Running a business means handling all the finances, including the website maintenance costs. This can be challenging if you don’t understand what factors affect these costs.
With this in mind, we will explain the cost of website maintenance and the average spending for different types of websites to help you make better long-term financial decisions.
Let’s start with the essential website maintenance aspects.
1. Domain Registration
A domain name is the first thing visitors learn about your business. It represents your brand and helps you stand out from competitors. Along with hosting and an SSL certificate, it’s one of the upfront payments you need to make.
The cost for domain registration varies from $10 to $20 per year, depending on many factors, such as a domain extension. Some top-level domain names, like .com, are generally more expensive than others.
Choosing a domain name registrar is another factor. Some registrars offer higher prices but add benefits like WHOIS privacy protection.
2. Hosting
Aside from the domain name, hosting allows your website to appear on the internet. Good web hosting improves your website’s performance, including its reliability, security, and loading time. Better hosting is a crucial investment to make, so be sure to think in the long term.
Choosing the right hosting requires a complete understanding of your website needs since web hosting services vary in features and pricing. Consider the storage, disk space, email server, and upgrade options.
Expect to pay from $1.39 to $10 per month for hosting. Understand the different hosting plans, like shared, VPS, WordPress, or dedicated hosting. Compare your list of preferred hosting service providers and consider the extra features, like a website builder.
3. SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate protects your website and ensures a safe connection, securing your users’ data and privacy.
Moreover, getting an SSL certificate can be one of your SEO strategies to rank higher on search engine results since Google prefers SSL sites.
The pricing for SSL certificates varies depending on the certificate period. Furthermore, some hosting providers offer a free one-year SSL certificate, but the average cost is up to $49.99 per year.
For a simpler and easier SSL certificate setup, always choose the web hosting plan that includes it. This will reduce your upfront payment cost.
4. Tech Support
Tech support for business websites is crucial as it includes bug fixing, ensuring a smooth user experience. Furthermore, it focuses on web development and software updates for better website performance.
As tech support has various maintenance services, the cost will adjust to a business’ needs. The average price for tech support is from $0 to $200 per month according to business size, the technology itself, and your product.
Depending on your budget, tech support can be outsourced or done by an in-house service provider. Like with SSL certificates, some hosting plans include tech support.
5. Search Engine Optimisation
Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for businesses to grow their sales and marketing efforts. Focusing on SEO increases website quality and search engine ranking in the long run.
Depending on your SEO strategies, the cost can vary. While some SEO methods are free, others are paid and require the help of a third-party platform. SEO can also include social media optimization.
Expect to pay up to $800 per month for a typical SEO work. If you’re going DIY for zero cost, start by improving your backlinking strategies, including relevant keywords, and regularly updating alt texts.
If you have the budget, consider hiring SEO consultants.
6. Content Updates
Content helps maintain your website’s ranking if you update it actively. Maintaining your content means constantly updating links, broken pages, meta descriptions, and keywords.
Consider using social media platforms, email marketing, online ad campaigns, analytics platforms, and website design to make content updates cost-effective.
If you’re planning to outsource your content work, go to platforms like Freelancer to find a potential writer.
Make decisions based on your short and long-term content plan. If you’re just starting, there are plenty of free online tools and platforms to support your content update activity. Fortunately, most of the maintenance is doable within the website’s CMS – so you don’t have to pay extra.
7. General Updates
General website updates ensure that the site is secure and working at 100% capacity.
Most hosting providers include a daily or weekly general update into the cost. The update covers automatic data backup and ensuring that you’re using the latest software version.
If you need more in-depth software updates, you can upgrade the feature. Alternatively, hire a developer, but you will need to pay from $60 to $80 per hour. However, we recommend considering it if you’re running an eCommerce website or any other business website.
Average Website Maintenance Cost for Different Types of Websites
In this section, we will overview the average web maintenance costs for different website types to give you better budget calculations. However, understand that there is no one cost that fits all websites.
Depending on the size, different businesses have a different website maintenance costs. This depends on the storage usage, resources needed, and monthly web traffic.
We will go over the cost of maintaining a personal website, a low to medium-traffic blog, a high-traffic blog, a small-to-medium eCommerce website, and a large eCommerce website.
Personal Website
Personal sites include a hobby, a portfolio, or a small business website. It’s often the first option for beginners to grow their online presence.
Personal websites experience little traffic, fewer than 100 monthly visitors, making them suitable for a shared hosting plan.
The website maintenance cost for this type of website ranges from $3 to $25 per month. This average price includes the hosting, domain name, SSL certificate, and additional plugins. The price is the same if you’re running a WordPress website – with the monthly cost of $25.
Low to Medium-Traffic Blog
A low to medium-traffic blog site doesn’t require much monthly website maintenance aside from hosting, website builder, and the maintenance included in the hosting. However, it can also be a small business website, where you may need more website features to maintain.
Again, understanding the average monthly traffic is the key to knowing your cost. Usually, a medium blog has 100-1000 visitors per month, but don’t forget to constantly check the bandwidth and storage usage to avoid poor site performance.
The monthly maintenance cost ranges from $20 to $60 per month, with the web hosting price from $2 to $20 per month. A medium-traffic blog requires technical maintenance, which can be free or paid, depending on the hosting provider. The cost for paid technical maintenance is around $20.
As this will be more expensive, consider choosing only the free tools whenever possible, like Google Analytics and MailChimp, for up to 2.000 subscribers so that you can focus on the main website.
High-Traffic Blog
A high-traffic blog should prioritize exposure, steady website traffic. Sometimes, a large blog can include a simple online store. This type of website typically has more than 1.000 visitors per month. Therefore, it needs more immense website capabilities, from the hosting to the software.
The cost for maintaining a high-traffic website also includes the sales and marketing to reach the website’s objectives. While there are still some free online tools, high-traffic websites require more in-depth analytics, reporting, and website monitoring tools to ensure their growth.
This website type’s monthly maintenance cost is from $50 to $300, with hosting pricing that ranges from $25 to $100 per month.
Small-to-Medium eCommerce Website
A small to medium eCommerce website can be a startup or a newly-launched business. Usually, using a CMS becomes a necessity for such a company website. To make it easier, let’s divide the needs for small and medium eCommerce websites.
Small eCommerce websites can work with a simple CMS and a cloud or a VPS hosting plan. The average maintenance cost is from $30 to $35 per month.
For medium eCommerce websites, the CMS needs to cater to the increasing customer base. They can still opt for a VPS hosting plan but can start considering dedicated hosting. The average maintenance cost is from $80 to $150 per month.
Large eCommerce Website
Large eCommerce websites need more exposure, higher search engine ranking targets, web traffic, sales targets, and site security. They also need to maintain the team members’ performance to reach KPI and other business targets.
With that in mind, maintaining a large eCommerce website is to be taken seriously as it’s responsible for the company’s continuity.
The maintenance covers the security – both the back end and front end, or storefront. It includes elaborate marketing and sales platform management, from social media and email marketing to graphic design and online ads.
Naturally, the website maintenance pricing for large businesses is more costly. On average, maintenance costs for a large eCommerce website start from $300 per month. The hosting platform ranges from $100 to $500 per month as they need dedicated hosting.
Why Is Website Maintenance Important?
A well-maintained website provides many long-term benefits, like higher ranking, sales conversion, and successful business campaigns. Moreover, maintaining a website also includes preventive actions, so you can detect problems before they happen.
You should try to keep your website running 24/7 with minimum downtime to ensure constant growth. Without regular maintenance, the website can get overworked, which will lead to more significant risks. This includes aspects like:
- More downtime and lower speed. Site maintenance takes care of the storage or disk space. Without maintenance, the storage and disk space can quickly go over the monthly limit, slowing down the website. Business-wise, this decreases the potential sales.
- Broken links or page errors. This is due to many factors, like server error or back-end problems. Although no website has 100% uptime, having regular maintenance keeps a maximum uptime whenever possible. This includes detecting early issues on your page or links.
- Higher security risk. This includes the chance of hacking, data leakage, data loss, or other cybercrime. Regular maintenance also consists of a secure website connection and frequent data backup.
- Reduces content quality and page rankings. Lack of maintenance also affects your content by decreasing the site’s performance. This will affect the overall business credibility in the long run.
You may need to spend more to fix these problems you could’ve avoided with simple maintenance.
If you’re worried about the website maintenance costs, start by creating a maintenance plan or checklist to prepare in advance. Make sure to phase yourself to avoid getting overwhelmed by the process.
Prioritize the most crucial website maintenance cost aligned with your goals, and cut down the budget as much as possible. But don’t forget that sometimes you will have to pay more or less than expected.
Conclusion
The costs for maintaining your website vary depending on many aspects, including your business size and monthly visitors. In short, the more your website grows, the more maintenance it needs.
While there are many factors to consider to be smart with the cost, make sure the website maintenance cost isn’t over your budget.
We hope this article can help you maintain your website better, continuing your business success. Good luck.