Maintaining a website creates a great impact on visitors and helps to display new information, products and services.
Website maintenance will increase the security level which will protect you from hackers and malware. It helps you to solve problems at initial stage where you don’t have to spend excess money later. A well maintained website will also get a good search engine ranking.
To an extent, we know the importance of website maintenance, but still many avoid it because they think it will cost them a fortune. But, in reality, it doesn’t. It mainly depends on what you require. In our blog, we are going to give you a detailed overview on how much it costs to maintain a website.
A detailed overview of website maintenance cost
Website maintenance includes various segments. The entire cost of maintenance can be split like the below accordingly.
Domain renewal
Domain name is one which gives you an identity on the internet. Once you purchase a domain, your job is not done. It has to be renewed periodically. If the renewal delays, your website will go down and you might even lose its ownership.
The cost may differ according to competition. It usually starts from $10/year.
Hosting
Hosting is a separate space on the internet allocated to an individual domain in a computer server.
There are some free service providers, but choosing them will have a negative impact because your pages may load slowly.
Commercial service providers charge $4 for 10GB space per month.
Backups
Backing up your website in a separate location apart from your hosting location is necessary.
If anything goes wrong in a website due to malware attack or even if someone hacks it, you should have a backup in order to recover your website.
The cost may vary depending upon website size and backup type. Approximately it starts from $5 per month.
License Fee – SSL certificate installation
SSL Certificates provide secure, encrypted communications between a website and the internet browser. Any computer in between you and the server can view your credit card numbers, usernames passwords, and other sensitive information, if it is not encrypted with an SSL certificate. So getting an SSL certificate for your website is very important.
The cost of this particular license starts at $50 per year.
Also Read – Website Maintenance Tools to Know in 2019
Website maintenance
Website maintenance can be explored in below five areas.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – Depending upon the competition of keywords required by website, fee may vary from $200 to $5000 per month.
- PPC (Pay-Per-Click) – Here, prices may vary from $1000 per month and may go higher depending on clients budget and competition.
- CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) – To stay unique, we can do a A/B testing to test out various CRO methods which may cost $300 to $6000. This is optional.
- Copywriting – This costs approximately $50 for every 500 words.
- Social Media Marketing – This costs $250 to $25,000 per month depending upon client’s budget and needs.
The cost of maintenance depends upon duration, packages, and nature of the requirement. For example, a small business that requires minor content updation would cost from $3000 per year. Likewise, it depends upon the amount of content and hours the client is willing to invest.
As per our research, above were some of the categories of website maintenance. Let’s see how much it costs for an hourly, monthly and yearly basis below.
Approximate cost for hourly website maintenance
Maintaining website in an hourly basis is not good because, you will not receive predictive maintenance. For example, if problems are not caught in the initial stage, it may take several hours to fix it. This will increase the cost.
However, the hourly minimum rate charged is up to $50/hr where the maximum rate may go upto $150/hr depending upon the type and complexity of issue.
Also Read – WordPress Website Maintenance Checklist
Approximate cost for monthly website maintenance
Choosing monthly payment method is convenient for everyone, where they can identify the problems much in advance. They will start working on them and fix it immediately.
The cost may vary depending upon client requirements. For example, at WDR, website maintenance package starts from $297 per month. It includes maintenance, individual developer alloted, website works, graphic design works, backups, content integration, content creation, time bound, report and support. You can include or remove any services, so that your cost will differ based on your requirement.
Approximate cost for yearly website maintenance
Yearly payment is not recommended since it would result in spending a huge amount of cash at once.
The annual minimum rate for maintaining a website is $600 and it may go up to a maximum of $2,800.This cost is determined based on your website.
How much does freelance developers charge for website maintenance?
Choosing a freelance developer is not good because they are not reliable. They may not understand your expectation and will have some difficulties in handling the issues. This may delay the delivery time.
Agencies will always have an in-house expert team at their disposal. They might have come across various unique issues and they will know how to resolve it quickly.
Cost wise, it varies by developer’s experience, location and expertise. An experienced freelance developer may charge minimum of $150 per hour, where a freshman may charge $30 per hour.
Also Read – Small Business Website Maintenance
How much does digital agencies charge for website maintenance?
Digital agencies will help to focus on business priorities. They will check a website’s performance and provide you analytical reports from where you can monitor your performance.
If you have a limited budget, then consulting an agency is recommended. You can get your maintenance cost as per your expectation and trust us – it is cost effective.
Also agencies will use updated softwares and tools which will help in increasing the efficiency of businesses.
Digital agencies charge anywhere between $200 to $1500 per month depends on effort required.
Website maintenance is an ongoing process
Do not think in a common way that “ building a website is enough.” Maintaining it is also equally important.
Website maintenance might seem like an unnecessary investment but, it will help you earn multiples of the amount back.
Hope you got an idea on how much website maintenance costs.
So take the first step towards maintaining your website so that it can run smoothly without any unexpected issues.
If you are interested in maintaining your website at your budget we are always here to make it easier at Web Design Retainer. Contact us anytime, we are ready to help you.
You are in a path of success and we are here to lift you up to reach it.
Also Read – Ecommerce Website Maintenance Checklist
