Subscription website or owned website: which one suits your business

It isn't a question of which is better, but of what your business needs now and three years from now. We walk through the three questions that settle it and the cases where each model makes sense.

The short answer: it depends on three things. How much you can invest up front right now, how much your website is going to change over the next few years, and whether you have someone to look after it once it's live. If the answers are "not much, not much and nobody", a subscription fits you. If they're "I have the budget, the site will grow and I want the asset on my books", ownership suits you better. Almost everything else is nuance, but the nuance is where people get it wrong.

What a subscription website actually is

It's worth clarifying first what a subscription website actually is, because the name drags a prejudice along with it: "if it's a monthly fee, it must be a template." In our case it's exactly the same custom design work as a one-off project; what changes is how you pay and who looks after it afterwards. The fee covers hosting, the SSL certificate, maintenance, backups and support — in other words, everything that with an owned website you have to contract and keep an eye on yourself. It works like your accountant's monthly fee: something that's handled and you don't think about again.

What an owned website costs after delivery

An owned website has the obvious advantage that the asset is yours from day one and there's no minimum term. It also carries a cost almost nobody calculates when signing: from delivery onwards, hosting, updates, security and backups become your problem. We see a great many one-off websites that two years later are broken, slow or out of date — not because they were badly built, but because nobody cared for them afterwards. If you choose ownership, budget for maintenance from the start or you'll end up paying for the site twice.

The domain, always in your name

One thing should never depend on the model, and that's the domain. In both cases it has to be registered in your name, with your email and your details, and you must be able to access it. We still get businesses whose domain is in the previous agency's name and who, when they try to move, discover they can't even take their own address with them. It's the first question to ask any provider, subscription or not, and if the answer isn't an unqualified "yes, always", walk away.

Who each model fits

So who does each model fit? A subscription is ideal for the business that needs a solid, well-made presence — who we are, what we do, how to reach us — and doesn't want to think about it any further: freelancers, professional practices, clinics, installers, restaurants that don't sell online. Ownership makes more sense when the website is itself a tool that's going to grow: an online store, a hotel with its own booking engine, a project with integrations or several languages from day one. And there's one specific case that tips the balance: if you qualify for Kit Digital, the grant pays for a one-off project, so ownership comes out almost fully covered.

Three questions to settle it in ten minutes

If you want a practical rule, answer these three questions in writing before asking for a quote. First: can I pay for the whole project today without it hurting cash flow? If the honest answer is that you'd have to wait for the season or ask for instalments, a subscription stops you starting later than you should — and with a website, every month unpublished is a month without customers arriving on their own. Second: what will I ask of the website two years from now? If the answer is "the same as today", a subscription fits comfortably; if it's "selling online, bookings, a client area", it's better to plan for ownership from the start so nothing has to be rebuilt. Third: who is going to look after it? If nobody has the time and judgement, the subscription includes exactly that person; if you already have a trusted provider, ownership won't leave you unattended.

With those three answers in front of you the decision usually makes itself. When they come out mixed — little liquidity but a project that's going to grow, say — the later buyout option is what resolves the conflict: you start on a subscription and move the site into ownership when the business calls for it.

Compare the three-year cost, not the first figure

On money, one piece of advice worth more than any figure: don't compare the monthly fee with the quote — compare the total cost over three years. Against the monthly fee times thirty-six you need to set the initial quote plus hosting, plus annual maintenance, plus the changes you'll ask for along the way. Sometimes one model wins and sometimes the other, and which one depends on what you're going to ask for. What isn't serious is deciding by looking only at the first number on each proposal.

The mistakes we see most often when choosing

The first is signing up for a subscription with a brochure site in mind and, three months later, asking it to become a store with a hundred products. It's not that it can't be done — it's that that project is quoted differently and it's better to know beforehand. The second is the opposite: buying the website outright to "depend on nobody" and not contracting maintenance, so the dependency shows up anyway the day something breaks — only now it's urgent and unbudgeted. And the third is not reading the terms: the minimum period, what happens if you stop paying, whether a buyout option exists and how much it drops over time, and who keeps the design and the copy if you leave. A serious provider explains all of this unprompted; if you have to drag it out of them, you already have your answer.

Our recommendation

We offer both models and, when someone writes to us, we tell them honestly which one fits — even when that means recommending the one that suits us less. If you're unsure, tell us your case and we'll give you both figures so you can compare calmly. And if you already know you'd rather forget about the website and simply have it work, the subscription website page lists everything it includes and the questions we get asked most.