What our websites cost to run, and what we measured on them
This page is our ledger: the dated figures we publish as proof for the tools and guides on this site, one row per dated reading, with the site it was read on. Data available since 2026-08-08. Readings at zero are printed in amber because they are part of the proof.
What the sites cost: $10.46 a year for each of our three domains, on invoice, and $0 a month to host wiserstaff.com on the Cloudflare free plan. The readings come from three sites we run. wiserstaff.com is our HR-software review blog, monetised by affiliation and live since 2026-06-27. ranthrice.com is this site, on this page since its first reading on 2026-09-05. riin-art.com is an online shop, on this page since its analytics were first read on 2026-09-08. Readings are never back-filled: a number that was not captured on the day does not appear.
What these figures stand behind: The Domain-Only Website Kit and our other systems. What each test found, and where it stopped: what we tested.
| Date | Site | Entry | Reading | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-04 | ranthrice.com | Production site, live build on the Cloudflare free plan: the account billing history read on 2026-10-04 | $0/month hosting · 3 account invoices, all $10.46 (the three domains), none for hosting · the domain is the only recurring cost | GRADE A |
| 2026-09-30 | ranthrice.com | The same Kit order at a beta-tester price, billed to two countries: the payment platform adds the buyer's VAT at checkout | Billed to France: 20% VAT added at checkout · billed to Morocco: no tax line, on 5 orders · no tax maths on our side | GRADE A |
| 2026-09-09 | ranthrice.com | Live card payment, tested with one $1.00 purchase through the site | $1.00 paid by card through the site, the file delivered intact, no tax due and no tax line on the receipt, refunded in full the same morning | GRADE A |
| 2026-09-09 | ranthrice.com | Scope of our figures page narrowed: our own mistakes leave the public rows | 1 row withdrawn (a second row of 2026-09-07, on the broken archive of the first Drop test): the test page still says what went wrong, and the Kit explains how to catch it. Readings at zero stay: 2 rows, printed in amber: the Perplexity and Google checks of 2026-08-22 and the first triage test of 2026-08-24. | GRADE A |
| 2026-09-08 | wiserstaff.com | First press answer published, a named mention without a link | 9 answers sent from 2026-08-25 · 1 published on 2026-09-08 · 0 links | GRADE A |
| 2026-09-08 | riin-art.com | Visits from an AI assistant, 30-day analytics window | 46 sessions from ChatGPT in 30 days, the site's third channel · 3 WhatsApp clicks among them · a click is not an order | GRADE A |
| 2026-09-07 | ranthrice.com | What a .com actually costs at Cloudflare Registrar, read on the invoice | $10.46 per year, the same figure on all three of our domains (riin-art.com 2026-06-02, wiserstaff.com 2026-06-26, ranthrice.com 2026-09-06), each an invoice in the account, not a price page | GRADE A |
| 2026-09-07 | ranthrice.com | First test of the path without a terminal: Cloudflare Drop, from upload to a live domain | under six minutes between claiming the uploaded site and registering its domain, read from the account's creation timestamps; the site was live on its own domain the same evening, on the free plan | GRADE A |
| 2026-09-05 | ranthrice.com | Keyword research for the 54-topic blog plan (DataForSEO Labs, Google US) | $0.41 spent · written cap $1.00 · 18 discovery + 2 overview + 2 SERP calls | GRADE A |
| 2026-09-03 | wiserstaff.com | Competitor price check, read on the vendors' own pricing pages; the document stays internal | 11 third-party price reads: 8 on the vendor's own pricing page, 3 read indirectly, which count as secondary | GRADE B |
| 2026-08-31 | wiserstaff.com | PageSpeed Insights, 13 URLs on mobile | 8 scored 100 · the other 5 between 90 and 99 | GRADE A |
| 2026-08-30 | wiserstaff.com | Production site, live build on the Cloudflare free plan | 53 URLs · $0/month hosting (the domain, at registry cost, is the only bill) | GRADE A |
| 2026-08-29 | wiserstaff.com | Journalist-request feeds, second triage test (default feeds again) | 54 cards → 25 worth reading → 2 usable leads | GRADE A |
| 2026-08-28 | wiserstaff.com | Press pitches sent, written by hand, zero automation | 5 pitches · 3 live accounts · 0 published (added by 2026-09-06: 1 marked “selected” on 2026-09-03) | GRADE A |
| 2026-08-26 | wiserstaff.com | First calibration of the DataForSEO API, live calls through both MCP servers | $2.35 total · 8 paid APIs | GRADE A |
| 2026-08-24 | wiserstaff.com | Journalist-request feeds, first triage test (default feeds) | 49 cards → 6 worth reading → 0 usable leads | GRADE A |
| 2026-08-22 | wiserstaff.com | Perplexity and Google checks on our own site, 6 queries on each engine, published anyway (corrected 2026-09-28: this row said “seventh week at zero”; the dated files hold five readings up to that day) | 0 citations on five dates in a row | GRADE A |
| 2026-08-22 | wiserstaff.com | Copilot citations of our site, five-day Bing window | 1,039 citations · 97% on vendor-brand queries · 6 of 35 pages produce all of them | GRADE A |
| 2026-08-21 | wiserstaff.com | One request platform, one filtered paid-hashtag search, read by hand | 512 opportunities, no pitch credit needed; read by hand, no capture kept | GRADE B |
| 2026-08-08 | wiserstaff.com | What one click on our own target queries would have cost to buy, keyword planner data read through the DataForSEO API | $31.39 to $323.19 a click across the queries we target · $0 ever spent on ads | GRADE B |
| TOTAL | Figures in this table without a dated source | 0 | OUR RULE |
Correction policy and reuse
A wrong reading is corrected in place with a dated note in the same row, as the row of 2026-08-22 shows. A mistake we made while running a site is not a reading: since version 1.2 of our house rules, it leaves the public rows for the list of pitfalls sold with the product it cost, and the row of 2026-09-09 says how many left and why. Rows may be reused under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page. Raw files behind grade A rows are shared on request to hello@ranthrice.com. Each test page says which proof files exist for it, and says so when there are none.