The MySurgeryWebsite renewal trap — what practice managers wish they'd known

I've sat in PCN meetings, on hospital corridors and on the receiving end of a great many practice-manager phone calls, and one conversation has come up enough times that it warrants its own piece. It goes like this:

"Our renewal letter from MySurgeryWebsite came through last week. It's gone up again. We didn't really notice the increase the first two years but it's added up. The site itself is fine — nothing wrong with it — but we feel like we're paying for inertia. What are our actual options?"

This article is the long version of the answer I usually give in the corridor. It's specifically about MySurgeryWebsite because they're the dominant provider in the UK GP website market, but most of the same logic applies to any annual SaaS contract you signed three or more years ago.

Why renewals creep up

Two things are happening at once.

The first is an annual uplift clause. Most SaaS contracts in this space allow the provider to raise prices in line with an inflation index, an "annual adjustment" clause, or simply a permitted percentage uplift. None of these clauses are illegal. They're often buried in the original contract you signed and renewed silently when the next year started.

The second is product bundling. New features get added to the standard package over time. Each individually sounds reasonable. The cumulative effect is that today's "standard package" is materially different (and pricier) than the one you originally bought, and you've been paying for the difference quietly.

Neither of these is dishonest. They're how the SaaS industry works. But they only stay reasonable if the customer notices and pushes back. Most practice managers I speak to don't — partly because they have actual practice issues to deal with, partly because the renewal email lands in a busy week, and partly because the alternative ("change provider") sounds like a multi-month project.

What's actually in your contract

Pull out your original MSW contract, or your most recent renewal letter, and look for three things:

1. The notice period. Typically 30, 60 or 90 days before the end of the current annual term. Sometimes it's expressed as "before the renewal date". The renewal date is the anniversary of your original signing, not the start of the financial year.

2. The auto-renewal clause. Most provider contracts roll automatically into the next 12-month term unless cancelled in the notice window. This is the clause that traps practice managers who tell us in February they want to leave in March, then discover their renewal date was 14 January and they're locked in until the following year.

3. The exit terms. What happens to your content. Whether you get a full export. Whether there's an exit fee. Whether the supplier is obliged to provide DNS instructions or assistance.

If you can't find your contract, you're entitled to request a copy. UK law (the Consumer Rights Act and standard commercial-contract good faith) backs that up; the supplier has to provide it. You don't need to give a reason for asking.

The hidden cost of staying

Three costs that don't show up on the renewal invoice:

1. Practice-manager time. Routine website edits — opening hours, a new partner's bio, a clinic cancellation, a flu-vaccine banner — either consume your PM's time directly (logging into a CMS) or generate support tickets that round-trip with the provider. Industry-typical estimates put this at 3–6 hours per month of PM time on the website. At a UK practice-manager salary, that's £900–£1,800 per year of opportunity cost.

2. NHS England benchmarking gaps. The benchmarking tool keeps moving. Sites that scored well three years ago may have drifted, particularly on accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA), translation coverage, and online-services display. Failing a check has consequences with your ICB.

3. Compounding price increases. If your renewal is £525 today and goes up 4% per year, by year five you're paying £641. Over a five-year horizon, the cumulative cost of staying-and-creeping is meaningfully more than the cumulative cost of switching once and locking the price.

Three things to do this month

Whether or not you decide to switch, these three actions cost nothing and put you back in control.

1. Find your contract and your renewal date. Look in your DocuSign archive, your accounts inbox for the original invoice, or email MSW support and ask for a copy. Note both the renewal date and the notice-period clause. Set two calendar reminders: one 30 days before the notice window opens, one on the notice deadline itself.

2. Get a benchmark on what you're paying. The market has more options than it had when you signed. Practice Digital is £399/year flat with a 5-year price lock, but the right move isn't necessarily to switch to us. The right move is to know what the comparison looks like. Even staying with MSW, having that benchmark in hand gives you something to push back with at renewal.

3. Audit your current site against the NHS England benchmarking tool. Use the official tool if you have time, or a third-party audit if you don't. Either way, this gives you a numeric score that protects you in front of your ICB and tells you whether you're getting value for the price you currently pay.

If you do decide to switch

The mechanics are less daunting than they sound. We've written a separate detailed playbook at How to switch GP surgery website providers without disrupting patients and a step-by-step page at switch.html. The short version: you parallel-run the new site under a temporary URL while your MSW contract is still alive, you sign off the result before any cut-over, and on cut-over day the DNS swaps in minutes. Patients see no gap.

If you want to talk it through before doing anything, the team has a 20-minute discovery slot at contact us. Or you can just read our MSW alternative page, which has the side-by-side comparison.

The thing I want most practice managers to take from this post is just — look at the contract. The renewal-date trap exists because nobody opens the renewal letter the day it lands. Open yours.

About the author. Our team includes practising NHS GPs and a BCUHB Cluster Lead in North Wales. We have worked with practice managers across England and Wales on website migrations, compliance audits and renewal-letter pushbacks.