NorthLuma blog · 2026-05-08 · 6-minute read
$49 once vs $30/month: the website-cost spreadsheet
If you sign up for a $30/month website plan today, by 2036 you will have paid $3,600 for the same site. We charge $49 once. This post shows the math, no spin, in a table you can rebuild on the back of a napkin.
The basic compounding
Subscription website builders advertise per-month pricing because per-month pricing looks small. Multiply by 12, then by N years, and the picture changes:
| Plan | /mo | 1-year | 3-year | 5-year | 10-year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wix Combo (entry plan) | $16 | $192 | $576 | $960 | $1,920 |
| Wix Unlimited | $22 | $264 | $792 | $1,320 | $2,640 |
| Wix Business Basic | $27 | $324 | $972 | $1,620 | $3,240 |
| Squarespace Personal | $16 | $192 | $576 | $960 | $1,920 |
| Squarespace Business | $23 | $276 | $828 | $1,380 | $2,760 |
| Webflow Basic | $18 | $216 | $648 | $1,080 | $2,160 |
| Webflow CMS | $29 | $348 | $1,044 | $1,740 | $3,480 |
| Shopify Basic | $32 | $384 | $1,152 | $1,920 | $3,840 |
| Hostinger WordPress (premium) | $12 | $144 | $432 | $720 | $1,440 |
| WP Engine (Personal) | $25 | $300 | $900 | $1,500 | $3,000 |
| NorthLuma (Starter) | $0 | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 |
Pricing pulled from each vendor's public pricing page in May 2026. Plans get cheaper if pre-paid annually but typically rise after the first year. The $49 NorthLuma figure is a one-time charge — there is no second year.
"But hosting is included."
Every line in the table above bundles hosting. So does ours, sort of — except yours. Once you receive your NorthLuma zip, you deploy it on:
- Vercel free tier — covers 100GB of monthly bandwidth and unlimited static traffic. Cost: $0.
- Cloudflare Pages free tier — unlimited requests, unlimited bandwidth. Cost: $0.
- Netlify free tier — 100GB bandwidth + 300 build-minutes per month. Cost: $0.
For most local businesses, the free tier covers years of traffic. Even if you outgrow it, $20/month on a paid Vercel plan still beats $360/year — and you can leave any time without losing your site.
What the subscription does buy
To be honest about the trade-off — subscriptions buy you four things, all of which are real:
- A drag-and-drop editor for ongoing tweaks. With a NorthLuma zip, you edit the HTML/CSS/JS files directly — same as any front-end developer would. There is a learning curve.
- Hosting that is configured for you. No DNS to point, no Vercel CLI to install. The trade-off is that hosting fee compounds forever.
- Email and customer support. Subscription builders have call centers. We reply personally from [email protected], founder-direct.
- App marketplaces. Some subscription builders let you bolt on a booking widget or a store with one click. NorthLuma does not, but most third-party widgets (Calendly, Stripe, Tally) embed into our zip just fine.
If you genuinely need the drag-and-drop editor and you charge customers $1,000+ per project, the $30/month is a reasonable cost of doing business. If you are a local business that wants a website to stop disappearing under the SEO of competitors, the math is simply lopsided.
The defect-fix guarantee
Every NorthLuma purchase comes with a defect-fix guarantee — if the deliverable has a documented bug we cannot fix within 7 business days, full refund. A 24-hour pre-download cancel window is also available before you download the ZIP. Once you have the source, the digital sale is final, which is industry-standard for source-code purchases. Full terms at /refunds.
Read the math. Decide for yourself.
Generate a real preview at /builder — it's free and takes 60 seconds.
Build your website →Have a comparison plan we missed? Email [email protected] and we will add it.
NorthLuma team
Linköping, Sweden · about
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