Renting or buying a website: the numbers for year one and year two

A price of “from €49 a month” tells you nothing on its own. Whether you rent or buy a website, you can only see if it is cheap or expensive once you add up every payment over one year and over two, and compare that with what you would have paid by buying the website outright. I covered the difference between the two formats in principle in “Buying a website or renting one with maintenance included”. This article is just the arithmetic over 12 and 24 months.

In short: if you are ready to look after the website yourself, buying soon catches up with renting, and over two years a one-page website is cheaper to buy if the build costs less than roughly €940-1,200. If you hand maintenance to a provider, renting stays cheaper for a long time, because maintenance is already included in the monthly payment.

Zen Webmaster prices are taken from the rental and pricing pages, hosting and domain prices from the providers’ websites, all checked on 16 October 2026. Zen Webmaster does not charge VAT (TVA non applicable, art. 293 B du CGI: the wording French law requires on invoices from VAT-exempt businesses), so the excl. VAT amounts below (HT in France) are exactly what you are invoiced.

Rent or buy a website: three options

A. One-off build

You pay for the build once and the website is yours from day one. After that you pay separately for hosting (the server your website lives on), the domain and maintenance: updates, backups, form checks. You can do the maintenance yourself or hire a provider.

B. Rent-to-own

A one-off setup, then a monthly payment, for at least 12 months. Hosting, maintenance, basic updates, backups and support are included. The plan price is fixed for 24 months.

C. Rent, then buy out after a year

The first 12 months as in option B, then a buyout at a price agreed in advance. You receive the website files, the database, the content and administrator access, and from then on hosting and maintenance are up to you.

I have not put a figure on the one-off build: it can vary hugely from one provider to the next, and mine is priced to the project. So below it appears simply as “build”, and at the end of the section you will find the amount below which buying works out cheaper.

One-page website: 12 and 24 months

Renting a one-page website from Zen Webmaster: setup €190, from €49 a month, buyout after 12 months €490. For option A, take the renewal price of shared hosting (mutualisé in French: one server shared by many websites) and a .fr domain: together about €80-215 excl. VAT a year (OVHcloud, o2switch, domain at OVHcloud, at Gandi). Maintenance from freelancers in France costs €29-80 a month, going by their own published rates, which is €348-960 a year (Adrien Bouchez, Sécurité WP).

Where the figures come from:

• B: 190 + 12 × 49 = €778, then the second year 12 × 49 = €588. Until you buy it out, the website remains my property and you have full use of it. If you buy it out after two years, add €490, making €1,856 in total.
• C: 778 + 490 = €1,268 by the end of the first year. In the second year you pay only for your own hosting and domain, if you maintain the website yourself.

The break-even point. If you maintain the website yourself, buying is cheaper than renting in the first year when the build costs less than €563-698, and over two years when it costs less than €936-1,206. If you hand maintenance to a provider, a one-off build only beats two years of renting if the build itself costs less than about €510, and even then only at the lowest hosting and maintenance prices. If you compare buying with a buyout after a year, so that the website is yours either way, and you do the maintenance yourself, buying is cheaper if the build costs less than €1,053-1,188.

Service website: the same three options

A service website (several pages, enquiries, contact details): setup €290, from €79 a month, buyout €990.

Here the break-even point is higher: if you maintain the website yourself, buying pays off in the first year when the build costs less than €1,023-1,158, and over two years when it costs less than €1,756-2,026. If a provider handles maintenance, add their annual price to row A, as in the table above.

Both tables show two things. First, what decides it is not the price of the build but who will maintain the website. If you are ready to update WordPress and check backups yourself, buying soon catches up with renting. If not, renting stays cheaper for a long time, because maintenance is already included in the payment. Second, if you definitely want to own the website and are ready to maintain it yourself from the second year, a buyout after 12 months works out cheaper than two years of renting followed by a buyout (€1,348-1,483 against €1,856 for a one-page website). If you need a provider in the second year, the totals come out close, so do the sums using their price.

Two caveats. Rental prices are starting prices: the exact amount, and the arrangements for the domain and email, are set out in the proposal; the domain is not included in the rental calculation. And the hosting and provider prices above are excl. VAT: if your business is not registered for VAT under the small-business exemption (franchise en base), add 20%, because you cannot reclaim that tax (service-public).

Which option suits whom

Renting

• you have little cash at the start, but you need a website now;
• the business is just starting and may change within a year;
• you need technical support and have neither the time nor the wish to deal with updates;
• you want to know your costs in advance: the plan price does not change for 24 months.

Buying

• you already have the budget for the build;
• you have your own provider or you maintain the website yourself;
• the website is simple and will run for years without changes;
• it matters to you that the website is yours from day one.

A rent-to-own website can be turned into a purchase at any time: before the end of the first year by paying the remaining months up to 12 plus the buyout price, after the first year only the buyout price. The contract is directly with me, with no finance company involved. That matters, and here is why.

How to spot a risky location financière contract

In France, website contracts that are also called “rental” but work quite differently have been around for years. The Ministry of the Economy described the scheme in a 2019 answer to a question from a member of parliament (question 17232). In a location financière (financial rental), you rent a service, such as building a website, with no option to buy and for a fixed term; the ministry gives 48 months as an example. The seller transfers the contract to a finance company, which becomes the owner and collects the payments until the end of the term, and you cannot stop them.

Sometimes these contracts are signed after a single visit from a sales agent, which the ministry calls “vente one shot” (a one-shot sale). Back in 2014, the government, answering a similar question, wrote that website rental contracts transferred to a credit institution generate “a very large number of complaints”, and that they usually run for 48 months with automatic renewal (question 42728). The DGCCRF, the French consumer protection authority, warns about the same thing.

A checklist before you sign, whoever is offering you a website to rent:

1. Who are you paying? If the contract or the payment schedule names not the company building the website but a bank or finance company, there is a third party.
2. What is the minimum term? 36, 48 or 60 months with no way out is a reason to stop and do the sums.
3. Is there a buyout? The buyout price and the terms for an early buyout should be written down in figures, not promised verbally.
4. In whose name is the domain registered? You should be the registered owner with the registrar. The website, files and content should be handed over to you after the buyout, and that too should be in the contract.
5. What happens if you stop paying? The contract should say how many days after a missed payment something is switched off, what exactly, and whether you can take the website with you at that point.
6. How does the contract renew? If automatically, how many months’ notice do you need to give to cancel?
7. Are you being asked to sign today, on the day of the visit? Take the contract with you and read it the next day, or better still, show it to someone who knows about these things.

I am not a lawyer. In its 2019 answer, the ministry writes that if the contract was signed away from the seller’s premises (in your workshop, for example), a small business (up to five employees, if the website is outside its main activity) may have the right to withdraw from the contract within 14 days, under article L221-3 of the Code de la consommation (the French Consumer Code). Whether this applies to your case is for a lawyer to decide, not a blog article.

What to do yourself, and what not to

You can work out your own case from the tables above in half an hour: put in the build price from your quote and the price of your hosting, and decide who will maintain the website. What you should not do alone is pick apart a 48-month contract you have already signed: the wording matters, and that is a job for a lawyer.

If you want to check the numbers for your own project, in a starter consultation (from €49 excl. VAT an hour) we will work out both options with your figures, and you will receive a written summary. You can take it to any provider you like.

If your time is worth more

If you have the time and the inclination, you can buy a website and maintain it yourself, and that is a perfectly sound choice. If you would rather spend your time on your customers than on updates and hosting, and would rather avoid a large upfront payment, Zen Webmaster can build your website on a rent-to-own basis and take care of the technical side. You can buy it out at any time.

Sources (checked 16 October 2026): Zen Webmaster prices: rent-to-own website, pricing; location financière: government answers to written questions from members of parliament 17232 (Ministry of the Economy, JO 04.06.2019) and 42728 (Ministry of Trade and Crafts, JO 24.06.2014), assemblee-nationale.fr; DGCCRF, economie.gouv.fr; Franchise en base de TVA, entreprendre.service-public.gouv.fr; hosting and domains: OVHcloud, o2switch, OVHcloud domains, Gandi; maintenance: Adrien Bouchez, Sécurité WP (all sources in French).