Every site runs on paid software somewhere. A premium form plugin. A page builder licence. A hosting plan. And on hosted site builders, more and more often, a paid seat for each person who wants to edit the content.
Who pays for all of that sounds like an admin detail. It isn't. Across the communities we follow, the same question keeps turning up from very different people. A beginner freelancer asking whether the client or the freelancer usually buys the premium plugins. Agency owners reacting to a hosted builder moving to per-seat editor pricing, with one pointing out that the client's editing access is the main thing keeping clients on that platform at all. Designers saying the new costs make them rethink which platform they recommend. Someone who quietly moved a handful of client sites elsewhere. A company where marketing wants to edit pages without waiting on engineering, which raises the same question in a different form: whose seat, whose budget.
There's no single right answer, but there are clear camps. Which one are you in?
Camp 1: the client pays for everything, in their own name
Every licence, seat and plan is bought by the client, on the client's account, with the client's card. The builder gets access to install and configure.
The case for it:
- No surprise lapses. When a freelancer moves on, licences don't quietly expire because they were tied to someone else's account.
- Costs are visible. The client sees exactly what the site costs to run every year, which makes later conversations about pricing honest.
- Leaving is easy. If the client changes agencies, nothing needs to be transferred, refunded or argued about.
- No reselling. Many licences have terms about who may use them. Buying in the client's name avoids that question.
The common objection: clients hate admin. Asking a small business owner to buy five licences, keep track of renewal emails and forward invoices can feel like handing them homework.
Camp 2: the agency buys and bundles it into the plan
The agency holds the licences, often a multi-site or developer licence, and folds the cost into a care plan or build price. The client sees one invoice.
The case for it:
- Simpler for the client. One bill, one contact, no renewal emails.
- Cheaper overall. Agency or developer licences spread across many sites can cost less per site than buying one licence per client.
- Updates actually happen. The agency manages renewals, so plugins keep receiving updates as long as the plan runs.
- It's what they're paying for. Many owners want someone else to handle the software entirely.
The common objection: what happens when the relationship ends? If the licence belongs to the agency, the client's site may keep working but stop receiving updates, and the client may not even know until something breaks.
Camp 3: avoid paid tools wherever you can
Choose free or open source tools, or platforms where editing doesn't cost per person, so the question mostly disappears.
The case for it:
- Nothing to renew. No licences to track, no per-seat surprises when a vendor changes its pricing.
- Portable. Sites built on widely used free tools are easier for the next person to pick up.
- Price changes can't hold you hostage. When a vendor raises prices or changes its model, you have fewer things that need a decision.
The common objection: free isn't free. Free tools may need more setup, more custom work or more maintenance, and someone pays for that time. Sometimes the paid tool is genuinely the right choice, and avoiding it just moves the cost into hours.
The grey areas
- Editor seats are different from plugin licences. A plugin licence is usually one per site. An editor seat is one per person. When a client has three people who edit, the cost scales with the client's team, not with your work. That feels like it belongs to the client, but it often lands in the agency's quote.
- Price changes mid-contract. If you quoted a fixed annual care plan and a tool's price rises sharply, who absorbs it? Many contracts never say.
- Developer licences on client sites. Convenient and often allowed, but read the terms. Some licences cover sites you build for clients; others don't once you stop being involved.
- Markup. Some agencies resell at cost; others add a margin for managing renewals. Neither is wrong, but clients notice when it's hidden.
- Lapsed licences after a handover. The site keeps running, updates stop, and a year later a security issue appears in a plugin nobody has been able to update.
- Moving platforms because of pricing. When editing costs jump, moving a client site can be the right call, but the migration has a cost too. Who pays for that move?
Where we lean
For the sites we look after, we lean towards a mix of Camp 1 and Camp 2. Anything the site can't live without, such as hosting, the domain and core premium plugins, sits in the client's name, so updates and access survive any change of agency. Day-to-day management of those renewals can still be part of a care plan, so the client isn't stuck forwarding renewal emails.
Where an agency licence genuinely saves the client money, we think it's fine to use, as long as the contract says plainly what happens to updates if the relationship ends, and the client gets enough notice to buy their own licence.
On per-seat editing, we'd treat seats as the client's cost, quoted separately and clearly, because they scale with the client's team. And when pricing changes force a decision, it helps to write down what the client actually needs to edit before comparing platforms. Sometimes the answer is fewer seats, not a new platform.
Mostly, we'd put it in writing at the start. Most of the arguments we see aren't about who pays. They're about nobody having decided.
Your turn
- Which camp are you in, and has a bad experience ever pushed you from one to another?
- When a tool's price rises in the middle of a fixed-price care plan, who absorbs it in your contracts?
- How do you handle editor seats for clients with several people who need to edit?
- If you've handed over a site that used your agency licences, what did you agree about updates afterwards?
