Do you have to pay monthly for a website?

Yes. You can pay once for the build and owe the designer nothing after. What you cannot avoid is hosting and a domain, and you can pay both upfront rather than monthly: a domain is billed yearly, and 123 Reg, for example, charges its Economy hosting for a 3-year term at sign-up (£71.64 ex VAT). What a one-off build costs is in how much a website costs in the UK. After the build, the costs fall into three groups:

• Unavoidable: a domain, renewed every year (Krystal charges £7.99 ex VAT for a .co.uk, 20i £9.99), and hosting, which keeps the site online (IONOS Standard is £6 a month ex VAT after its intro offer).
• Usually wanted: email on your own domain, priced per mailbox.
• Optional: someone to update, monitor and change the site for you. You can do this yourself, pay as you go, or pay a monthly care plan.

A pay-monthly website bundles these, plus the build, into one monthly figure. Convenient, but it hides the true cost, which is why the totals below matter. The yearly bills on their own are in how much a website costs per year to run.

On the figures above, an entry package is £30 to £55 a month and a fuller one £70 to £199 or more. The right number depends on what is included, and on what you get to keep. Tiers differ in the same few ways. Check each when you compare two monthly prices:

• Pages and features. More pages, copywriting, booking or a shop move you up a tier.
• Changes included. Some plans include a set amount of edits each month; others charge per change.
• VAT. £99 ex VAT is £118.80 if you are not VAT registered and cannot claim it back.
• The term and the exit. A low price with a long minimum term can cost more than a higher one you can leave.
• Set-up fees. None of the totals below include one, so ask whether there is one.

To compare a monthly price with paying once, you need a one-off quote too. How much web designers charge in the UK shows the hourly, day and fixed rates to expect.

Here is the arithmetic, including Coltura's options. We include Growth Care at £149 a month because leaving it out would flatter us.

Read it both ways. Against £50 a month, a one-off build you host yourself costs less by year three. Against £30 a month the totals stay close after five years, so the case there rests on ownership and on what is built. And £1,400 plus Growth Care, at £6,787.97 over three years, costs more than any pay-monthly package in the table. Growth Care is a different product from a £30 plan: hosting, content changes within a fair monthly allowance, new service pages as you grow, monitoring of forms, speed and search indexing, a monthly report, a quarterly conversion review and direct messages to us. Cancel any time, with a month's notice, and you keep the site.

It depends entirely on the contract, and the table above shows how much contracts differ. There are four patterns.

• Yours from the start. ProfileTree says the code, content and design are yours from day one, the domain is in your name, and you get a full export when you leave.
• Yours after the minimum term. Opace and Yoohoo Creative say the site becomes yours after 12 months.
• Transfer or buy-out after the term. Cloudswitched hosts the site during the subscription; after the minimum term it can transfer the files and domain if you cancel, or sell you the site at a reduced price.
• Not movable. Yell's terms say the site cannot move host without Yell's prior written agreement, and Yell owns content it creates. You own a domain Yell registers for you, and Yell may license the written copy to you on cancellation if you are paid up.

Owning “the content” gives you the text, which you can paste elsewhere. Owning “the website” gives you the working site, which is what you paid for. Who owns your website, and how to check explains what to look for in your name.

Within the minimum term, you usually owe some or all of the rest. Yell charges 80% of the outstanding charges for the first 12 months, plus VAT and any third-party costs it has incurred, and any unpaid design-fee instalments fall due. Yoohoo Creative lets you cancel early if the balance is cleared.

After the term, ProfileTree and Cloudswitched roll on month by month with 30 days' notice. At Yell it depends on the order: a monthly rolling term, or a further 12 months unless you give at least 90 days' notice before the term ends. Opace says that after the 12 months you can pay a settlement figure to end the monthly payments; its page does not give the amount. If the site was never yours and you stop paying, it comes down, and you are starting again: whether to redesign or build a new website covers that choice.

Red flags in a pay-monthly contract:

• The domain is registered in the provider's name.
• No written answer on whether you can take the whole working site with you, as well as the words.
• Automatic renewal for another fixed term, with no option to roll monthly.
• No stated limit on price rises.
• An exit fee with no way to work it out in advance.

Yes, or yearly, which is cheaper: Wix Core is £16 a month billed annually or £19 billed monthly, plus VAT (ExpertSure; Wix's plans page says prices do not include tax), and Squarespace Core is £17 or £24 (Startups.co.uk). You build it yourself and a Wix site has to stay on Wix's servers; Wix vs custom websites covers what you can take with you if you leave.

Sometimes. Pay monthly is a fair choice in some situations:

• You cannot spare a lump sum now, and a site that brings in work this month matters more than year three.
• You want one supplier and one bill, with changes handled for you, and you do not mind the total.
• You are testing a new business and may not need the site in two years.
• The contract gives you the domain, the site and a full export, with a short notice period.

A one-off build suits the opposite case: you want to own the site outright, keep it for years, and decide month by month whether to pay for care. With Coltura, the build is £1,400, fixed, done in about 14 working days once the direction is agreed and you have got us your content. Everything is in your name from day one. Growth Care is optional, and you can host it yourself. See what the Growth Website includes, or compare website maintenance plans. If you already pay monthly for a site that is not bringing in work, a free Growth Audit gives you a written, prioritised list of what is costing you enquiries and what we would do about it, whether or not you go ahead.

1. What is the minimum term, and what exactly does leaving early cost, including any third-party costs?
2. Is the monthly price ex VAT or inc VAT?
3. Is the domain registered in my name, at a registrar I can log in to?
4. When I leave, do I get the website itself, or only the words?
5. Can the price rise during the term or after it, and by how much?
6. Does it renew automatically, for how long, and how much notice do I give?
7. Is there a set-up fee, and is it refundable?
8. What changes are included each month, and what is charged extra?
9. Multiply the monthly price by 36. Is that more than a one-off build plus hosting?