What happens when the free month ends — exactly what the first £45 charge looks like

When I tell people the website subscription is £45/month with the first month free, the next question is almost always the same: “And then what?” It’s a fair question. “Free trial” is a phrase that’s been abused by every gym chain and streaming service in the country, so I want to be specific about what month two actually looks like.

The short version

A month after you sign up, your card gets charged £45. Then £45 every month after that, until you cancel. That’s it. No price hike, no “intro rate ending”, no “this charge is for the build, the next one is for hosting”. Just £45/month, the same number that was on the page when you signed up.

If you want to cancel before that first charge happens, you can — one click in the Stripe email you got at sign-up, no questions, no exit interview. The first charge never lands, the site comes down, and we’re done. You keep your domain (which has always been in your name) and anything you brought to me — logo, photos, copy you wrote. What you don’t keep is the site itself: I built it, you haven’t paid for it, so it doesn’t come with you. That’s the fair side of the trade.

After 12 paid months together (about £540 paid in — roughly the cost of the build itself), the site files become yours to keep when you cancel. Before that, cancel = site offline.

The full timeline

Day 0 (sign-up day). Stripe collects your card details to start the subscription, but doesn’t charge anything. Your bank statement shows no transaction. Most banks send a notification saying “a payment method was authorised for £0.00” — that’s normal, that’s all that happens.

Days 1–14. I build your website. You review previews, send content, we tweak it, we launch it. You’re on the subscription but not paying.

Day ~25 (about a week before the free month ends). Stripe sends an automated email reminding you the first £45 is coming, with the exact date. I also email you separately — same week — with a plain-English heads-up, because nobody reads Stripe receipts carefully. Both emails include a one-click link to cancel if you want to.

Day 31. First £45 charge lands on your card. You get a Stripe receipt by email. From here on, the same charge happens on the same day every month.

Whenever you decide to cancel — could be week 8, could be year 3 — you click the cancel link in any of your Stripe emails. The subscription ends at the end of the current billing month, so you’re never paying for a month you don’t use.

The cancellation outcome depends on where you are in the subscription:

• Cancel during the free first month: first £45 never charges, site comes down, no files transfer (you haven’t paid for the build). You keep your domain plus anything you brought.
• Cancel between month 2 and month 12 (paid, but before the 12-paid-months loyalty point): site comes down at the end of your current paid month. Build stays with us. Domain still yours. (I can quote a one-off transfer fee if you want the files earlier — usually the balance to reach the equivalent of 12 paid months.)
• Cancel from month 13 onwards: site files are emailed to you, the site is yours to host wherever you like.

What happens if I forget about month 2 entirely?

You’ll know. Stripe emails you a heads-up about a week before charging. Then a receipt on the day the charge lands. Then another email a month later when the next charge lands. The “I forgot I was paying for it” scenario doesn’t really exist with Stripe — they email you for every charge, every month, by default.

If you don’t want the subscription to continue but you also genuinely forget to cancel, you’ve paid one £45 charge — not a year, just one month. You can still cancel after that and the next month doesn’t happen.

What happens if my card declines?

Cards get reissued. Banks change them. Sometimes a charge fails not because of you but because your bank’s fraud system flagged a recurring £45 to a new merchant.

When that happens, Stripe emails you (and emails me, on the webhook) to update the card. The site stays up. Stripe retries the charge over the next few days. If nothing’s updated in roughly two weeks, the subscription pauses — I email you, we sort it out on WhatsApp.

The reason I built UK Web Marketing as a subscription and not a one-off is precisely because of this kind of relationship. A freelancer who built your site for £1,500 two years ago and hasn’t heard from you since isn’t going to email you when your card fails. They’re not going to fix it when the site breaks. They’re not even going to pick up the phone in a year. I’d rather charge £45/month and actually still be here.

Will you put the price up later?

Honestly: maybe, but not in a way that affects you.

If I ever raise the price for new customers, existing customers keep the price they signed up at. That’s not a marketing promise, it’s how Stripe subscriptions work — your subscription is locked to the price on the day you started. The only way to move you to a higher price would be to cancel your subscription and resubscribe you, which I’m not going to do.

So if you sign up today at £45/month and in two years I’m charging new customers £60/month: you stay on £45. Indefinitely. Until you cancel.

Why 12 months before files transfer?

The honest answer: the build itself takes roughly 30–50 hours of focused work. At a fair hourly rate that’s a few hundred pounds of cost to me. After 12 paid months (£45 × 12 = £540) the customer has paid enough to cover roughly that build cost — so at that point the files genuinely belong to them, not just to the relationship.

Before that point, cancellation = the site goes offline. That’s not a punishment, it’s the trade that lets me offer a free month and a low monthly price without giving away the work itself.

If you need the files earlier than month 13 — say you’re being acquired, or moving in-house — I’ll quote a fair transfer fee (usually the balance to reach the equivalent of 12 paid months, so somewhere between £0 and £540 depending on how far through you are).

The bottom line

The first month is free in the sense that no money leaves your account — but it’s not “free for keeps”. I’m doing real work in that month (designing, building, hosting, supporting), so the deal is: pay nothing for 30 days while you decide if the site is right; if you become a paying customer, the work runs alongside your subscription; after 12 paid months together, the files are yours.

From month two onwards, you pay £45 per month, on a fixed date you’ve been warned about twice, until you decide to stop. You can stop any time.

Start the subscription — first month is on me. Or read the pricing in more detail. Or WhatsApp me a question if there’s anything I haven’t covered.