What does a website cost to run in NZ after it's built?

The four lines every site has

Whatever the site is built with, the running cost comes down to four things: the domain name, the hosting, email on that domain, and whoever makes changes after launch. Some providers bundle all four into one monthly fee. That's convenient, and it hides which part you're paying for. Ask for the breakdown before you sign anything with a monthly line on it.

A useful habit is to write the four lines down with a yearly figure next to each, then add them up. Monthly prices look small. Twelve of them, every year for three years, is the number that matters. A site usually lasts about that long before a refresh, so that's the horizon to compare on.

Domain name: small, and the one that matters most

A .co.nz or .nz domain is commonly $20 to $50 a year, depending on the registrar and how many years you pay up front. It is the cheapest line and the most important, because it is your address. Every business card, van sign, and Google listing points at it.

Register it yourself, or make sure you are listed as the registrant if someone does it for you. The registrant is the legal holder of a .nz domain. If a designer registers it under their own name, you are relying on their goodwill to get it back. Set auto-renew on, and use an email address you'll still have in five years. Domains lapse when renewal notices go to an old staff inbox.

Hosting: where the biggest differences are

Hosting is the computer that serves your site to visitors. The price depends almost entirely on how the site is built. A static site — plain pages built ahead of time, like the ones we build — needs very little. Several well-known hosts have free tiers that cover a small business site comfortably, and paid static hosting is often a few dollars a month. The security certificate (the padlock, SSL) is included free by most hosts now.

A WordPress site needs a server that runs code on every visit, plus a database. Decent managed WordPress hosting in NZ is commonly $20 to $60 a month, and cheap shared hosting tends to be slow. A website builder like Wix or Squarespace charges a plan fee that includes hosting, often $20 to $60 a month on a business plan. Check the current price page, because these change.

The cheapest hosting is not always the right hosting. If you're on WordPress, a $3 host that takes six seconds to load the page will cost you enquiries. If you're on a static site, paying $60 a month for hosting is usually paying for nothing.

Email on your own domain

An address like [email protected] looks more established than a Gmail address, and it moves with the business if you change providers. It is a separate service from the website. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are the common choices, and both charge per user, per month. Check their current NZ prices before you add staff accounts you don't need.

You don't have to start there. Plenty of sole traders run on a free address for the first year, and that's fine. If you already have email on your domain, tell whoever builds your site before they touch the domain settings. The mail records (MX records) have to stay correct when the domain is pointed at a new site, or the inbox goes quiet.

Maintenance: necessary on some sites, optional on others

Maintenance plans published by NZ studios commonly run $50 to $300 a month. On a WordPress site with plugins, some of that is real work: plugins need updating, updates sometimes break things, and an unpatched plugin is the most common way small sites get hacked. If you're on WordPress, either pay someone to do updates or learn to do them carefully yourself.

A static site has no plugins and no database to patch. There's nothing to update unless you want to change the content. That's why we don't sell a retainer with Starter or Growth. Changing a phone number, an hour, or a price on a page we built is a short job, quoted when you ask. A new page or a shop is a new quote. You pay for the change, not for a month in which nothing happened.

Costs that aren't running costs

Google Ads, photography, copywriting, and SEO retainers are often listed alongside hosting in a quote, which makes the monthly figure look like a fixed cost of having a website. They aren't. They're marketing, and each one is a choice. A Google Business Profile is free. Search Console is free. Neither needs a monthly fee to set up.

Booking and ordering tools are the exception worth planning for. If your salon uses a booking app, or your café takes online orders, that tool has its own subscription and sometimes a per-booking or per-order fee. The website links to it; it doesn't replace it. Count it in your running costs if the business depends on it.

Three setups, three yearly bills

A sole trader on a static site with a free email address: a domain at about $30 a year and hosting on a free tier. Under $50 a year to run, after a one-off build. That's our Starter at $499 for most tradies: logo mark, one page, quote form, and the files.

A café on a static site with two email accounts on its domain: the domain, a few dollars a month of hosting or a free tier, plus two email users. Growth at $1,199 builds the five pages. The yearly running cost is mostly the email. Changing the menu prices is a short job when it comes up.

The same café on a builder: a business plan at around $35 a month is about $420 a year, plus a booking or menu app, plus the same email. Over three years the plan alone is about $1,260, before the app, the email, or anyone changing a menu item — and if the plan lapses, the site goes offline. The builder vs custom guide runs this comparison in more detail.

How to cut a running cost you already have

Start by finding out what each line actually is. Log in to the billing page for your domain, hosting, and email, and write the yearly amount next to each. If you can't log in to one of them, that's the first problem to fix, not the price. Ask whoever set it up to add you as the owner.

Then look for the line that's paying for nothing. A static brochure site on premium hosting can move to cheaper hosting in an afternoon. A maintenance plan on a site nobody has edited in a year is worth questioning. A builder subscription for a five-page site that never changes is the classic case: you're renting something you could own.

Moving costs something once. Rebuilding a builder site as a static site is a project, not a switch, and the old page addresses need redirects so you keep the search traffic you've earned. Do the three-year sum before you decide. If the saving is small, stay put and spend the effort on your Google Business Profile instead.

Red flags in a monthly website fee

A monthly fee isn't a bad thing on its own. Some businesses would rather pay a predictable amount and never think about the site. The problem is a fee that bundles things you can't see, on a site you can't take with you. Watch for four signs.

The first is a fee with no breakdown. If a quote says $99 a month for “hosting and support”, ask how much of that is hosting. On a static site the honest answer is a few dollars. The second is a contract term with an exit fee, where leaving early costs you the remaining months. The third is a domain registered to the provider, so cancelling the plan means losing your address. The fourth is a site that stays on their platform when you leave, so there's nothing to move.

Any one of those can be fine if you know about it and the price is right. All four together is a website you rent from someone who controls your address. Read the cancellation clause before the features list. It tells you more about the deal than any feature does. If a provider won't send the clause in writing before you sign, treat the monthly price as provisional.

What you pay us after launch

Nothing, unless you ask for a change. Starter at $499 and Growth at $1,199 are one-off fees: half to start, the rest on handover. There's no monthly fee to us. The domain and hosting are in your name and billed to you directly by the providers, so you can see every running cost yourself. The cost guide covers build prices across the NZ market, and the ownership guide covers what to check so the site and domain stay yours.