Cost guide
What a website actually costs to run each year — the bill after the build
By Samuel Marndi · Updated
The short answer
A small Indian business website costs roughly ₹8,000–₹35,000 a year to run once it is live — domain, hosting, SSL, business email and basic upkeep. A busier site with e-commerce, a VPS and active maintenance runs ₹60,000–₹2,50,000 a year, and that is before any marketing spend.
The recurring bill is where most business websites quietly die. Build quotes are competitive and detailed; the running costs are mentioned in a line or not at all. Then hosting lapses, the SSL certificate expires, plugins go unpatched, and eighteen months later the site is either broken, defaced or invisible. Ask for the annual figure before you sign the build.
The itemised annual bill
These are Indian market rates for 2026. Almost every line has a free or near-free option and a sensible paid one, and the gap between them is usually about who is responsible when it breaks rather than about features.
| Item | Typical annual cost | What you are actually paying for |
|---|---|---|
| Domain (.com / .in) | ₹500 – ₹2,000 | Renewal. Set auto-renew — lapsed domains get bought within hours |
| Shared hosting | ₹2,000 – ₹10,000 | Fine for a brochure site with modest traffic |
| VPS / cloud hosting | ₹10,000 – ₹50,000 | Needed once traffic, e-commerce or custom code is involved |
| SSL certificate | ₹0 – ₹8,000 | Let’s Encrypt is free and adequate for most; paid adds warranty and support |
| Business email | ₹1,500 – ₹9,000 per user | Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Do not run business mail off free webmail |
| Backups (off-site) | ₹1,200 – ₹12,000 | The line most often skipped, and the one that saves you |
| CDN / security (e.g. Cloudflare) | ₹0 – ₹24,000 | Free tier covers most small sites genuinely well |
| Plugin / theme licences | ₹0 – ₹30,000 | WordPress builds especially — check what renews |
| Maintenance and updates | ₹15,000 – ₹60,000 | Patching, uptime, fixes, content changes |
| Payment gateway (e-commerce) | 2% per transaction | Razorpay and peers; not a fixed cost but budget for it |
What that totals, by kind of site
Where the money is genuinely wasted
- Overpaying for hosting you cannot use. A brochure site on a ₹40,000-a-year VPS is buying capacity that will never be reached. Match hosting to traffic, and revisit it annually rather than at renewal panic.
- Paid SSL on a site that does not need it. Let’s Encrypt is free, automatic and trusted by every browser. A paid certificate buys warranty and support, which matters for payments and rarely otherwise.
- Plugin licences nobody audits. WordPress builds accumulate premium plugins, each auto-renewing. Every year, list what renews and cancel what the site no longer uses.
- Paying for a CDN tier you do not need. Cloudflare’s free tier genuinely covers most Indian small-business sites, including the security basics.
- Maintenance retainers with no defined scope. “Upkeep” that does not say what is patched, how often backups are tested and what response time applies is a subscription rather than a service.
Where cutting costs will hurt you
Four lines on that table look optional and are not. Each of them is cheap, and each of them is the direct cause of an expensive failure I get called about.
Off-site backups, because a hosting-level backup does not help when the hosting account itself is the problem. Domain auto-renewal, because expired domains are bought within hours by people who know exactly what they are doing. Security updates, because an unpatched WordPress site is found by automation within days, not months. And business email on a real provider, because a business running on free webmail loses deliverability, loses accounts when a person leaves, and looks exactly as improvised as it is.
What to ask before you sign a build quote
- What will this cost me every year once it is live, itemised?
- Which accounts — domain, hosting, email, CDN — will be registered in my company’s name?
- What exactly does the maintenance retainer cover, and what is billed separately?
- Are backups off-site, and how often is a restore actually tested?
- Which plugin or theme licences renew, at what cost, and who holds them?
- If I move to another developer next year, what do I take with me?
FAQ
Related questions
How much does it cost to maintain a website in India?
Roughly ₹8,000–₹35,000 a year for a small brochure site covering domain, hosting, SSL and basic upkeep. A business site with active maintenance runs ₹35,000–₹90,000, and e-commerce ₹60,000–₹2,50,000 once you add a VPS, payment gateway and higher security requirements.
What is the cheapest way to keep a website running?
Domain on auto-renew (₹500–₹2,000), decent shared hosting (₹2,000–₹10,000), free Let’s Encrypt SSL, and Cloudflare’s free tier. That is a genuinely adequate stack for a brochure site at well under ₹15,000 a year. What you must not cut is off-site backups and security updates.
Do I need to pay for an SSL certificate?
Usually not. Let’s Encrypt is free, renews automatically and is trusted by every browser — the padlock and the SEO benefit are identical. A paid certificate buys a warranty and vendor support, which is worth considering if you process payments directly and irrelevant for most business sites.
Is website maintenance actually necessary?
If the site runs WordPress or any CMS, yes. Unpatched installations are found by automated scanners within days and are the most common way small business sites get defaced or used to serve malware. A static site has a far smaller surface, which is one reason this site is built the way it is.
Who should own the hosting and domain accounts?
You, always, in your company’s name with you holding billing. Domains and hosting registered under a developer’s account are a routine and entirely avoidable problem that surfaces the first time you change providers. Ask before the build starts, not after.
Why is my hosting renewal so much higher than the first year?
Because the first year was a promotional rate, which is standard across the industry. Renewal is frequently two to four times the introductory price. Check the renewal rate rather than the signup rate when comparing hosts, and diarise it a month before it falls due.