Renting a website
vs owning one.
There's a deal going around that sounds great: no big upfront cost, just a flat monthly fee and someone handles everything. It's a real option and it suits some businesses. But there's one line in the contract worth finding before you sign — and it's about what happens the day you stop paying.
What a website subscription actually is
A subscription provider builds your site on their platform and charges a flat monthly fee to design, host, and maintain it. Setup is cheap on purpose — often a few hundred dollars — and the monthly covers everything after that. For a business with no cash to put down, that's a genuinely useful way to get online, and plenty of these firms do good work.
The part that catches people out is spelled out in the better providers' own terms, to their credit: the website runs on their platform, so it comes down when the subscription ends. Not your domain, and not your photos — those you keep. The website. The pages, the layout, the structure Google spent two years learning to rank.
Why that one line matters more than the price
A website isn't really a monthly service like phone or internet. It's the thing your customers judge you by, and — if it's doing its job — it's an asset that gets more valuable the longer it's up, because search rankings compound. Renting means that value stays with the provider. Leave after three years, for any reason at all, and you're back to a blank page while your competitors' sites keep climbing.
It also quietly changes the relationship. When leaving means starting over, a provider doesn't have to keep earning your business the same way. We'd rather build something you own outright and then keep it good enough that you don't want to go anywhere.
Side by side
The honest version, on the things that actually decide it:
Own it, or rent it.
| Owning it (Stonekept) | Renting it (website subscription) | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay upfront | A real build fee, from $2,200. You're buying something. | Very little — a setup fee of $350–$650 is typical. Easy to say yes to. |
| What you pay monthly | $79/mo to keep it running, or $199–$349/mo for a care plan that grows it. | Commonly $250–$450/mo for a fully-managed package. |
| Who owns the website | You do. It's plain HTML and CSS, and the files are yours to take. | Usually the provider — the site is built on their platform, not yours. |
| If you stop paying | Nothing happens to your site. Move it to any host you like. | The site usually comes down. Ask before you sign, not after. |
| Your domain name | Registered in your name from day one. Always yours. | Reputable providers do this too — get it in writing. |
| Your photos & content | Yours, and you have the originals. | Yours — but the pages built around them generally aren't. |
| The Google rankings you earn | Belong to your site, and stay with it wherever it goes. | Go offline when the site does. You start again from zero. |
| Changing providers later | Hand the files to any developer and carry on. | Rebuild from scratch somewhere else. |
| Honestly best for | A business that plans to still be here in five years. | Testing a brand-new venture, or when the upfront cash genuinely isn't there yet. |
Terms vary between providers, and some are better than others — this is the common shape, not a description of any particular company. Which is exactly why the question below is worth asking out loud.
The one question to ask
Before you sign anything — with them, with us, with anyone — ask this, and ask for the answer in writing:
“If I cancel, does my website stay online, and do I get the files?”
Any straight answer is a good answer, because now you know what you're buying. Watch for a reply that talks about your domain and your content instead of your website — those are three different things, and only one of them is the site itself. Having your domain in your own name is a good sign, and every decent provider does it. It just isn't the same as owning what's built on it.
Three years, side by side.
| Three-year total | What you own at the end | |
|---|---|---|
| Our Standard build, then hand-off at $79/mo | $6,444 | The website. Files and all. |
| Our Standard build, then a $249/mo care plan | $12,564 | The website, plus three years of changes made for you. |
| A subscription at $250/mo (+$350 setup) | $9,350 | Nothing. |
| A subscription at $450/mo (+$650 setup) | $16,850 | Nothing. |
Our figures are our published prices, on a Standard build. The subscription figures are an illustration at the going market rate ($250–$450/mo plus setup) — use whatever you've actually been quoted. Note the honest part: at the cheaper end a subscription costs you less over three years than our care plan does. It's a fair deal on price. You just don't have a website at the end of it.
Fair
questions.
Are website subscriptions a rip-off?
No — and we'd rather say so plainly. For a brand-new business with no cash to put down, $350 to get a real site live and managed is a genuinely reasonable deal, and the good providers do solid work. The catch isn't the price, it's what you're left holding. Three years in you've paid for a website every month and you still don't have one you can take with you. That's fine if you knew it going in. Most people don't.
How do I find out whether I'd own my site?
Ask one question, in writing: “If I cancel, does my website stay online, and do I get the files?” A straight answer either way tells you what you need. If the reply is vague, or it's about your domain and your content rather than the site itself, that's your answer — the domain being in your name is not the same as owning the website built on it.
Isn't paying upfront riskier for me?
It would be, which is why we don't ask you to take it on faith. Builds are billed 50% to start and 50% at launch, and before the balance is ever due we design your home page and one key inner page and show you. If you don't like the direction, say so and your deposit comes back in full — no argument, no retained fee. You're risking a look at the design, not the price of a website.
I'm on a subscription site now — can you move me off it?
Usually, yes, but be clear on what moves. Your domain, your written content, and your photos come with you. The pages themselves almost never do — they're built with the provider's system, so the honest answer is that we rebuild rather than migrate. We map your old URLs to the new ones with 301 redirects so the rankings carry over. See website redesign for how that works.
If I stop paying Stonekept, do I lose my site?
No. That's the whole point of this page. Your site is yours from launch — plain HTML and CSS you can host anywhere, with no lock-in and no contract. Cancel a plan and the site keeps working; you'd just be taking over hosting and upkeep yourself, or moving it to whoever you like. We'd rather you stay because it's working than because leaving is painful.
Build something
you actually own.
Tell us about your business and we'll map out the right approach on a free discovery call — and tell you honestly if renting suits you better for now.