What does a website cost to run each year in Australia?
About $154 a year for a site whose pages are built in advance and hosted free, about $376 for WordPress on Australian shared hosting before its plugins and upkeep, and $233 to $708 on a website builder. Every line priced at what it renews at, not what the first year costs, on 11 October 2026, with the care-plan question answered honestly.
- Pre-rendered
- about $154 a year
- WordPress
- about $376 a year, plus plugins
- Builder
- $233–708 a year
- .com.au
- $21–23 a year to renew
- $20–139 a mailbox a year
- Care plan
- optional, or about $99 a month
- Price
- see our own price list
Renewal prices checked on 11 October 2026, Australian dollars with GST.
Australia · 2026About $154 a year, or ten times that once WordPress needs looking after.
A business website whose pages are built in advance and served as plain files costs about $154 a year to run in Australia: $0 to host on Cloudflare or Netlify, whose free plans allow a business site, $22.95 to renew a .com.au domain, and $130.68 for one Google Workspace mailbox with GST. The same site on WordPress costs about $376 a year for hosting, domain and email at Australian renewal prices, then about US$557 a year of premium plugins if it uses the usual six, then someone to keep it patched: WordPress counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in 2025, and Australian care plans start at about $99 a month, which puts a properly kept WordPress site at about $1,560 a year before those plugins. A website builder includes its hosting and costs $233 to $708 a year once the domain and a mailbox are added, from WordPress.com Personal to Shopify Basic. Two things cause most surprises. First-year prices that renew at two to five times as much, so SiteGround's $59.88 first year becomes $323.88 and a 1-cent .com.au renews at $20.99. And guides that count SEO and advertising as running costs: worth paying for, but not what it costs to keep a website online.
The same small business site, three ways.
A year at renewal prices, one mailbox, a .com.au, Australian dollars including GST. Checked on 11 October 2026.
| A year of | Pre-rendered | WordPress | Website builder |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Pre-rendered $0 | WordPress $222 | Website builder included |
| .com.au domain renewal | Pre-rendered $22.95 | WordPress $22.95 | Website builder $22.95 |
| Email Google Workspace, one user | Pre-rendered $130.68 | WordPress $130.68 | Website builder $130.68 |
| CMS or plan | Pre-rendered $0 on Sanity's free plan | WordPress $0, WordPress is free | Website builder $79–554 |
| Plugins | Pre-rendered none | WordPress US$507–557 | Website builder mostly none |
| Total before upkeep The bill | Pre-rendered $154 | WordPress $376 plus plugins | Website builder $233–708 |
| Upkeep | Pre-rendered optional | WordPress about $1,188 for an entry care plan | Website builder optional |
Hosting: Cloudflare or Netlify free; VentraIP's WordPress plan at its renewal price. Domain: VentraIP's .com.au renewal. Email: Google Workspace Business Starter, A$9.90 a month on an annual commitment plus GST. Builders: WordPress.com Personal to Shopify Basic, plus GST. Plugins: six common ones at their published single-site prices, in US dollars. A headless CMS costs more if you outgrow a free plan: CloudCannon is US$49 a month on annual billing.
Every running cost, priced.
What each line costs a year once the introductory price is gone, the vendors named, and the catch in each.
| A year | What it buys | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| A year $0 Hosting a pre-rendered site | What it buys Cloudflare serves static files free and without a request limit, and Netlify's free plan allows business use within 300 credits a month. | Watch for Vercel's free Hobby plan and GitHub Pages do not allow business sites. Netlify pauses a site that runs past its monthly credits. |
| A year $132–324 Shared or WordPress hosting | What it buys VentraIP is $132 a year for its Entry plan and $222 for WordPress, GST included. GoDaddy's Economy, Hostinger's Premium and SiteGround's StartUp renew at about $191 to $324 before GST. | Watch for The first term. SiteGround's $59.88 becomes $323.88 in year two, and Hostinger's A$4.39 a month needs four years paid upfront. |
| A year US$350–A$480 Managed WordPress | What it buys Hosting that handles WordPress updates, backups and caching for you. Kinsta's single site is US$350 a year, and WP Engine's starts at A$480 a year. | Watch for WP Engine's figure is a first-year price with no renewal price published. |
| A year $21–23 A .com.au or .au domain | What it buys The renewal price at VentraIP, Crazy Domains and GoDaddy. A .com.au needs an ABN, ACN, ARBN or Australian trade mark; a .au direct needs only an Australian presence. | Watch for First-year prices of 1 cent and 5 cents need two or three years upfront. The registry's wholesale price rose to $9.50 on 1 October 2026. |
| A year $20–139 Email, a mailbox | What it buys Zoho Mail Lite is $19.80 a year with tax. Google Workspace Business Starter is $130.68 and Microsoft 365 Business Basic $138.60 on annual terms, with GST. | Watch for Month-to-month billing costs a fifth more. Microsoft's list prices rose on 1 July 2026. |
| A year $0–600 The CMS or the builder plan | What it buys WordPress is free, and Sanity is free up to 20 seats. CloudCannon is US$49 a month on annual billing. WordPress.com Personal is $79 a year, Squarespace Basic $224, Wix Light $252 and Shopify Basic $554. | Watch for A builder's free domain lasts a year, and Wix and WordPress.com leave .com.au out of it. |
| A year US$507–557 WordPress plugin licences | What it buys A common six at single-site prices, Elementor Pro, Yoast SEO Premium, WPForms, WP Rocket, UpdraftPlus and Wordfence, comes to US$557 a year at renewal. | Watch for Introductory prices. WPForms is US$49.50 in its first year and US$99 after; Jetpack Security goes from A$179.40 to A$359.40. |
| A year $360–11,988 A care plan | What it buys Australian care plans dated 2026 run from $30 to $999 a month. A typical entry plan, about $99 a month, covers updates, backups and uptime monitoring; changes usually start on the second tier. | Watch for Plans that fold in "SEO" or "content" are a different purchase. Ask for the tasks and the minutes, not the tier name. |
| A year $0 SSL, analytics and a map | What it buys Certificates from Let's Encrypt or Cloudflare are free, Google Analytics 4 is free, and an embedded Google map costs nothing at any traffic. | Watch for Hosts that charge for SSL after year one. A JavaScript map past 10,000 loads a month costs US$7 per 1,000. |
Each vendor's own pricing page, checked on 11 October 2026. Australian dollars include GST where the vendor shows it or where we added 10% to a price shown without it; US-dollar items stay in US dollars. The care-plan range is from 22 Australian agencies and freelancers that publish their prices, unnamed here.
What a care plan should cover, and when you can skip it.
- 01
Updates, on a schedule.
Core, plugins and theme on WordPress, at least monthly. In 2025, 46% of WordPress vulnerabilities had no fix by the time they were made public, so updates alone are not the whole job.
- 02
Backups you have seen restored.
Off-site, daily for a site that changes, and a restore tested at least once. A backup nobody has restored is a hope.
- 03
Monitoring that someone answers.
Uptime, forms and the certificate. Let's Encrypt certificates shrink to 64 days by default on 10 February 2027, so renewal has to be automatic.
- 04
Changes, counted in minutes.
Most entry plans include none; the second tier adds 15 minutes to an hour a month. Know the number before you need it.
- 05
A report of what was done.
The updates applied, the incidents, the speed. Without it, a care plan is a direct debit.
- 06
Skip it on a pre-rendered site.
No plugins, no database and no login page leave nothing to patch. Made Quiet's store front pays nothing a month and buys changes by the hour.
One real site, a year of running costs.
Edtripper is a directory of 958 excursion venues that teachers filter by subject, year group and attraction type, edited by a team with no developer. It is pre-rendered, served from Cloudflare and edited in Sanity. The only line on its running bill is the one it chose: a care plan, because its team wanted someone on hand for changes.
- Client
- Education directory, Sydney
- Site
- 958 venues, pre-rendered, Sanity CMS
- Hosting
- Cloudflare, their own account
- Live at
- edtripper.com
- Hosting Cloudflare, on the free plan, 12 months
- $0
- CMS Sanity, inside its free plan at 958 venues
- $0
- Care plan the website side, $250 a month
- $3,000
- Total a year, ex GST, before their own domain and email
- $3,000
Without the care plan
- Hosting and CMS the same free plans
- $0
- Changes quoted and billed by the hour when wanted
- as used
The site keeps running either way; the plan buys a person, not uptime.
Published with Edtripper's permission. Excludes GST.
Ex GSTTwo more of ours, two other answers. Joris pays $350 a month, which covers his site and the AI systems we built him, plus US$10 a month for CloudCannon on our partner rate; Made Quiet pays no care plan at all. Every site we build includes twelve months of care at no charge first. What the builds themselves cost is in our website cost guide.
Who looks after websites in Australia, and what to ask them.
- 01
The renewal price, in writing.
For the hosting, the domain and every plugin. Year two is the price you will pay for the life of the site.
- 02
Whose name is on each account.
Domain, hosting, email and the CMS should be yours, on your card, with the agency invited in. Leaving is then an email, not a negotiation.
- 03
What the care plan does, task by task.
Update frequency, backup frequency and retention, monitoring, and the minutes of changes included each month.
- 04
How fast a broken site gets fixed.
A response time for an outage, and whether it applies at night and at weekends.
- 05
What it costs to stop.
Notice period, exports, and whether the site keeps running without the plan. On WordPress it does, until something breaks.
- 06
We do.
Croissant & Baguette is a small Sydney studio with a network of Australian specialists. The sites we build are pre-rendered by default, hosted for $0 in the client's own Cloudflare account, with twelve months of care included, after which a care plan is a choice. On WordPress we say plainly that it is not.
Built in Sydney, never offshored.
What we charge.
- Website build pre-rendered or WordPress, designed from scratch
- from $9,000 typically $9–18k
- Content migration from an existing site
- quoted typically $1–4k
- Care plan monitoring, updates, small changes, monthly performance snapshot
- from $250/month
What moves the care plan above $250:
- WordPress against pre-rendered, which decides how much there is to patch
- how many changes you want each month, and how quickly
- how many sites, stores or systems the plan covers
- forms, bookings or integrations that need watching as well as the pages
Why our care plan is not $99
Because it covers small changes as well as the monitoring and updates, with a monthly performance snapshot, on sites we built and know. A $99 plan keeps plugins current; ours is for a business that wants someone to make the changes too. On a pre-rendered site you may need neither, and we will tell you so before the twelve free months run out.
Fixed quote after a 20-minute call. Hosting, domain and email accounts are yours and billed to you directly.
Is there a monthly fee to have a website?
Not necessarily. A pre-rendered site can run on $0 of hosting, leaving about $23 a year for a .com.au and the cost of email, from $1.65 a month for Zoho Mail Lite to about $11 for Google Workspace with GST. Website builders do charge monthly, from about $7 a month for WordPress.com Personal paid yearly to $56 plus GST for Shopify Basic. WordPress needs paid hosting, from about $11 a month in Australia.
How much should I pay to host a website?
Nothing, for a pre-rendered business site on Cloudflare or Netlify, whose free plans allow business use; Vercel's free plan and GitHub Pages do not. WordPress on Australian shared hosting costs $132 to $324 a year once the first-term discount ends, and managed WordPress about US$350 to A$480. Paying more buys support, speed and someone else doing the updates, not the right to be online.
How much does a domain name cost in Australia?
$20.99 to $22.95 a year to renew a .com.au or .au at VentraIP, Crazy Domains and GoDaddy, checked on 11 October 2026. First-year prices of 1 cent, 5 cents or $9.95 are promotions, and the two cheapest need two or three years upfront. A .com.au needs an ABN, ACN, ARBN or Australian trade mark; a .au direct needs only an Australian presence.
Is it costly to maintain a website?
It depends on what the site runs. A pre-rendered site has no plugins, database or login page to patch, so it can go years without maintenance. WordPress needs updating every month: 11,334 new WordPress vulnerabilities were published in 2025, 91% of them in plugins. That is your own time or a care plan, which in Australia starts at about $99 a month for updates, backups and monitoring.
Do I need a care plan for my website?
On WordPress, yes, or the same hours of your own: plugins need updating every month, and 46% of the WordPress vulnerabilities found in 2025 had no fix when they were made public, so someone has to watch. On a pre-rendered site, no. There is nothing to patch, and one of the stores we built pays nothing a month and buys changes by the hour. Australian care plans start at about $99 a month.
How much does business email cost in Australia?
$9.90 a user a month for Google Workspace Business Starter on an annual commitment, $11.80 on flexible billing, and $10.50 for Microsoft 365 Business Basic paid yearly, all before GST, checked on 11 October 2026. Zoho Mail Lite is $1.65 including tax, and Zoho's free plan covers up to five users without IMAP. Microsoft's list prices rose on 1 July 2026.
What is the cheapest way to run a website?
A pre-rendered site on a free hosting plan, with the domain at its renewal price and an inexpensive mailbox: about $43 a year with Zoho Mail Lite, or $154 with Google Workspace. To do it yourself, a website builder is cheapest, from $79 a year for WordPress.com Personal with GST. Avoid first-year deals that need years paid upfront or renew at three to five times the price.
Do I need a cookie banner in Australia?
No law requires one: Australia has no cookie-specific rule. If your business is covered by the Privacy Act and its cookies or tracking pixels collect personal information, your privacy policy and notices must say so, and the OAIC names a banner or pop-up as one way to give that notice. Visitors from the EU or UK can bring their own rules into play, and draft reforms may widen what counts.
Sources
Every price on this page was read on the vendor's own page on 11 October 2026.
- 01 Static assets, billing and limitations Cloudflare · static requests free and unlimited
- 02 Netlify pricing Netlify · free plan credits and limits
- 03 Fair use guidelines Vercel · Hobby is for non-commercial use
- 04 WordPress hosting VentraIP · first-year and renewal prices
- 05 Web hosting plans SiteGround · prices in AUD excluding GST
- 06 com.au domain names auDA · eligibility rules
- 07 Domain name pricing VentraIP · .com.au and .au renewal
- 08 Google Workspace pricing, Australia Google · per-user prices in AUD
- 09 Microsoft 365 Business Basic Microsoft · AUD prices after 1 July 2026
- 10 Zoho Mail pricing Zoho · Mail Lite and the free plan
- 11 State of WordPress Security in 2026 Patchstack · 2025 vulnerability figures, published 25 February 2026
- 12 Tracking pixels and privacy obligations OAIC · notice, banners and the Privacy Act
- Website costs. What a website costs to build in Australia, by band, with a real receipt.
- WordPress or pre-rendered? Speed, running cost and editing side by side, and when each is the right call.
- Websites under a second. What a site that loads in under a second costs, with four sites timed.
- Websites. What we build and how. Pre-rendered, or WordPress done properly.