A no money down website is one of two deals wearing the same coat. One is rent. One is a build you are paying off. The federal rule that puts a yearly rate in front of a borrower carves business credit out, so nobody has to print one for you. The total is yours to add up.
No money down is a payment shape, not a product
Two very different deals hide behind the same offer.
- Rent. You pay every month for a site the shop owns and hosts. Stop paying and the site comes down. Nothing transfers to you.
- Financing. The build has a price, and that price is spread across a term. At the end the payments stop, or there is a buyout figure, and the site is yours.
Some deals blend the two: a financed build with a service fee stacked on top of it.
Ask one question in writing before anything else. Is this a subscription, or is it a build I am paying off? The answer decides every other question below.
No federal rate box on a business deal
Regulation Z is the rule that puts a yearly rate on a consumer loan. Section 1026.18 lists what a lender has to hand a borrower on a closed end loan, and 18(e) is the line that calls for the “annual percentage rate, using that term.”
Business credit is carved out of that. Title 15 of the U.S. Code, section 1603(1), exempts “Credit transactions involving extensions of credit primarily for business, commercial, or agricultural purposes” and then keeps going, to government bodies and to organizations. The Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives publishes that text and stamps every page with the date the law on it runs to. That stamp read August 25, 2026 the day this was checked, and it moves as new laws pass.
Regulation Z, the rule that carries that Act out, says the same. At 12 CFR 1026.3(a)(1) it exempts “An extension of credit primarily for a business, commercial or agricultural purpose.” The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau publishes that section on its own site. That page carries no update date.
So if a website deal is credit at all, and it was sold to your company, it is business credit. No rate box. No finance charge line. That is not a vendor trick. It is the law leaving the paperwork off.
This is not legal or tax advice, and your own state can add rules the federal ones do not. A contract that spreads a cost over years is worth twenty minutes of your own attorney’s time before you sign it.
California asks for a rate, and probably not from your web shop
California passed SB 1235 in 2018. It added Division 9.5 to the state Financial Code, Commercial Financing Disclosures, sections 22800 to 22807, on the California Legislative Information site. Section 22802 makes a covered provider disclose six things and get your signature on them before the deal closes: the total amount of funds provided, the total dollar cost of the financing, the term or estimated term, the method, frequency and amount of payments, a description of prepayment policies, and the total cost of the financing expressed as an annualized rate.
California’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation put out a press release dated June 14, 2022, saying the state Office of Administrative Law approved those rules on June 9 and that they would take effect on December 9, 2022.
Now the honest part. That law almost certainly does not reach a website company.
- Section 22800(d)(1) defines commercial financing as an accounts receivable purchase transaction, including factoring, an asset based lending transaction, a commercial loan, a commercial open-end credit plan, or a lease financing transaction. A monthly service fee is none of those.
- Section 22800(e) defines a commercial loan as a loan of a principal amount of $5,000 or more.
- Section 22801(e) exempts any person making no more than one such deal in California in a 12 month period, and any person making five or fewer that are incidental to their business.
- Section 22800(n) reaches a recipient who is presented an offer of $500,000 or less, so the size of your deal is not what puts it outside the rule.
Do not walk in quoting it. Read it as proof that asking for a plain rate is a normal thing to do, not as a rule your vendor broke. California is only the example here. Your own state may have nothing like it, and none of this is legal or tax advice. Your attorney or accountant is the one who knows what your state requires.
The arithmetic nobody is required to do for you
Take the monthly figure. Multiply it by every month in the term, including any renewal that starts on its own. Add the setup fee, the content fee, and anything charged for going live. That number is what the site costs you.
Then ask for three more numbers in writing.
- The exit figure. What you pay to stop in month nine.
- The renewal. What the monthly becomes once the first term ends.
- The month after. What you owe in the month following the final payment, if anything.
Put that total beside a one-time quote for the same work. Monthly website plan or pay once walks the break-even math on both sides. If you have several offers on the desk, put three website quotes on the same footing first, since a total only means something once both sides cover the same work.
What you own when the payments stop
This is the real catch in a no money down deal, and it has nothing to do with interest.
Start with the domain. Ask in writing whose name the registration is in, and look it up yourself in the first week, not in the month you want to leave.
Handing it back is not instant either. ICANN’s Transfer Policy, updated February 21, 2024, tells a registrar to put a 60 day lock on moving a domain to another registrar after the registrant changes, unless the registrar offered an opt out and the holder took it before the change. Section 3.9.4 of the same policy names 60 day windows after a new registration and after a transfer as well. So even a friendly handover can leave you two months away from moving your own address on the internet.
Then ask about the rest.
- The written pages and the jobsite photos. Yours to take, or theirs?
- The files. Do you get a copy of the site, or a login you lose on the last day?
- The phone number and the forms. Do calls run through a tracking number the shop owns?
A no money down deal where every answer is theirs is not financing. It is a lease you cannot end with your business intact.
What to do next
None of this makes a monthly website deal a bad one. Plenty are fair, and spreading a cost is a normal way to run a small shop. The catch, when there is one, sits in the parts nobody wrote down.
Five steps, in order.
- Ask in writing whether the fee is a subscription or a payment plan, and what happens the month after the last payment.
- Multiply the monthly by the full term. Write that number on the front of the quote.
- Ask for the early exit figure and the renewal rate as dollar amounts, not as policy language.
- Ask in writing who is listed as the registrant on your domain. Ask for the domain in your own name, at your own registrar, before you sign anything.
- Get the line saying you own the pages, photos and files into the contract, in plain words.
There is also a case for buying nothing at all. If your current site loads fast on a phone, says plainly what you do and where you work, and the phone rings, then no payment shape fixes anything. Put the money into a van tire.
To see where you stand before committing to a monthly anything, the free scan asks AI assistants the questions your customers ask and writes down who gets named. It is a check and not a fix, and a person reads it before it goes out. The Galloping monthly plans, and what each one covers, are on the pricing page.
No monthly fee, here or anywhere, can promise a ranking, a call, or a mention in an AI answer. What a fee can do is name the work and name the total. Ask for both, on paper, before the first payment.