How much does a website cost per month in Morocco? Buying vs subscribing, in dirhams

“How much does a website cost per month?” It is the question a business owner asks when two quotes look nothing alike: one offers a website built for 10,000 DH, the other a monthly subscription with nothing to pay up front. The two figures cannot be compared as they stand. A website you pay for once keeps costing money every month. And a subscription ends up costing more than a build if you keep it long enough.

This guide does the maths for a business operating in Morocco, in dirhams, whether you are a local owner or a foreign investor who has set up a company here. It lists the costs that come back every month on any website, what each one is worth per month, the real differences between buying and subscribing (cash flow, ownership, commitment, exit), a month-by-month table over 12 and then 36 months, and the questions to ask before you sign. We are an agency, Bzaf Studio, and we sell a subscription. We present it with the same figures as a one-off purchase, and we say when it is the wrong fit. If you want the three-year comparison by type of provider, freelancer, traditional agency or online website builder, it is in our guide to what a website costs in Morocco.

How much does a website cost per month? The short answer

There are two answers, depending on how you pay for the site.

• If you buy the website once, its real monthly cost adds up two things: the build price divided by the number of months you keep the site, plus the running costs expressed per month. A 10,000 DH build kept for three years is 278 DH a month. Add about 175 DH of running costs in our example and the site costs you roughly 453 DH a month. Kept for five years, it comes down to about 342 DH a month.
• If you subscribe, the monthly cost is written in the contract: a fixed amount that normally covers the build, the domain, hosting and maintenance. Ours is 399 DH a month including VAT. What matters then is what that amount really includes, how long you are committed and what happens at the end.

The one-off figures are working assumptions, picked within the Moroccan market ranges for a brochure website: from around 5,000 DH with a freelancer, 15,000 to 45,000 DH with a traditional agency. Swap in the numbers from your own quotes; the method stays the same.

You keep the site for	Buy once: total paid	Buy once: cost per month	Subscription: total paid	Subscription: cost per month
12 months	12,100 DH	1,008 DH	4,788 DH	399 DH
24 months	14,200 DH	592 DH	9,576 DH	399 DH
36 months	16,300 DH	453 DH	14,364 DH	399 DH
60 months	20,500 DH	342 DH	23,940 DH	399 DH

In short: the subscription is cheaper per month as long as you keep the site for less than about four years. Beyond that, buying once wins, provided someone keeps doing the updates. The rest of this guide explains where these numbers come from, and what they leave out.

The 7 costs that come back every month, even on a paid-for website

A website is not a printed brochure. It is software running on a server, at a rented address, probed day and night by bots looking for a weakness. Seven cost lines therefore keep coming back, whoever builds the site and however you pay for it.

1. The domain name

Your address, your-company.ma, is rented, never bought outright. In Morocco, Law 24-96 makes the telecoms regulator, ANRT, responsible for .ma domain names, and registrations go through providers declared to it, 50 of them at the end of 2025. Registration is open to residents and also to foreigners, provided they appoint an administrative contact based in Morocco. According to ANRT’s annual report, 93.5% of .ma names registered in 2025 were taken for one year only, and 92.3% of renewals were for one year too. For almost everyone, then, it is a yearly bill not to forget. ANRT itself recommends registering and renewing for several years, so a name is not deleted because a renewal was missed.

For a .com, ICANN rules require the registrar to warn the registrant at least twice before expiry, roughly one month and one week beforehand, and to publish its renewal and restore fees. Those reminders still need to land in an inbox someone reads. What to ask: the renewal price, not the first-year price, and whose name the domain is registered in. Our domain name page checks live whether yours is available, as a .ma or a .com.

2. Hosting

This is the server your site runs on, day and night. Shared hosting is enough for a brochure website. It is usually billed yearly, often with a low introductory price in year one and the full rate afterwards. Per month it is a small amount. The real cost lies elsewhere: how fast the site loads on a phone over 4G, and who steps in when the server goes down on a Friday evening.

3. The SSL certificate, the padlock

It is what shows the padlock and the https address. It can be free: Let’s Encrypt, a certificate authority run for the public’s benefit, issues certificates at no cost. But certificates expire quickly, and faster and faster. Let’s Encrypt currently issues certificates valid for 90 days; this will drop to 64 days in February 2027, then to 45 days in February 2028, a change required of every publicly trusted certificate authority. Let’s Encrypt advises against renewing by hand. So the cost is not the certificate itself, it is automation and monitoring. An expired certificate puts up a warning page that drives away almost every visitor.

4. Backups

A full copy of the site and its database, stored somewhere other than the server, and above all tested. Ask three questions: how often, how long they are kept, and what a restore costs. A backup nobody has ever tried to restore is a promise, not a backup.

5. Security updates

This is the most underestimated line. maCERT, the cyber-attack monitoring and response centre of Morocco’s national IT security directorate (DGSSI), publishes security bulletins almost every working day: 37 between Monday 9 and Friday 13 November 2026 alone. On 13 November, one of them, rated “critical”, covered flaws in dozens of plugins and themes of a widely used content management system. Exploiting them could let an attacker run code, upload malicious files or reach sensitive information. The fix given: apply the vendors’ patches. Several bulletins on the same list flag flaws as “actively exploited”. A site built on such a system has to be updated continuously, not once a year.

6. Content changes

New opening hours, a new service, a photo, a price, a page for a new city. These edits keep the site accurate. With a one-off build they are usually paid per job, at the provider’s rate and on the provider’s schedule. With a subscription, check which edits are included, how many per month and how fast.

7. Email addresses on your domain

An address such as contact@your-company.ma inspires more trust than a free webmail address, and it depends on the same domain as the website. According to ANRT, 57% of .ma names carry a mail (MX) record, a sign that an email address is attached to them. Mailboxes are often billed separately, per mailbox and per month, by the website provider or by an email provider. It is the line to get clarified in every case, including with us.

Cost line	Usual billing	Example, per month	If nobody looks after it
.ma domain name	Yearly (93.5% of .ma names registered for one year in 2025)	200 DH a year, i.e. 17 DH	The name expires: website and email stop
Hosting	Yearly, introductory price in year one	700 DH a year, i.e. 58 DH	A slow site, or one that is down without anyone noticing
SSL certificate	Can be free; renewed every 90 days, soon 45	0 DH if automated	A “not secure” warning page instead of your site
Backups	Often bundled with hosting	Included in the example	Nothing to restore after a crash or a hack
Updates and edits	Maintenance contract, or per job	1,200 DH a year, i.e. 100 DH	A hacked site, wrong information
Email addresses	Per mailbox, per month	Not counted: depends on the number of mailboxes	Lost customer messages
Total before email		about 175 DH a month

A website’s calendar: what happens every week, every month, every year

What you pay for every month is mostly regular work. Here is a typical calendar for a brochure website. Use it to check what your provider actually does, or what you will have to do yourself if you run the site alone.

How often	Task	Why
Every day	Uptime monitoring; automatic backup	Knowing the site is down before your customers do
Every week	Security patches as soon as they are released; test the contact form and the WhatsApp button	Some flaws are actively exploited, according to maCERT bulletins
Every month	System and plugin updates; mobile speed check; small edits; a blog post or news item	An up-to-date site stays accurate and fast for your customers
Every quarter	Test-restore a backup; re-read phone number, opening hours and prices	An untested backup guarantees nothing
Every year	Renew domain and hosting; check who owns the domain; re-read the legal pages	An expired domain cuts off both website and email
Continuously	Automatic SSL certificate renewal	90 days today, 45 days in 2028; renewing by hand is discouraged

A website nobody keeps on this calendar does not stop in the first month. It decays: a certificate expires, a plugin stops being updated, a phone number goes out of date. Often it is the day a customer tells you “your website isn’t working” that you find out nobody was looking after it any more. To check whether yours has reached that point, our guide to redesigning a website gives seven fifteen-minute tests.

Buy once or subscribe: two ways to pay for the same website

Once you know the running costs, the remaining question is the build: how do you pay for it? Two models exist side by side in Morocco.

Buying once: a fixed-price build, then running costs on top

You pay for the build, often with a deposit on order and the balance on delivery. After that, the domain and hosting are paid yearly, and maintenance through a contract or per job. This is the usual model with freelancers and traditional agencies. The upside: once the build is paid, you never pay for it again. The trade-off: a large sum up front, and running costs you manage yourself, often with several suppliers.

The all-inclusive subscription: no build fee, one monthly amount

You pay no build fee. A fixed amount each month covers designing the site, the domain, hosting, the certificate, backups and maintenance. In return you commit to a minimum term: twelve months with us. The upside: nothing to pay up front, one line in your accounts, one point of contact. The trade-off: you pay for as long as the service runs, and ownership of the site depends on what the contract says.

Criterion	Buy once	All-inclusive subscription
Cash needed up front	All or part of the build, on order	The first month
Running costs	On top: domain, hosting, maintenance, email	Included in the amount, except what the contract excludes
Suppliers	Often several: developer, host, registrar	One
Ownership of the site	Yours on delivery, if the contract says so and the files are handed over	As set by the contract’s ownership clause, to read before signing
Commitment	None for the build; possibly a maintenance contract	A minimum term, then as per the contract
At the end	The site stays, but someone has to keep updating it	Files, logins and domain handed back or not, depending on the contract
Cost over time	Falls over time: the build is spread over more months	Flat: the same amount every month
Updates	Yours to organise, or paid per job	Done by the provider, within the contract’s limits

The month-by-month table, in dirhams, over 12 then 36 months

Here is what actually leaves your bank account, month after month, under each model. It is the table to redo with your own quotes before you sign.

The assumptions

• Buy once: a brochure website built for 10,000 DH incl. VAT, half paid on order (month 1) and half on delivery (month 2). Domain and hosting: 900 DH a year, paid in months 1, 13 and 25. Maintenance and small edits per job: 300 DH a quarter.
• Subscription: 399 DH a month incl. VAT, first month paid on order, no build fee. After twelve months the price is assumed unchanged.
• Left out on both sides: email addresses, your own time, and anything one includes that the other does not, such as the monthly blog post in our subscription.

The first 12 months

Month	Buy once: paid this month	Buy once: running total	Subscription: paid this month	Subscription: running total
1	5,900 DH	5,900 DH	399 DH	399 DH
2	5,000 DH	10,900 DH	399 DH	798 DH
3	300 DH	11,200 DH	399 DH	1,197 DH
4	0 DH	11,200 DH	399 DH	1,596 DH
5	0 DH	11,200 DH	399 DH	1,995 DH
6	300 DH	11,500 DH	399 DH	2,394 DH
7	0 DH	11,500 DH	399 DH	2,793 DH
8	0 DH	11,500 DH	399 DH	3,192 DH
9	300 DH	11,800 DH	399 DH	3,591 DH
10	0 DH	11,800 DH	399 DH	3,990 DH
11	0 DH	11,800 DH	399 DH	4,389 DH
12	300 DH	12,100 DH	399 DH	4,788 DH

In month 1, buying once takes 5,900 DH out of your account; the subscription takes 399 DH. After two months the gap is over 10,000 DH. For a business that is just starting, or that would rather keep its cash for stock, salaries or advertising, that is often the deciding argument. By the end of year one, buying has cost 12,100 DH and the subscription 4,788 DH.

Over 36 months

Month	Buy once: running total	Subscription: running total	Gap in the subscription’s favour
12	12,100 DH	4,788 DH	7,312 DH
13	13,000 DH	5,187 DH	7,813 DH
18	13,600 DH	7,182 DH	6,418 DH
24	14,200 DH	9,576 DH	4,624 DH
25	15,100 DH	9,975 DH	5,125 DH
30	15,700 DH	11,970 DH	3,730 DH
36	16,300 DH	14,364 DH	1,936 DH

The gap narrows every month: the subscription carries on at 399 DH, while the one-off build now only costs its running costs, about 175 DH a month on average. After 36 months the subscription is still 1,936 DH cheaper in this example. The lines cross in month 46: 18,354 DH of subscription in total, against 18,100 DH for buying once.

Your break-even month, with your own quotes

No need to rebuild the whole table. One division is enough: break-even month ≈ build price ÷ (monthly subscription − monthly running costs of the one-off build). In our example: 10,000 ÷ (399 − 175) ≈ 45 months, a little under four years. The exact figure, 46, comes from the payment dates.

Build price	Running costs of the one-off build, per month	Subscription, per month	Buying becomes cheaper after
5,000 DH	175 DH	399 DH	about 22 months
10,000 DH	175 DH	399 DH	about 45 months
15,000 DH	250 DH	399 DH	about 101 months, over 8 years
20,000 DH	400 DH	399 DH	never: running costs exceed the subscription

Two lessons. The more expensive the build, the longer the subscription stays ahead. And if the purchase comes with a full maintenance contract, its monthly cost can reach the subscription’s, in which case buying never breaks even. Conversely, a low-cost site kept for many years and maintained in-house almost always ends up cheaper bought than rented.

Cash flow, invoices and accounting: what changes for the business

• Cash flow. A subscription turns a large up-front outlay into a regular, predictable expense. Paying yearly sits in between: with us, 4,550 DH incl. VAT in one go instead of 4,788 DH over twelve months, a saving of 238 DH, against a bigger outlay in month one.
• Invoices. Ask for an invoice in your company’s legal name with its ICE, the Moroccan company identifier, for every payment. Always compare VAT-inclusive with VAT-inclusive: agency quotes are often shown before VAT. Our prices include 20% VAT: 399 DH incl. VAT is 332.50 DH before VAT plus 66.50 DH of VAT.
• Accounting. A build paid once and a monthly subscription are not necessarily booked the same way. The right treatment depends on your legal form and tax regime: ask your accountant before choosing, with both quotes in front of you. This guide does not give tax advice.

Ownership: who owns the website, the domain and the content?

It is the question owners ask too late, on the day they want to leave. It breaks down into three parts.

• The domain name. Check the registrant in the WHOIS database: it must be your company, not the provider. ANRT reports that most complaints it handles about .ma names involve intermediaries who registered them in their own name rather than their client’s. Whether you buy or subscribe, insist on being the registrant from day one.
• The website itself: the files, the design, the database. When you buy, ask for them to be handed over on delivery, with the logins. When you subscribe, read the ownership clause: from when is the site yours, and what happens if you stop before then?
• The content: your text, your photos, your logo. They must remain yours in every case, with the right to reuse them elsewhere. Be wary of set-ups where the site cannot leave the platform that hosts it: the day you leave, everything has to be rebuilt.

Our answer is written, word for word, in article 11 of our terms and conditions: “Once paid in full, the client owns the delivered website, its content and its domain name. For the All-Inclusive Plan, payment in full means the payment of the 12 monthly instalments of the commitment period, or of the balance due under article 10.3. Until that payment, Bzaf Studio retains ownership of the website.” The domain name, for its part, is registered in your name from the start: you are the declared registrant, we are only the technical contact.

Commitment and exit: what happens when the contract ends

A subscription should be judged on how you leave it as much as on its price. Four points need to be written down.

• The minimum term, and the cost of ending it early. Some contracts make every remaining monthly payment due: on a 12-month term, leaving in month four can cost the next eight.
• What happens at the end of the term: renewal for a new fixed period, or a switch to month to month? Is there a reminder before the date?
• The price after the minimum term: is it guaranteed, or can it go up, and with how much notice?
• What you get back when you leave: the site’s files, a copy of the database, the logins, the domain transfer code. Without them, cancelling means starting from scratch.

For the domain name, the official rules protect you in part. For a .ma, ANRT states that the registrant of an active name can change provider at any time, subject to the .ma rules and to their contractual commitments, without losing the remaining registration period; 1,804 provider changes were made in 2025. Hence the importance of being the registrant: the registrant decides.

With us, the exit rules are in our terms and conditions. The All-Inclusive Plan runs for a fixed 12 months, and we notify you in writing at least 30 days before that period ends. After that it continues month to month and can be cancelled by a simple written request, effective at the end of the current period. During the commitment the price is guaranteed; for a running subscription, any increase is notified at least 30 days in advance. On cancellation we hand over the site’s files and logins, and help you move the site and the domain to the provider of your choice. On the other hand, if a business cancels before the 12 months are up, except for a legitimate reason such as a documented closure of the business or force majeure, all remaining monthly payments fall due. Better to know that before you sign.

12 questions to ask before signing a website subscription

Print this list and get the answers written into the quote or the contract. A serious provider answers them in one message.

• 1. What is the minimum term, and what does it cost to cancel before it ends?
• 2. What happens at the end: a new fixed period, or month to month?
• 3. What is the price after the minimum term, and with how much notice can it rise?
• 4. What exactly is included: number of pages, languages, edits per month, response time?
• 5. Who is the registrant of the domain name? The only right answer: your company.
• 6. From when do the site, its design and its content belong to me?
• 7. What do you hand over if I leave: files, database, logins, domain transfer code?
• 8. Are email addresses on my domain included, and how many mailboxes?
• 9. Backups: how often, kept for how long, is restoring included?
• 10. Who applies security updates, and how often?
• 11. How is the subscription paid, and does the invoice show my company name and ICE?
• 12. What is not included, and at what price: extra pages, online shop, photography, an extra language?

The same questions apply to a one-off build, with one difference: ownership and the handover of files must be settled on delivery, not later.

Subscription or one-off build: which suits your situation

Your situation	Best-suited model	Why
You are launching the business and cash is tight	Subscription	Nothing up front: the site goes live without a large outlay
You want one supplier and nothing to manage	Subscription	Domain, hosting, updates and edits on a single line
You will keep the site five years or more, and someone in-house handles updates	Buy once	The build is spread over many months and running costs stay low
You need an online shop or custom development	Buy, on quotation	A subscription brochure site does not cover these needs
Your business or brand will change within two years	Subscription, after reading the exit clause	You do not sink a large sum into a short-lived site
Your one-off quote includes an expensive maintenance contract	Work out the break-even month	If its monthly cost approaches the subscription, buying never comes out cheaper

For the full comparison of providers, line by line over three years, see our guide to the real cost of a website in Morocco.

The All-Inclusive Plan at 399 DH a month: what it covers, and its limits

Having set out the method for everyone, here is our own offer, put through the same questions. The All-Inclusive Plan costs 399 DH a month including VAT, with a 12-month commitment, then month to month. You can also pay yearly: 4,550 DH incl. VAT, which is 238 DH less than twelve monthly payments. There is no build fee: the first month is paid on order, by bank transfer, with our bank details (RIB) sent with the order confirmation within 24 hours.

• What is included: a brochure website of up to 30 pages, a custom design built mobile-first, a blog, an FAQ, a contact form, a WhatsApp button, SEO on every page, a second language (French and Arabic, or French and English), your Google Business profile and the legal pages.
• The running costs you no longer manage: the .ma or .com domain name and its renewal, hosting and maintenance, the SSL certificate, backups, updates, small edits, and one blog post written for you every month.
• Timing: live within 5 working days of a complete brief. You approve every page before launch.
• Ownership: the domain is in your name from the start. The site and its content are yours once paid in full, that is after the 12 monthly payments of the commitment (article 11 of our terms).
• Leaving: after the commitment, cancellation by simple written request, handover of files and logins, help moving the site and the domain.

One clarification: the Plan’s list does not mention mailboxes on your domain. If you need them, tell us before ordering. And if you order as a private individual, Moroccan consumer law 31-08 gives you 7 days to withdraw.

It is the wrong choice in these cases, and we would rather say so up front:

• You need an online shop, with a basket and payments: that is not the Plan, it is a different project.
• Your site needs more than 30 pages, or custom development: a client area, a link to your management software.
• You want to pay once and run the site yourself for five years or more: according to the calculation above, a fixed-price build can work out cheaper, provided someone keeps it updated.
• You cannot commit for 12 months: for a business, early cancellation makes the remaining monthly payments due.

We work from Marrakech, as an agency since 2021, for businesses all over Morocco, from Casablanca to Rabat, and we reply within 24 hours on WhatsApp. Run the numbers with your quotes, put the twelve questions to us, and if the subscription suits you, the order page takes five minutes.