How long does a website last? What building websites since 2001 has taught us

How long does a website last? Longer than most people expect, if somebody keeps looking after it. We have been building websites since 2001, and some of the clients we work for today first came to us in 2002, 2003 and 2005. None of them is running what we first built. Each has been rebuilt since, and each is still with us.

That is the difference this article is about. The build is what gets replaced. The site can carry on. What follows is our own record, what the sites that lasted have in common, and the questions to ask about yours.

What is the average lifespan of a website?

There is no average that we could defend, so we give our own dates instead. A website has two lifespans. The build, meaning the design and the software under it, is replaced every so often. The site, meaning its address, its content and the customers who know where to find it, can outlast many builds.

Here are the dates. Bonethrower’s site was first built in the early 2000s and most recently rebuilt in 2016. Tin Soldier’s was first built in the mid-2000s and most recently rebuilt in April 2025. The Something Fab site was first built in the early 2010s and rebuilt in 2025. Systems that run a business have dates of their own. GiftBucks’ gift-card platform dates from 2007, was rebuilt in 2016 and again in 2022, and its latest version was built in 2026. Network Dynamics’ system was first built in the 2000s and upgraded in 2014, and a new system was finished in 2026. We haven’t worked an average out of these. The gaps are plain without one.

Nothing in a web page wears out. CERN still keeps the first website online for anyone to browse. What ages is everything around the page: the software it runs on, the devices people read it on, and the business it describes.

So a better question than how long a site lasts is what happens to it each time the ground moves. The table shows some of our clients, and what has changed and what has stayed for each.

Read down the third column and you will find first builds and rebuilds, new names, new technology, new work for the site to do and an owner who moved country. Read down the fourth and very little moves.

What have we built since 2001?

The same things, on different tools. We have changed technology three times without changing what we do. Our brochures and our own old site record what we were selling at each point, and the table sets them side by side.

Two things in that table are worth a second look.

The first is what didn’t change. The 2006 brochure promised free support for 30 days after launch, covering bug fixes. We make the same promise today: in the first 30 days after a site goes live, anything that breaks because of our own work is fixed free.

The second is what disappeared. In 2006 we sold Flash. Adobe’s Flash Player end-of-life page says Adobe stopped supporting Flash Player on 31 December 2020, after announcing it in July 2017, and blocked Flash content from running in Flash Player from 12 January 2021. However well a Flash site had been made, it stopped there.

What keeps a website going?

Seven things, in our experience, and most of them are not technical. A site lasts when one team stays answerable for it, when it is kept up every month, when it is built on tools that many people support, and when its owner treats the address and the content as the asset and the build as replaceable.

One team stays answerable for it

“We have hosted it throughout” appears in the table for a reason. When the people who host a site are the people who built it and who update it, a problem has one owner. When those are three suppliers, a problem has three explanations. If your own supplier has gone quiet, taking over a website when your developer has disappeared covers what to do next.

It is kept up every month

Software under a site keeps moving whether the site changes or not. WordPress’s security page says only the latest version of WordPress is officially supported, and that fixes reach older versions as a courtesy. Our sites run on current PHP versions, and we keep at least seven days of daily off-site backups, and a restore from them is included.

Upkeep counts for more than the age of the technology. We built smscodes.co.za and have run it since 2010. South Africa’s mobile networks have paid to keep its short-code, USSD and WASP data current ever since. It runs on older technology that we still maintain, and it still does its job.

It is built on tools that many people support

Flash belonged to one company, and one company ended it. Adobe’s Flash Player end-of-life page gives the reason: open standards had matured and serve as viable alternatives. A site built on something open and widely used can be picked up by another developer. We build on WordPress and on the Blocksy theme, and we don’t use paid themes, which tend to arrive loaded with things a site does not need.

It carries only what it needs

Sites gather weight: old images, unused features, plugins nobody remembers installing. Each is something more to update and to back up. Big City Life came to us very slow, and we reduced the whole site from roughly 85GB to about 4.5GB. The account is in what was behind a photographer’s slow website.

The address and the content outlast the build

Some of the businesses in the first table trade under different names from the ones we first knew them by, and their sites and systems carried on. When a site is rebuilt, the pages that bring in visitors and the addresses they sit at are what must survive, and our website migration checklist sets out how. It also matters who holds them. With us, your website and its content are yours, and you can move them wherever you like.

It is rebuilt before it has to be

Every client in the first table has had a site or system rebuilt, or a new one built, since they first came to us. A rebuild is planned work when it is chosen in a quiet month, and an emergency when a failure forces it. It is also when a site catches up with how people now read it: every site we build is responsive and works on phones, and a display problem on a phone is fixed free. Our guide to a website redesign covers the signs that a site is due, and what a website redesign costs covers the price.

For systems a business runs on, the stakes are higher. The GiftBucks gift-card platform and the Network Dynamics logistics system were both rebuilt as custom WordPress plugins, and each has its own account. A rebuild is also the moment to add what the business now needs, as the FCRMC rebuild did.

What is finished gets retired

Lasting is not the goal for everything. We built over 50 white-label rewards platforms for One Loyalty, which it used to provide services to its insurance clients. They are no longer in use. One Loyalty is still a client, and we built and host its current website. A platform that has done its work should be switched off cleanly, not left online with nobody updating it.

Can you tell how old a website is?

Not exactly, but you can see its past. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine help page describes a service that lets people visit archived versions of websites. It collects pages that are publicly available, so it holds no pages behind a password, and some sites are left out at their owners’ request.

This is useful when you are choosing a supplier. Any studio can say its sites last. Ask for the names of sites it built some time ago and still looks after, then look at them. Check that they open on your phone, and that they are still being updated. Ask how long each client has been with the studio, and what happened the last time one of those sites needed rebuilding.

What does it cost to keep a website going?

With us, managed hosting is R450 a month incl. VAT, and it keeps a site online and backed up. The basic care plan is R975 a month incl. VAT: it includes the hosting and adds updates, tested on a staging copy first. Our website maintenance page lists what each plan includes and leaves out.

The costs that are easy to miss are set out in the running costs nobody quotes.

What can you take from this for your own site?

Six questions, none of which needs technical knowledge. They cover who is answerable for the site, its updates, its backups, what it is built on, who holds the logins and which pages matter. If you can answer them all, your site is in good hands. If you can’t, the gaps tell you where it is most likely to fail.

1. Who is answerable for the site? One name for hosting, updates and fixes, or several.
2. When was it last updated? Ask for the date, and ask whether updates are tested before they go live.
3. Where are the backups, and how far back do they go? A backup on the same server as the site is not enough.
4. What is it built on? Ask whether another developer could take it over, and whether anything in it depends on one company’s product.
5. Who holds the logins? Hosting, the domain and the site itself. Find out before you need them.
6. Which pages bring in your visitors? Those pages and their addresses are what any rebuild has to protect.

The next step

A new website with us starts at R15,000 incl. VAT for a custom-designed site of up to eight pages. Our web design in Johannesburg page explains how we design and build one, about Fyre has the studio’s story, and our work shows the sites themselves.

If you want a site that is still doing its job years from now, tell us what it has to do. We reply to new enquiries on the same business day.

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