Unbundle it.
The domain hostage situation — the worst one. The agency registers your domain under their registrar account. Everything’s fine until you try to leave: suddenly the renewal is pricey, transfers are slow, emails go unanswered — because they’re holding your business’s name, and they know it. I’ve seen owners pay years of inflated fees rather than fight for their own domain. The fix is simple and non-negotiable: the domain lives in an account with your email, your password, your payment method. A developer who resists that is telling you their retention strategy.
The panic renewal. A cousin of the hostage trick: the site “needs renewal” annually — some vague ₹3,000–5,000 to “keep it live,” priced as one urgent, unitemised number a week before it “expires.” What actually expires is the ₹900 domain.
The ownership checklist
Whether you work with me or anyone else, “you own your website” should mean, concretely:
- Domain — registered in an account you control, your email on file
- Hosting — account in your name, even when the plan is free
- Code — you have it (a repository handover), so any developer can work on it
- Payment gateway — your business’s account, settling to your bank
- Every password — written down, in your hands, on day one
If you can tick all five, no one can ever hold your website against you — including me. That’s the actual product I’m selling when I say one-time payment: not just a website, but the absence of a landlord.
Frequently asked questions
What are the unavoidable recurring costs of a website in India?
The domain (~₹800–1,500/year) and hosting — which, for most small-business websites built on modern platforms, is genuinely ₹0 on free tiers. Everything else is either optional (email, payment fees) or padding.
Is monthly website maintenance necessary?
For a typical business website: no. Content changes are per-task work you request when you need it. A mandatory monthly maintenance fee on a site that isn’t changing is the industry’s most common padding charge.
My agency pays for my domain. Is that a problem?
It’s fine only if the domain is registered in an account you control. If it’s in the agency’s account, you’re one dispute away from losing your business’s name. Ask for a transfer to your own registrar account — a cooperative agency will do it within days.
Why do you build on free hosting tiers? Is it reliable?
Platforms like Netlify serve enormous production traffic; their free tiers are a pricing decision, not a quality tier. The account is opened in your name, so there’s no dependency on me — and if your traffic ever outgrows it, you upgrade the same account with a card.
What happens if I need changes a year after launch?
You ask, we agree a price, I make them — or any developer of your choice does, because you have the code. That’s the point of ownership: future changes are a choice with a market, not an obligation to one vendor.
Paying a monthly fee right now and not sure what it’s for? Send me the invoice line items — I’ll tell you honestly which are real and which are padding, whether you build with me or not. Get in touch →
