Yes, websites have recurring monthly costs even after the initial build is paid for. The baseline expenses include domain registration (typically $15-40 per year), web hosting ($10-300+ per month depending on traffic and server resources), and SSL certificates (often free with hosting, or $50-200 annually for advanced certificates). Those alone put you at $20-350 monthly before any maintenance. Most business websites also need ongoing maintenance—plugin updates, security patches, content changes, backups, and uptime monitoring. You can handle this yourself for free if you're technical, hire someone on-demand at $75-150 per hour as issues arise, or subscribe to a maintenance plan at $100-500 monthly depending on scope. E-commerce sites and high-traffic platforms usually sit at the higher end because they need more frequent updates and stronger hosting. Some agencies bundle hosting and maintenance into a monthly package. Ottawa SEO typically separates the initial build (one-time cost of $3,000-25,000+ depending on complexity) from monthly services, so clients can choose their own hosting or opt into managed plans. This avoids the all-in-one subscription trap where you lose access to your site if you stop paying the agency. Hidden costs that surprise people: premium plugins or themes with annual licenses ($50-300 each), email hosting if not included with your domain ($5-15 per inbox monthly), CDN services for faster global load times ($10-100+ monthly), and developer hours for feature additions or design tweaks. If you're running Google Ads or need SEO work, that's separate again—usually $500-5,000+ monthly depending on market competitiveness. The cheapest sustainable approach for a small business is shared hosting with annual domain registration and DIY updates, running about $20-40 monthly. The safest is managed hosting with professional maintenance and monitoring, closer to $200-400 monthly. Anything promising a full professional website for under $50 monthly is either severely limited in features or locks you into a proprietary platform you don't own.