What should I check on my website bills once a year?
The short answer
Match every website charge on your card statements to something your website actually uses. Look for a domain you pay for twice, paid SSL or privacy add-ons you could get free, trials that became bills, unused servers and databases, and renewals still charged to a personal card or a card that is about to expire.
- Paying twice for a domain, through a website builder and a registrar. See why this happens.
- Paid SSL certificates when your host includes one free. See do I need to pay for SSL?
- Privacy or “protection” add-ons that many registrars include free.
- DNS add-ons for a domain whose nameservers point somewhere else.
- Idle servers and databases left over from old websites.
- Trials that turned into monthly bills.
- Personal cards paying business bills, which makes accounting and handovers harder.
Words used here
- Clean-up scan
- SlopDox checks your bills for common money leaks — paid SSL, privacy add-ons, double domain fees, two tools doing one job, monthly plans that cost less yearly, idle databases — and shows step by step how to fix each one.
- Double domain cost
- Paying two companies for the same website name — for example a registrar and a website builder.
- Paying for SSL
- Standard SSL certificates are free (Let’s Encrypt), and hosts like Cloudflare, Vercel, Netlify and Squarespace add them automatically. Paying for one is usually wasted money.
- Domain (WHOIS) privacy
- Hides your name, address and phone number from the public records of who owns a domain. Many registrars include it free; some charge for it.
- Unused DNS add-on
- You pay your registrar for premium DNS, but your domain’s traffic is handled by another company — so the add-on isn’t being used.
- Paying for a dormant site
- The website is marked dormant but still pays for always-on services such as a database or server.
Still have a question?
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