01The question that settles it
Ask one thing and everything else follows: if I stop paying next month, what do I keep? The answers sort cleanly into three cases. The site goes offline and you have nothing, which means you were renting. The site stays up but stops being updated, which means you were buying a service and that is fine. Or you keep the code and the domain and can move anywhere, which means you bought the site and are paying for care. All three are legitimate businesses. Only one of them is what most people think they are buying, and the difference only becomes visible on the day you want to leave.
- The site goes offline and you have nothing. You were renting.
- The site stays up but stops being updated. You were buying a service.
- You keep the code and the domain and can move it anywhere. You bought the site and are paying for care.
- If nobody will answer this in writing, that is the answer.
02What a monthly fee is genuinely worth paying for
Some recurring costs are real, and refusing to pay them is how sites quietly rot. Hosting and certificates are small but not free. Security updates are genuinely not optional on WordPress, where unpatched plugins are the standard way a small site gets compromised, and somebody has to be paid to apply them. Backups count only if someone has restored one, because an untested backup is a belief rather than a safeguard. And a stated response time is worth paying for precisely because it costs nothing on the days you do not need it and everything on the day you do.
- Hosting and the SSL certificate, which are small but not free.
- Security updates, which are not optional on WordPress and are the usual way sites get hacked.
- Backups you have actually tested by restoring one.
- Someone who answers within a known time when the site is down, which matters most on the day you need it.
- Content someone actually produces, which is different from a fee for nothing happening.
03Warning signs in a monthly contract
None of these are illegal and none of them prove bad faith. What they have in common is that they make leaving expensive or unclear, and an arrangement you cannot exit is one you should enter deliberately rather than by default. The domain registered in their name is the sharpest example, because it is the one thing that makes every other asset negotiable. A fee described as covering the website rather than as a named list of deliverables is the softest, because there is nothing to audit it against and no month where it can be judged as good or bad value.
- The domain is registered in their name rather than yours.
- A minimum term of twelve months or more for a site that is already built.
- No stated response time, only the word support.
- An exit fee, or a charge to hand over your own code.
- The fee is described as covering the website rather than a named list of things.
A monthly fee that is genuinely a product
SunVolt Club is a membership that costs 99 EUR a year, and what the member gets is named: a 250 EUR credit toward a photovoltaic system, an energy assessment, member pricing and group buying. That is what a recurring charge should look like, a list of things you receive. Compare it with a web agency retainer described only as covering the website. One you can audit against what arrived. The other you cannot.
See the build: SunVolt ClubQuestions, answered
What does PROOF48 charge monthly?
Nothing, unless you want it. The build is a one-off and you own everything. Care plans exist from 25 EUR a month for people who want a guaranteed response window, and the site keeps working if you cancel.
Is hosting really that cheap?
For a normal business site, yes, a few euro a month. If someone charges fifty for hosting alone, ask what else is in it, because the hosting is not the fifty.
Can I take over the hosting myself later?
If you own the code and the domain, yes. That is exactly what ownership means, and it is why the ownership question comes before the price question.
Where PROOF48 fits
You own the code, the domain, the hosting account and the content after a PROOF48 build. There is no mandatory monthly fee and nothing switches off if you never pay us again. Our plans are for people who want ongoing work done, not for keeping their own site online.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.