How much does a website cost per year? The DIY numbers

A small website you build yourself costs about $150 to $370 a year once the first-year discounts end. WordPress on shared hosting is the cheapest, at about $150 a year after a first year of $35 to $50. A Wix or Squarespace site costs about $220 to $370 a year, and a Shopify store about $370 before the fees on each sale. Email at your own domain adds about $60 a year, and selling adds roughly 3% of every sale. Those are do-it-yourself figures in US dollars on yearly billing, not an agency’s quote for building the site. Here is where each line comes from, and four first sites added up.

The short answer, platform by platform

Each figure covers the plan or the hosting, a .com domain and a free theme. Email, apps and the fees on sales come later in this guide.

Where you build	Year one	Every year after
WordPress on shared hosting	about $35 to $50	about $150, more on some hosts
Wix Light	$204	about $224
Squarespace Basic	$228	about $248
Wix Core or Squarespace Core	$348	about $368
Shopify Basic	about $368	about $368, plus card fees

These are the same sums Theme Match uses for every theme it suggests; how we count the cost sets out the rules, and the rounding, in one place.

What goes into the yearly bill

Almost every website bill is made of the same six lines:

• The plan or the hosting. On a builder, the plan pays for the editor, the hosting and the security certificate that gives you an https address. On WordPress, you pay a host to run the free software.
• The domain. You don’t buy a domain outright. As ICANN, the body that coordinates domain names, explains in its guide to renewing domain names, you register it for a term, typically one to ten years, and renew it before it expires.
• The theme. Free on Squarespace and Wix, free or paid on WordPress and Shopify.
• Email at your own domain, so the address after the @ is your business’s name, not gmail.com.
• Apps, plugins and add-ons: online booking, a newsletter tool, store extras.
• Fees on sales: the card processor’s cut, and on some plans the platform’s.

The first three are the ones a pricing page shows. The last three are why the real bill is often higher.

Why year two costs more

Three things change after the first twelve months.

1. The hosting renews at the regular price. DreamHost’s shared hosting Launch plan costs $2.89 a month for the first year ($34.68), then $10.99 a month ($131.88). SiteGround’s StartUp plan goes from $2.99 to $17.99 a month, six times as much, and the intro price needs twelve months paid up front.
2. The free domain stops being free. Squarespace, Wix, WordPress.com and most hosts include a domain for the first year on yearly plans. After that it renews at about $20 a year.
3. Other introductory offers end. Google Workspace, for one, discounts its first year for new customers.

A builder’s plan doesn’t usually jump after the first year the way hosting does, but its price can still change: Squarespace raised its US yearly prices in July 2026.

Tip: look for the words “renews at” or “regular price” on any pricing page before you pay. Put that figure in your budget, not the intro one.

On a builder: Squarespace, Wix and Shopify

A builder’s bill is mostly the plan, because hosting, security and updates come with it. Paying yearly costs less than paying month to month on all three.

• Squarespace has no free plan, only a 14-day trial. Basic is $19 a month billed yearly ($228) and Core is $29 a month ($348). On Basic, Squarespace takes 2% of each product sale on top of card fees; Core drops that fee. Digital products and memberships carry a fee on both: 7% on Basic and 5% on Core.
• Wix has a free plan, but it keeps Wix branding and a Wix web address. Light is $17 a month billed yearly ($204) and Core is $29 a month ($348). Light can’t take payments, so selling anything, or taking a deposit for a booking, means Core.
• Shopify Basic is $29 a month billed yearly ($348), plus a domain at about $20 a year. Its own themes are free; paid ones are usually a one-time price, such as $380 for Local or $400 for Prestige.

Squarespace and Wix cost the same at the Core level, so the choice between them comes down to the templates and the editor more than the price; Squarespace vs Wix compares the two for a first site.

On WordPress: hosting, domain and theme

The WordPress software is free, and you pay for three things around it.

• Hosting. Shared hosting for a first site costs about $4 a month in year one and about $11 a month after, roughly $48 and then $132 a year. Pricier hosts charge more at renewal, as SiteGround’s figures above show.
• The domain. Most hosts include it free for the first year and charge about $20 a year after. A registrar that renews at the price it registers for costs less: Porkbun charges $11.08 a year for a .com, renewals included, with WHOIS privacy and email forwarding at no extra cost.
• The theme. Twenty Twenty-Five, Astra, Kadence, GeneratePress and Ollie are free. Paid options run from Ollie Pro at $89 a year and GeneratePress One at $99 a year to Kadence Pro at $299 a year; Divi is $89 a year or $249 once. All of them are on the Tools page with their prices after any first-year discount.

WordPress.com is the other way to run WordPress: its Personal plan is $4 a month billed yearly ($48), with a domain free for the first year, and every paid plan can install plugins and upload a theme. WordPress.com vs WordPress.org sets the two side by side, including who does the updates and backups.

The extras the headline price leaves out

Extra	What it costs	When you need it
Email at your own domain	Fastmail Individual $60 a year; Google Workspace Business Starter $84 a person	When you send email as your business
Card fees	About 2.9% + 30¢ a sale with Stripe or Shopify Payments; PayPal more	Whenever you take money on the site
Platform fees on sales	2% of product sales on Squarespace Basic; 7% or 5% on digital products	When you sell on Squarespace
Booking and newsletter tools	A separate subscription, or free up to a limit	When the site takes appointments or sends a newsletter
Store apps and plugins	Often billed monthly	Reviews, subscriptions, wholesale

A few notes on those lines. Google Workspace’s $84 is $7 a person a month on a yearly commitment, with a lower first year for new customers. Stripe’s pricing is 2.9% + 30¢ for each successful US card payment with no monthly fee, and Shopify Payments charges the same online rate on Basic. PayPal charges 2.99% + 49¢ for card payments and 3.49% + 49¢ through PayPal Checkout. On Shopify Basic, using a payment provider other than Shopify Payments adds a 2% fee on top. Booking is a subscription of its own on Squarespace (Squarespace Scheduling). Newsletter tools such as Kit are free up to a subscriber limit. Sales tax isn’t in any of these figures.

Four first sites, priced

Here are four common first sites, added up line by line from the prices above.

The site	Year one	Every year after
A freelancer’s one-page site on Wix Light	$204 (the plan; the domain is free)	about $224 (the plan and the domain)
A salon’s site on Squarespace Basic, with email	$288 (the plan and Fastmail)	about $308 (the plan, the domain and Fastmail)
A blog on WordPress at DreamHost, free theme	$34.68 (hosting; the domain is free)	about $152 (hosting and the domain)
A maker’s shop on Shopify Basic, free theme	about $733 (plan, domain, card fees)	about $733

The salon’s figure leaves out online booking; if it already uses a salon booking app, point the Book button at that instead. The blog with Divi in place of a free theme comes to about $124 in year one and about $241 after.

The shop assumes $10,000 of sales a year in 250 orders. Card fees at 2.9% + 30¢ come to $365 ($290 plus $75), on top of the $348 plan and a domain at about $20. If you also sell on Etsy, or are deciding whether to, Etsy vs Shopify works out the fees on both at three sales levels.

Where it’s safe to spend less

• The theme. Every Squarespace and Wix template is free with the plan, Shopify’s own themes are free, and a free WordPress theme can carry a whole small-business site. Pay for a theme only when it has a layout you would otherwise have to build.
• The plan. Start on the lowest plan that does what the site needs today. On Squarespace, Core costs about $120 a year more than Basic and removes the 2% fee on products, so it pays for itself once product sales pass about $500 a month.
• The domain. One .com is enough. Extra endings and misspellings add a renewal each without bringing in visitors.
• Email. If you only need to receive mail at your domain, forwarding to the inbox you already have is free with many registrars. You need a paid mailbox once you send as the business.
• The billing period. Paying yearly costs less than paying monthly on every builder above.

Two places not to save: backups on a WordPress site, which are the undo button for every mistake, and the renewal itself. Put the year-two price in the budget before the first payment, and the bill never surprises you. Domains, hosting and email have their own section, Hosting & Domains.