Do You Lose Website Support If You're Not Paying Monthly?
Myth: if you're not paying a monthly fee, you're not getting any support after your site goes live.
This one makes intuitive sense on the surface, but it skips over an important detail: there are actually two different things that could be called "ongoing cost" here, and only one of them is something Abilene Code charges for. Squarespace itself runs on a paid subscription, and that subscription is exactly where the automatic hosting, security, and maintenance comes from. What Abilene Code doesn't charge is a second, separate monthly fee on top of that just to have built your site. Here's the actual breakdown of who charges for what.
What Squarespace's own subscription actually covers
Squarespace is a fully managed platform, and that management isn't free, it's built into the subscription every Squarespace site runs on. According to Squarespace's own security documentation [1], that subscription is what provides automatic SSL certificates, protection against denial-of-service attacks, and fully managed cloud hosting backed by a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee. This is a real, ongoing cost, just one you pay directly to Squarespace rather than to a web design agency layering a management fee on top of it.
As a Squarespace Circle partner, Abilene Code passes along a real discount on that subscription: 25 percent off the first year of hosting, plus a free year of Google Workspace for a custom business email address. As one real example, a client's first-year Core plan renewal came to $348 before the discount, $261 after the 25 percent Circle discount, for a final total of $278.23 including tax. That's the actual cost of keeping a Squarespace site hosted, secure, and maintained for a year, paid directly to Squarespace, with Abilene Code's partnership reducing it rather than adding to it.
What Abilene Code's one-time build fee actually includes
The build fee covers a genuinely full scope of work, not just a homepage design and a handoff: domain registration (including tracking down and recovering a domain from a previous provider when needed, a process ICANN itself notes can involve real delay and paperwork if a registration has lapsed or a registrant's contact information is out of date [2]), setup of a professional business email address, Google Business Profile setup, and one-on-one training so you can actually manage your own site afterward.
It also includes one full round of revisions after you've had a chance to review the finished site, fine-tuning based on your feedback, sometimes done live over a video call walking through the site together. Separately, and at no cost regardless of the revision round, any bugs or mistakes made during the original build get fixed for free. That's standard practice across the industry too: development warranty periods, typically 30 to 90 days after launch, are built specifically to cover fixing defects introduced during the build at no extra charge [3]. For us, that's not a client revision, that's fixing our own work, and it's rare.
What happens if you need help later
There's no monthly fee required to keep an Abilene Code site online or working. If a business needs an update down the road, changes to a page, a new section, whatever it might be, that's handled by request, priced the same way the original build was: a fair one-time cost for the specific work, not a recurring package. It isn't something advertised as a standard offering, it's simply available if and when a client actually needs it.
Some clients want more than occasional updates, ongoing blog posts or social media management on a regular schedule. For that specific kind of recurring work, we set up a custom monthly arrangement directly with the client. That's a deliberate, opt-in choice for businesses that want it, not something built into every website by default.
One more real, recurring cost worth mentioning honestly: domain registration itself typically renews annually, usually a modest cost, regardless of who built or manages the site. ICANN's own guidance to domain registrants is direct about this: a domain is yours only for the period it was registered, and it has to be renewed before it expires to keep using it and any services tied to it, like a website or email address [2]. That's simply what it costs to own a domain name, the same for every website owner everywhere.
The honest bottom line
Nobody's getting a truly free ride here, and this post isn't pretending otherwise. Squarespace charges a real, ongoing subscription for hosting and platform maintenance, and our Circle partnership discounts that cost rather than adding to it. What we don't do is charge a second monthly fee on top of that subscription just to keep the site running, or lock anyone into a contract for support they may never need. Updates later are available by request at fair, transparent pricing, and ongoing content work is available for clients who specifically want it, set up directly with us.
If you want to know exactly what's included in a build, or what updates would cost down the road, contact Abilene Code or call (325) 280-1390.
Contact page: https://abilenecode.com/contact
Resources
[1] Squarespace, Security
Official documentation on automatic SSL, DoS protection, and managed hosting uptime included with a Squarespace subscription
https://www.squarespace.com/security
[2] ICANN, Renewing Domain Names
Official guidance on domain registration periods, renewal requirements, and recovery of lapsed registrations
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/renew-domain-name-2018-12-07-en
[3] Paper Leaf, Why is My Software Warranty Only 30 Days?
Industry standard explanation for post-launch bug-fix warranty periods
https://paper-leaf.com/insights/software-warranty-guarantee/
