Yes, every website costs money to run, though the amount varies wildly based on your traffic, functionality, and performance requirements. The two non-negotiable costs are domain registration and hosting. Domain names run $15–$50 annually for standard TLDs like .com or .ca, sometimes higher for premium or country-specific extensions. Hosting starts around $5–$10/month for basic shared hosting suitable for low-traffic sites, scales to $20–$100/month for managed WordPress or VPS hosting for business sites, and can reach $300–$2,000/month or more for dedicated servers or cloud infrastructure handling serious traffic. Beyond those basics, you'll face additional recurring costs depending on what you build. SSL certificates used to be a separate $50–$200/year expense but are now often included free with hosting via Let's Encrypt. Email hosting adds $5–$15/month per mailbox unless you use Gmail Workspace or Microsoft 365. Premium themes or plugins typically run $50–$200/year each. CDN services like Cloudflare start free but paid tiers ($20–$200/month) become necessary for larger sites. Backup solutions, security scanning, and uptime monitoring add another $10–$50/month combined. Maintenance is the hidden cost most site owners underestimate. WordPress core, themes, and plugins need regular updates to stay secure and functional. If you handle this yourself, it's free but time-consuming. Hiring an agency like Ottawa SEO Inc. for monthly maintenance typically runs $100–$500/month depending on site complexity and whether you need content updates, performance monitoring, or just security patches. For a simple brochure site with modest traffic, expect $200–$600/year all-in. A typical business site with managed hosting, premium tools, and basic maintenance lands in the $1,500–$4,000/year range. E-commerce or high-traffic sites easily hit $5,000–$20,000+ annually once you factor in payment processing, advanced hosting, and dedicated support. The key is matching your infrastructure spend to actual traffic and revenue—overpaying for enterprise hosting on a 500-visitor-per-month site is as wasteful as running a 50,000-visitor site on $8/month shared hosting.