Website Maintenance Cost

So you want to get your site maintained by a website design agency? Here’s how the pricing for the same may look like:

• Dilettante: If you’re a hobbyist or amateur,  then you will only need to cover the domain and hosting costs of your website because more than likely be doing everything else yourself. Depending on the hosting services that you use, the estimated costs should fall between 5$ to $30. 
• Personal: Designing a website for an individual, like an online portfolio or resume’, will be similar to maintaining a hobby site. The costs are lower, between $5 to $30 because you’ll be doing all of the maintenance yourself, and it will be fairly easy to maintain independently. 
• Small Business: With basic services like email marketing, graphic design, hosting, and securing your domain should cost below $300 per month. However, if your business’s website needs to be maintained and updated regularly then those costs could increase up to $2500+ per month.
• Electronic Commerce: Your online store’s size will determine the extent to which it will need to be maintained but most e-commerce sites can expect to pay $400+ dollars a month for the domain, hosting, general updates, graphics, and email marketing functions of their site. If your e-commerce store requires tech support, updating, site maintenance, security features to protect user data, item tracking, and analytic services then the price could increase to $6000.00+ per month. 
• Corporations: Larger companies normally have larger websites due to their sizable number of consumers and employers. These types of sites require constant maintenance and tech support which could cause them to be more expensive to maintain. You could expect to pay anywhere between $5,000 to $10,000 each month for website upkeep. 

When designing your website it’s important to keep in mind modern design trends, the needs of your business, and the needs of your consumers. Running a personal or hobby website doesn’t require as much effort as an e-commerce site for a large corporation like Nike for example. We at On The Map Marketing can help your website meet your needs, help you to ensure your Website maintenance costs will vary based on several factors. Investing in website maintenance could save you lots of potential headaches, energy, time, and money. Your website’s specifications will determine how much your maintenance costs will be. 

Types of Websites

Are you a small business owner, a hobbyist with a smaller website, or are you managing a large corporation? Your maintenance needs will be different depending on the scale of your business. Here are a few examples of what you may expect in your particular size business venture: 

business falls within the financial parameters of your budget and helps to grow your client base and potential leads. 

Site Maintenance

Most website maintenance costs will be reoccurring subscription services. However, it’s important to be proactive in maintaining your website because website errors will lead to lost opportunities. Here are a few examples of monthly website tips that are possible to overlook:

• Missing Pages: If a page on your website is returning 404 errors then it could harm your business. Imagine that your checkout page is malfunctioning, you could lose vital opportunities each minute that your webpage is down. Third-party coverage reports, hiring someone to maintain your site regularly,  and daily, weekly, or monthly checks should alleviate this irritant.
• Link Malfunctions: If the supporting links in your content or the hyperlinks between activities on your site don’t operate optimally, then it could harm your SEO ranking and decrease your user experience. Third-party applications normally can find broken links on your site and notify you of a malfunction. A WebCrawler or spider service can be used to gather data for your website and monitor your links. 
• Image Troubles: If the images on your site don’t load, then it will ruin your user experience and damage your company’s first impression. Internet users can determine the value of your company in 50 milliseconds or less. It’s advantageous for your branding and conversion rate to work with someone that will address image errors quickly. 
• Backups:  The internet can be an uncertain place if you don’t have the skills to properly navigate its interwebs. If you don’t back up your data you run the risk of losing it all and having to rebuild your site from nothing. This will cost you customers, time, energy, effort, opportunities, and money. Your business can maintain it’s internet presence if you make it a regular practice of storing a back up of your most current website. There are paid subscription-based services that can automatically back up your site for a monthly fee. The money you save from maintaining your site will pale in comparison to what you would have to spend recreating it. 
• Analytic Reports: Need to know how your new website design is doing, or how many consumers saw that new product launch? Getting analytic reports about your website can give you valuable information on new pages, website flow, errors, even information about how to improve your marketing strategies by redirecting your resources to elements that garner more interests and drives engagement. Knowing where your site falls in its SEO ranking for certain key terms can also help you produce new content that effectively reaches your target audience. 

Essential Website Costs

How much you pay each month for the following services will determine how much your website maintenance ends up costing:

Domain

Domains can be purchased for $10 to $20 per year. Domains do range in price depending on the service that you use to purchase it and the name you choose for your business. A domain is a web address for your business and without it, people won’t be able to find your website on the web. 

You have to renew the domain name each year and not renewing it could result in someone else purchasing the name and making your company find a new one. Imagine a competitor purchasing your domain name out of spite, and creating a mock site to confuse your clientele. Domains are an important aspect of website maintenance and design. 

SSL Certificate

A Secure Sockets Layer certificate protects your business and client data. SSL certificates work by letting your site to send and receive data securely. SSL certificates provide a padlock beside the name in your browser and some internet users will look for that padlock before they purchase anything on your site. Some content management systems offer this service for free and others offer paid services that come with better encryptions and customer support. SSL certificates may cost between 10$ to $2000 per year dependant upon the size of your business and security level needs. 

Hosting

Without a hosting provider, people won’t be able to access your domain. A web host provides servers that house your website. There are four different options to host your site and the cost will depend on which of the following options that you choose:

• Shared Host: The cheapest option costing anywhere between $24 to $120 per year. Normally for websites without a bunch of traffic because your site will be hosted on a server with other sites, meaning that the load times will be reduced. If your website will have loads of traffic, then you may want to consider the other options. 
• Website Builder: A website builder service, like WordPress for example, costs between $60 and $180 per year. This is a great option for bloggers and smaller businesses. 
• Virtual Private Server: The service provider divides the server giving you complete access to all of the resources of the server. This option is a bit more expensive ranging from $200 to $600 per year. Though you are still sharing a server, you have your own designated space within the server. 
• Dedicated Server: There are lots of benefits to having your own server including increased website speeds, data capabilities, and security functions. This option is the most expensive ranging from $1,200 to $25,000 per year. Websites with their own dedicated servers are high volume, high traffic sites with 100,000+ visitors per year. 

You can also check out some cheap WordPress hosting if you have a WordPress site.

Updates 

General updates on your website will happen more often than you think, especially if you’re using a content management system. However, working with a professional web maintenance service could be in your best interest to ensure that your website stays fresh, filled with new engaging content, and modern. 

Website upkeep from a professional maintenance service could include the following: 

• Webpage upkeep
• Posting new content
• Media updates
• Improving site navigation
• Background images changes
• Rotating color palettes

Website upkeep doesn’t normally include website redesign. Normally your business is responsible for providing the content and the maintenance service ensures that it makes its way onto your website. Speak with a professional website maintenance service like On The Map Marketing to maintain your site and find the perfect maintenance plan that fits your needs and budget. 

Content Management

A Content Management System (CMS) allows you to publish content on your website using themes and plugins. Some of the most popular CMS are Joomla, WordPress, Drupal,  and Magento. Some businesses can even customize a CMS for you.

Your CMS will need to be updated with new security patches, plugins, and theme updates as they become available. Your site could be applicable for service fees and therefore the amount you pay for this service could vary between $0 – $4000. Having a professional website management service maintain your website can help you understand exactly how much each element of your website upkeep will cost. 

Tech Support

If you’ve designed a website, then you know that things can go horribly wrong leaving you without any data after hours of time and energy building your website. Having someone available to you to provide technical support could be the difference between the life and death of your website. A down website could negatively affect your customers and sales. 

Many businesses invest up to $3000 per month on technical support to ensure that their customers, employees, and platform stay supported and running efficiently. Make sure to review turn around times and hours of operation before signing with a web management service to ensure that your schedules align and your customers are supported in the case of a technical error on your site. 

Site Analytics

When you add new content or try a new design element on your website, you want to make sure it’s being effective. Analyzing your website will help your team stay apt on whether or not your site is growing or declining and help your business understand when to continue what ti’s doing or reevaluate.

A website analytics report can tell you your number of site visitors, how long they stay on your site, and the bounce rate. Some analytics reports can detail where the traffic is coming from if you’re running digital marketing campaign initiatives. 

Website analytics reports can cost between $5 to $15 each month in addition to your other monthly site maintenance costs.  

Ecommerce Payment System

If you’re in the electronic commerce business, then your shopping cart is your lifeline. If something is not functioning properly on your site, then that could be the difference between a new and loyal customer or lost revenue. When your payment system malfunctions, then it is impossible to process payments, fulfill orders, and satisfy your customers. 

Similar to tech support, turn around times could be crucial, and the faster the turnaround the more expensive the service. Your maintenance service provider may look at tech support and e-commerce support as separate entities and charge a different fee for e-commerce support. These services could range from $15 to $30 per month. 

Why invest in website maintenance services?

There are more than 4.5 billion internet users in the world today. That’s more than half the world’s population and almost half of small businesses don’t even have a website. Having a website could separate you from your competitors. Building and maintaining your website will also help you to keep in contact with your consumers, generate more leads, provide more value, and stay engaged with your clientele. Partnering with a service provider can help you to ensure that you get a prompt, experienced, and specialized service that meets the needs of your business and your customers.