What a Company Website Actually Needs (and What It Costs to Run)

Most companies need a much smaller website than they think, and a more reliable one. Five pages that load quickly and say clearly what you do will outperform a twenty-page site with a stock-photo carousel and a blog that stopped in 2023.

Search this and you get website builders selling templates and award galleries showing agency work with budgets you do not have. Neither tells you what to actually build or what it costs to keep running. Here is the short version, from the pages that earn their place through to the monthly numbers.

Table of contents

• The five pages that do the work
• The things that matter more than the design
• What it costs, line by line
• Build it, buy it, or hire it
• A short launch checklist
• How this fits the rest of the stack
• FAQ

The five pages that do the work

For the overwhelming majority of companies, this is the whole site.

1. Home. What you do, who for, and what to do next — in the first screen, without scrolling. The most common failure here is a headline that could belong to any company in any industry.
2. What you do. Services or products, described in the words customers use rather than the words your industry uses. One page if the list is short; one page each if a customer would search for them separately.
3. Proof. Case studies, client names, testimonials, numbers. This is the page that converts and it is the one most often missing or thin, because it requires asking customers for things.
4. About. Who you are and why you are credible. People buy from people, and this page gets far more traffic than anyone expects.
5. Contact. Every reasonable way to reach you, plus a physical address if you have one — it matters for local search and for trust.

Add a blog only if someone will actually write it. An abandoned blog with a two-year-old last post is worse than no blog: it is a visible signal that nobody is home.

The pages that rarely earn their place: a separate Mission page, a Partners page nobody clicks, and a News section that duplicates your social feed.

The things that matter more than the design

Design gets the attention and these get the results.

• Speed. A site that takes five seconds on a phone loses a meaningful share of visitors before it renders. This is mostly an image problem and a hosting problem, not a design problem.
• Mobile. Most visitors are on a phone. Check the site on an actual phone on mobile data, not a resized desktop browser.
• Clarity in the first sentence. If a stranger cannot say what you sell after five seconds, nothing else on the page matters.
• Working contact routes. Test the form by submitting it. A surprising number of business sites have a contact form that has silently posted into nowhere for months.
• Accurate local information. Name, address and phone consistent everywhere, with proper structured data. For a business with a location, this drives more enquiries than the website itself.

The uncomfortable one: your contact form is the highest-value thing on the site and the least tested. Put a reminder in a calendar to submit it yourself every quarter.

What it costs, line by line

Separating the fixed costs from the ones that move.

• Domain — a fixed annual cost, small. Renew it automatically and keep the card current; the most common way to lose a company domain is an expired payment method, not a decision.
• Hosting — depends entirely on the shape. A static brochure site is nearly free to serve. A CMS-backed site needs a runtime and a database on all the time, which is a different monthly number.
• Certificate — should be zero, issued and renewed automatically. If someone is billing you for this, ask why.
• Email — a per-mailbox monthly cost on your domain. Worth every penny; a business emailing customers from a consumer address is leaving credibility on the table.
• Maintenance — the honest one. Updates, backups, the occasional broken thing. Either someone’s time or a retainer, and it is real either way.
• Bandwidth — usually irrelevant for a text-and-a-few-images business site, and a real line if you host video or large image galleries.

The decision that most affects the total is static versus CMS. A brochure site that changes monthly does not need a database and a running server; it needs files. That single choice is often the difference between a few pounds a month and a few tens of pounds.

Build it, buy it, or hire it

Three routes, with the trade-off that actually matters rather than the one in the sales copy.

A website builder gets you online without touching code, with a subscription that continues forever and a site you cannot take with you. Right for a company with no technical help and no plans to grow the site. The lock-in is genuine — moving means rebuilding.

A CMS on your own hosting — WordPress being the default — gives you your own domain, your own database, your own URLs, and a maintenance obligation. Right if you publish regularly or need functionality a builder cannot reach. The cost is discipline: prompt updates, tested backups, and restraint about plugins.

An agency or freelancer builds it and you own the result. Right when the site is commercially important enough to justify the spend. Two things to insist on in the contract: the domain is registered in your account, and you receive the source code and hosting credentials at the end. Both are routinely overlooked and both are painful to recover later.

Whatever route you take, own the domain and own the analytics account. Everything else can be rebuilt in a few weeks. Those two are the things you genuinely cannot recover if the relationship ends badly.

A short launch checklist

1. Domain registered in the company’s own account, auto-renew on, card current.
2. One canonical hostname, with the other permanently redirected.
3. Certificate issued and renewing automatically — verified once, not assumed.
4. Contact form submitted by a human and the email confirmed as received.
5. Checked on a real phone on mobile data.
6. Analytics installed and verified as recording, in an account the company owns.
7. Sitemap submitted in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
8. Backups running, and one restore actually tested.

The last item is the one everyone skips and the one that matters most on the day something goes wrong. A backup nobody has restored is a belief rather than a plan.

How this fits the rest of the stack

The shape you pick decides the bill more than anything else: a static brochure site is close to free to serve, while a CMS-backed one needs a runtime and a database running continuously. The RunxBuild hosting calculator puts those side by side so the monthly figure is a decision rather than a surprise. RunxBuild covers both — static sites built from a repository with 120GB of bandwidth included, and managed WordPress from $3/month with a file manager and database browser in the dashboard instead of behind SFTP.

Useful related references:

• SaaS Company: What One Actually Runs Under the Hood
• Django Web Development: When to Hire a Team vs Build In-House
• Backend App Development Company: The Five Things the SERP Glosses Over (And What to Ask Instead)
• Services on RunxBuild

FAQ

How many pages does a company website need?

Usually five: home, what you do, proof, about, and contact. Add a blog only if someone will genuinely write it — an abandoned blog with a two-year-old last post signals that nobody is home, which is worse than having no blog at all.

How much does it cost to run a company website?

The domain is a small fixed annual cost and the certificate should be free and automatic. The variable is the shape: a static brochure site is close to free to serve, while a CMS-backed site needs a runtime and a database running continuously. Email on your domain and maintenance time are the other real lines.

Should I use a website builder or WordPress?

A builder if you have no technical help and no plans to grow the site — accepting a subscription that continues forever and a site you cannot move. WordPress if you publish regularly or need functionality a builder cannot reach, accepting the maintenance obligation of prompt updates, tested backups and restraint about plugins.

What should I insist on if an agency builds my site?

That the domain is registered in your own account, and that you receive the source code and hosting credentials on completion. Both are routinely overlooked and both are painful to recover if the relationship ends. Everything else can be rebuilt; those cannot.

What matters more than design on a business website?

Speed on a phone, clarity in the first sentence, a contact form somebody has actually tested, and accurate consistent local information. The contact form is the highest-value element on most business sites and the least tested — a great many have been posting into nowhere for months.