What Happens If I Stop Paying for My Website Hosting?

If you stop paying for website hosting, your site comes down. With me, that happens 30 days after you stop, and you leave with your site files and instructions to host them anywhere. Most people only ask this when a renewal email lands, so here's the detail, written down before you sign anything.

Hosting is only one of four things you pay for

"My website" is usually four separate things, often on four separate bills.

1. The domain. Your address (yourbusiness.co.uk). It's rented a year or more at a time from a registrar.
2. The hosting. The computer that serves your pages to visitors. Usually monthly.
3. The email. The mailboxes on your domain (you@yourbusiness.co.uk). Often a separate provider again, but it relies on the domain.
4. The care. Someone making edits, doing updates and answering the phone.

Stop paying for one and the others carry on, until they don't. The domain is the one that brings everything else down with it.

What stops first, and how fast

The hosting. When a hosting plan ends, the site comes down. With me, that happens 30 days after you stop the plan, so you have a month to move it. Other hosts vary, so check yours.

The domain. For a .uk domain, Nominet (the registry that runs .uk) gives a fixed timetable after the expiry date:

• Days 1 to 30: everything keeps working. You can renew as normal.
• Day 30: the domain is suspended. Your website stops loading and email on that domain stops working.
• Up to day 90: you can still renew it and get it back.
• Day 95: it's released, and anyone can register it.

Other endings, such as .com, run on a different timetable, so ask your registrar.

The email. If your email runs through a separate provider, cancelling your hosting won't touch it. What matters is that the domain stays renewed and its email settings come with you when you move. Lose the domain and you lose the email, even if you're still paying for the mailboxes.

What "you own it" has to mean

"You own your website" is easy to say. It only means something if you can name what you'd leave with. Here's my list:

• Your site. Once the build is paid in full, it's entirely yours. There's no minimum term to serve first. If you stop hosting with me, you get your site files plus instructions on how to use them, so any host can run it.
• Your words and photos. Every one of them.
• Your enquiries. The messages your site collected are yours, not mine.
• Your domain. I help you register it and you pay its yearly cost, so the renewal is always in your hands. If you move it to another provider, there's a £25 transfer fee.

A WordPress site like Capital Training's is a folder of files and a database. Any decent host can run it. That's the point: nothing about the site should only work with me, which is why the files come with instructions.

What happens if you stop my Care Plan

The Care Plan is £250 a month and covers monthly edits, new sections and same-day support. Stop it and you have two choices:

• Drop to The Kennel at £35 a month. Your site stays live, backed up and updated. Monthly edits done for you stop being included, but you can still change your own text and photos by clicking them on the live page.
• Leave altogether. Email me, and the plan stops at the end of that billing month. The site stays up for 30 days, and you get everything on the list above.

Both plans are monthly with no contract. Full prices are on my pricing page.

The pay-monthly trap: when a plan is a lease

Some pay-monthly websites bundle the build into the monthly fee. That can suit a business with no cash up front. The catch is in the small print: if the plan never ends, and leaving means you walk away with nothing, you've been renting the website, not buying it.

Two questions sort a lease from a sale:

1. Is there a point where the build is paid off?
2. When I leave, what do I take with me, in what format?

With me, the build is a one-off price, so it's paid off the day you pay it, and the answer to the second is: your site files, instructions for using them, your photos, copy and enquiries. If someone's answer to the second one is "nothing", you know where you stand.

A 5-minute check on your current site

1. Look up your domain. Put it into Nominet's lookup for a .uk address. It shows your registrar and the renewal date.
2. Log in to that registrar. If you can't, you don't control your domain, whoever's name is on it.
3. Find your email provider. Know who you pay for your mailboxes, and whether that's tied to your hosting.
4. Find your enquiries. Do form messages only go to an inbox, or are they stored somewhere you can get them back?
5. Ask one question in writing: "If I stop paying, what do I get, and when?" A good answer takes one line.

If any of those five turn up a surprise, send me what you found. I'll tell you where you stand, whether you end up hosting with me or not.

Mark Jarvis

Born in Petersfield in 1986, now based in Poland. Twenty-five years running real businesses, and now I build websites, local SEO and socials for Hampshire small businesses. Every price I quote is on one page.