Annual website costs break down into hosting ($50–$600/year), domain registration ($15–$50/year), SSL certificate ($0–$200/year if not included with hosting), and maintenance ($0–$4,000+/year). The real variable is maintenance. If you run a simple brochure site on shared hosting and handle your own WordPress updates, you might spend $200–$300 annually. A midsize business site on managed hosting with monthly content updates and security monitoring runs $1,500–$3,000/year. High-traffic ecommerce or SaaS platforms can easily hit $5,000–$15,000 annually once you factor in CDN costs, premium hosting, and developer retainers. Most Canadian small businesses land in the $800–$2,000/year range. That typically covers decent shared or VPS hosting around $15–$40/month, domain renewal, and either a quarterly maintenance contract or occasional developer hours for plugin updates and troubleshooting. If you're handling 50,000+ visits per month or running complex functionality, budget closer to $2,500–$4,000 to avoid performance issues. The mistake we see constantly is businesses launching a $5,000 website, then spending $80/year on bottom-tier hosting that crashes under moderate traffic. Hosting should scale with your traffic and revenue expectations. A site generating $200,000/year in leads shouldn't run on $5/month hosting. At Ottawa SEO, we typically recommend clients budget 15–20% of their initial website build cost annually for the first three years. A $10,000 site should have $1,500–$2,000/year reserved for hosting, updates, and gradual improvements. After year three, costs often drop unless you're actively expanding functionality. Also factor in periodic redesigns every 4–6 years, which reset the clock. One often-missed cost: if you're collecting emails or running forms, you need CASL-compliant list management, which might add $15–$50/month for tools like Mailchimp or ConvertKit. Budget for the ecosystem around your site, not just the server bill.