What $99 a month actually costs.
The math is simple. It's just never done out loud during the sale, because doing it out loud ends the sale.
Business
4 min read
A monthly website costs $99. Over 5 years that's $5,940. At the end you own nothing: not the site, usually not the domain, and never the ability to take it elsewhere.
Rented by the month
- You $ / month
- The vendor's account domain, site, hosting
- Stop paying the site goes dark
Built and owned
- Your account domain, hosting, analytics, site
- Your name on all of it
- The studio collaborator, removable
A build from us is one payment, and everything is in your name. Put whatever we quote you next to that 5-year number and the comparison makes itself.
The monthly is rent, and rent doesn't build equity.
Where the monthly model does make sense
It's the better deal if you need real ongoing work: content every month, campaigns managed, a site that changes constantly. Paying monthly for something that changes monthly is fair. Paying monthly for a page nobody has touched in 2 years isn't.
The question that settles it
Ask what happens if you stop paying. If the site goes dark, you're renting. If it keeps running and you lose support, you're buying support, which might be worth it and is at least honest.
Our version
The build is one payment and you own the result. Ongoing care is scoped separately, optional, decided after launch, and cancelable. If you stop, your site keeps working. That's the whole difference.
Not sure whether this is happening on your site?
We'll run the 5 checks on it and tell you, in plain English, whether or not you ever hire us.