Money’s tight. You know this already.
69% of charities cite finances as their biggest barrier to digital progress. Your organisation is probably one of them.
And when budgets are squeezed, the website is often where cuts happen. It’s not frontline services. It’s not direct support. So it feels like an easy place to save money.
But here’s the problem: a website that doesn’t work costs you more than it saves. Failed donations. Lost volunteers. Funders who can’t find your impact reports. Members who give up trying to book events.
So the question isn’t whether to spend money on your website. It’s what to spend it on when you don’t have much to spend.
What actually matters (and what doesn’t)
I work with charities whose budgets range from “we’ve got £5,000” to “we can stretch to £15,000 if the trustees approve it.” What I’ve learned is that expensive doesn’t mean effective, and cheap doesn’t mean rubbish.
Let me break down where your limited budget should actually go.
Keep: Things that directly affect whether people can use your site
Your hosting and domain This is obvious, but I’ll say it anyway. Don’t let your domain lapse. Don’t move to the cheapest hosting you can find if it means your site loads in eight seconds instead of two.
Slow sites lose people. Lost people means lost donations, lost applications, lost engagement.
Decent hosting for a charity website costs £10-30/month. This isn’t where you cut.
Security and backups If your site gets hacked, you’re offline. If you get offline, you lose more in one day than you’d save in a year of skipping security.
WordPress security plugins, SSL certificates, regular backups – these cost very little but matter a lot. The Charity Commission’s guidance on cyber security makes clear this isn’t optional. Keep them.
Keep (but optimise): Things you need but might be overpaying for
Your CMS and plugins WordPress itself is free. Many excellent plugins are free. But premium plugins add up – £50 here, £100 there, and suddenly you’re spending £800/year on features you barely use.
Go through your plugins. What are you actually using? What’s just sitting there because someone installed it three years ago?
I regularly find charities paying for:
- Three different form builders (pick one)
- Two SEO plugins (you only need one)
- Page builders they’re not using because they don’t know how
- “Premium” versions of things the free version does fine
Cut the duplication. Downgrade what you’re not using fully. That’s probably £200-500 back in your budget.
Ongoing support and maintenance You need someone who can update WordPress, fix things when they break, and make small changes. But you might not need a monthly retainer if your site is stable.
Consider:
- Ad-hoc support (pay as you need it)
- Quarterly check-ins instead of monthly
- Training someone internal to handle basic updates
The right level of support depends on how complex your site is and how confident your team is. But paying £300/month when you need £300/quarter doesn’t make sense.
Cut: Things that feel important but can wait
Visual redesigns Your website looks a bit dated. I get it. But does it work? Can people donate? Can they find what they need?
If yes, the design refresh can wait. Function before fashion when money’s tight.
That doesn’t mean tolerating something broken. It means accepting “fine but not trendy” while you sort out more important things.
New features you haven’t validated Someone had an idea. “We should add a member forum!” or “What about a resource library?” or “Can we build in an events calendar?”
Maybe. But has anyone actually asked for this? Do you have evidence people would use it?
New features cost money to build and money to maintain. Don’t add them based on “it would be nice.” Add them when you have proof they solve a real problem.
Fancy integrations Connecting your CMS to your CRM to your email platform to your donation system sounds efficient. Sometimes it is.
But often it’s expensive, breaks regularly, and requires ongoing management. Manual processes are slower but free and reliable.
If an integration saves significant staff time, keep it. If it’s just neat, cut it.
Maybe: Things that depend on your situation
Custom development Charities come to me wanting custom features. Sometimes they genuinely need them. Sometimes they just think they do because they haven’t explored what already exists.
Before commissioning custom work:
- Check if a plugin does it (probably £50 instead of £2,000)
- Check if a different approach solves the same problem
- Check if you actually need it or just want it
Custom development is worth it when nothing else works. It’s wasteful when you haven’t looked properly.
Marketing and SEO tools Paid SEO tools, email marketing platforms, social media schedulers – these can drive real results. They can also sit unused while you pay monthly fees.
The question is: are you using them enough to justify the cost?
Free versions often do 80% of what you need. Use those until you’re hitting their limits, then upgrade.
What this looks like in practice
Here’s a real example. Charity came to me spending about £1,200/year on their website:
- £400/year on premium plugins (five different ones)
- £300/year on a page builder they didn’t use
- £500/year on hosting that was overkill for their traffic
We:
- Cut to two plugins, used free versions (saved £300)
- Removed the page builder (saved £300)
- Moved to appropriate hosting (saved £200)
Total saved: £800/year. That paid for a proper audit and fixes.
Same website. Better website. Less money.
The question you should actually be asking
It’s not “what can we cut from our website budget?”
It’s “what does our website actually need to do, and what’s the cheapest way to do that well?”
When you frame it like that, the answers get clearer.
You don’t need every feature. You need the features that help your users do what they came to do. You don’t need cutting-edge design. You need design that works on a phone and doesn’t confuse people. You don’t need complex integrations. You need reliable systems that your team can actually manage.
If your budget is genuinely tiny
Let’s say you’ve got £500 for the year. What can you actually do?
Focus on:
- Keep it working – Hosting, security, basic maintenance
- Make it accessible – Fix critical issues that stop people using it
- Make the donate button obvious – If nothing else works well, at least that should
Don’t try to do everything. Do the essential things properly.
And be honest about what you can maintain. A simple site that works is better than a complex site that’s falling apart because nobody knows how to update it.
Getting help when you need it
I know. You need help but you can’t afford an agency.
Options that work:
- Pro bono support – Some developers offer discounted charity rates. Ask.
- Phased work – Fix the critical stuff now, do nice-to-haves later when budget allows
- Training – Sometimes paying someone to teach you is cheaper than paying them to do it
The worst option is struggling alone until something breaks badly enough that you have to pay emergency rates to fix it.
The uncomfortable truth
Your website probably costs more to run than it should. Not because you’re wasteful, but because you’ve accumulated things over time that made sense when they were added but don’t now.
This is a good time to audit that.
What are you paying for? Why? What would happen if you stopped?
You might find money you didn’t know you had. Or at least clarity about where your money’s actually going.
Need help working out what your website actually needs? I work with charities to audit their setups and find savings without sacrificing what matters.
