Updated October 8, 2026 · Lukáš Březina
Can you have a business website without monthly fees?
Without a monthly fee, yes. Without any fee, no. A website on your own .com always costs something every year: the domain alone costs about $11–$23 a year to renew, and the site has to be hosted somewhere. What you can skip is the subscription — pay once for a build and run it yourself, or pick a service you pay once a year.
What each option really costs per year
One bill a year, the same every year.
$59 with your .com and hosting. The draft and preview are free — you pay when you go live.
Checked October 8, 2026, in US dollars. "Year one" for builders is the yearly-billed price with the free first-year domain; "after" adds the domain renewal. Freelancer figures are ranges, not quotes. Sources in "How we checked" below.
Why isn't any professional website free forever?
Two things always cost money: the address and the place the site lives.
The address. Every .com is rented one year at a time. Verisign, the company that runs .com, charges every seller $10.26 a year per domain, rising to $10.97 on November 1, 2026, plus a $0.20 fee to ICANN. So nobody can sell you a .com for much under $11 a year without losing money on it. Cloudflare sells at that cost with no markup. GoDaddy lists .com renewal at $22.99 a year. A "$0.01 domain" or "free domain" is a first-year deal, paid back at renewal.
The hosting. Someone runs the computer your site sits on. Free hosting exists — Cloudflare Pages and GitHub Pages will host a plain page at no charge — but you set it up, and you fix it when it breaks. Free builder plans host your site too, in exchange for their name in your address and their branding on your page.
Can I pay once for a website and never pay again?
You can pay once for the building. That's what a freelancer offers: one invoice, usually $1,500 to $8,000 for a simple small business site. What you can't pay once for is the domain and the hosting. Those become your bills — often around $150–$400 a year on typical hosting — and changing your prices next spring is a new invoice.
That's a fair deal if you want a custom design and someone's judgement. Just compare it on the yearly cost, not on the word "once". More on this in what a small business website really costs.
Is WebSmoothly a website with no fees?
No, and we won't pretend it is. It's one fee a year instead of twelve: $59, which covers a .com registered in your name, hosting and 30 edits. The price stays $59 when you renew. If you run out of edits, 30 more cost $9.99. Nothing is billed monthly.
You don't build it. You describe your business in plain English, add links to your Instagram, Facebook or Google Maps listing, maybe a photo of your flyer. A first working version is ready in about ten minutes, and about two hours of back-and-forth gets it really polished. Making the draft and previewing it costs nothing — you pay only to go live on your own .com.
Which option fits you?
- Just testing an idea? A free builder plan is fine. Their name in the address doesn't matter while you find out if anyone's interested.
- Comfortable with the technical side? Build a plain page, host it free, buy the domain at cost. About $11 a year is the real floor.
- Want a custom design and advice? Hire a freelancer once, and budget for the yearly running costs.
- Enjoy building it yourself? Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy, paid yearly. Compare them in our Wix and Squarespace and GoDaddy pages.
- Need a real online store? Shopify. It's monthly, and for a store that's worth it.
- Want one good page, done for you, on your own .com? That's WebSmoothly, $59 a year.
Where we're weaker
If your only goal is the lowest possible number, a page you build and host yourself beats us — about $11 a year against $59. We also build one strong page, not a store or a blog with hundreds of posts. (Already own a domain? Then it's $44 a year with us, since you keep paying for the domain where it is.) What the extra $48 buys is that you don't build it, host it or fix it.
Questions people ask
- Is there a website builder with no monthly fee?
- Most builders let you pay yearly instead of monthly, which is also cheaper. Free plans exist, but they don't let you use your own domain. A site on your own .com always has a yearly cost.
- Why is the domain only free for the first year?
- Because the seller pays the .com registry about $10.50 a year for it, every year. The free first year is a promotion; from year two you pay the seller's renewal price.
- What's the cheapest way to have a website on my own .com?
- If you can build it yourself: a plain page on free hosting plus a domain bought at cost, about $11 a year. If you'd rather not build it: WebSmoothly is $59 a year with the domain included.
- Do I need a website at all if I have a Facebook page?
- A Facebook page and a Google Business Profile are free and worth having. A website is what people find when they search your name, and it's yours rather than the platform's. We wrote more in do I need a website?
- What happens if I stop paying WebSmoothly?
- You can cancel anytime. The domain is registered in your name, and we send you the full source code of your website so you can host it anywhere.
How we checked
Checked October 8, 2026. Wix figures ($17 a month billed yearly for Light, free domain for year one only, own domain and no Wix branding only on paid plans) come from Wix's own plans page. GoDaddy figures ($119.88 first year on Starter, $22.99 .com renewal) come from GoDaddy's own pages; the $14.99-a-month Starter renewal comes from All About Cookies' GoDaddy Airo review (August 2026) and matches the first-year discount GoDaddy's cart shows. The .com wholesale price and the November 2026 increase are from Verisign's announcement as reported by Domain Name Wire; Cloudflare's no-markup pricing is from Cloudflare's registrar page. Freelancer and hosting ranges are the ones from our cost guide, drawn from several 2026 industry surveys. Prices change — check at checkout. Spotted something out of date? Email hello@websmoothly.com.
No honest offer gets a business website on its own .com to zero. The honest question is how many bills, how big, and who does the work. Ours is one bill of $59 a year, and we do the work. See what your site would look like first — it takes about ten minutes and looking costs nothing.
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