The real cost, over time
What a council website actually costs over five years
Most council websites are rented. The monthly or annual fee looks small, but it never stops, and the council never owns the site. Here is the honest comparison.
| Provider | Set-up | Per year | 5-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| My build | £850 | ~£30 | ~£1,000 |
| Aubergine (small parish) | £499 | £299 | ~£1,994 |
| Aubergine (town) | £999 | £399 | ~£2,994 |
| Vision ICT (small) | £1,200 | £320 | ~£2,800 |
| Vision ICT (mid) | £2,000 | £395 | ~£3,975 |
| Parish Web & Host | £499 | £305 | ~£2,024 |
| My Parish Council (Standard) | £0 | £312 | ~£1,560 |
Against the main done-for-you providers, a council saves roughly £1,000 to £3,000 over five years, and the gap keeps widening every year after, because there is no platform fee to keep paying. Only pure do-it-yourself services come in cheaper, and there the clerk does all the work and the council still owns nothing.
Work out your own saving
If you are on a rented platform, put in what you pay now and see the five-year difference.
Why the difference is so large
It is not really about the headline price. It is about what you are buying. A platform subscription is rent: you pay every year, and if you stop, the site goes with it. That is not a worst case, it is what happened to the roughly four hundred councils left stranded when the 2commune platform closed in 2024.
A rented platform
- You pay every year, forever
- Stop paying and the site disappears
- The provider owns the site and often the domain
- Accessibility is sometimes a paid extra
- Moving away can mean starting again
A site the council owns
- One payment, then only bare hosting (about £30 a year)
- The council owns the domain, the site and every file
- Full WCAG 2.2 AA compliance included, never an add-on
- Move it anywhere, any time, no lock-in
- Nothing to re-justify at every precept
For a council that has to justify recurring spending every year when it sets the precept, a one-off that the council owns outright is simply an easier thing to approve, and an easier thing to defend at audit.
See where your own site stands
Run your council's website through the free checker, or see councils already built this way.
Run the free checkCompetitor prices are taken from each provider's own published pricing in July 2026 and are shown in good faith for comparison; check current prices with the provider. Figures exclude VAT. "5-year total" assumes the provider's set-up fee plus five years of their ongoing fee.