Website maintenance costs are something that many site owners don’t calculate and often gone unplanned for. However, it is quite a fact that a website is not just a matter of development and deployment on an Appstore. There’s a lot that goes into making a website a success, and staying on top of your maintenance game is one of them.
In this piece, we’re going to discuss some factors that determine and influence your website maintenance costs. So, let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
What Is Website Maintenance?
Website maintenance could be referred to as a regular process of checking out whether your website is in perfect running condition or not. While a site undergoes maintenance, all bugs are removed, and errors are resolved, necessary updates are made to the sites, such as plugins and site core.
Moreover, site maintenance also involves making all changes to the site through which you plan to reflect your business planning or strategies. Ecommerce site with continuously changing products could be a great example of this.
In the case of WordPress and Shopify website maintenance, you might initially not feel the need for regular maintenance. Still, as your site grows, you’d eventually need to maintain it regularly as the loading speeds and other such factors would matter that time to keep your audience engaged with your site.
Not to mention a regularly maintained website is more reliable, makes more money, and ranks well on the Google SERPs.
Now let’s talk about the factors that regulate your website maintenance costs.
Factors That Determine Your Website Maintenance Costs.
When budgeting your website maintenance costs, consider these factors as they heavily influence your website maintenance costs.
- Site’s Domain Name
- Site’s Hosting
- CMS Updates
- General Updates
- Analytics Reports
- Site’s Domain Name
1. Site’s Domain Name
The domain name of your site is what your audience uses to find you.Also, it is the first thing that draws the users’ attention when they visit your site. Therefore, choosing a domain name that is easy to remember is quite essential. Moreover, keeping your domain name secure should also be a priority as companies that work in a similar niche as yours can easily purchase the same domain as yours. You’ll then need to purchase a new one.
Every month, domain registration would cost you as low as up to $1.
2. Site’s Hosting
Your website hosting is what enables the users to find you over the web. It is essential to find suitable hosting depending upon the type of your site. Typically, there are 4 different ways of hosting that you can opt for.Let’s discuss them briefly.
- Shared Hosting: Shared hosting is hosting that runs multiple websites on a single server. It is the cheapestformof hosting because, technically, several other sites are contributing alongside you for their place on the server. Shared hosting would cost you around $30 – $100 a year. Note that this hosting only works will if you have a site with low traffic. You may need to change the hosting once your audience grows.
- Site Builder:By site builder, we mean services like WordPress. These site builders a great for those who run professional blogs or social media influencers. Moreover, they can also be a great choice for those who plan to start a small business. A site builder would cost you as low as $50 – $170 per year.
- VPS: VPS stands for the Virtual Private Servers. You can easily tell with the name that the server here is divided into multiple virtual sections. However, a user may utterly own the server’s resources. A VPS would cost you around $240 – $600 per year.
- Dedicated Server: Dedicated server is the most expensive among all. It provides the user with complete ownership of the server. Note that a dedicated server is suitable for the site having traffic of over 100,000. A dedicated server would cost you around $1200 – $2400 per month.
It is highly recommended to choose the hosting that is relevant to your site. The reason behind this is quite simple; hosting significantly impacts your overall website maintenance costs. Suppose you own a site with traffic below 100. In such a case, if you purchase a dedicated server, you’d needto pay much more than you’re using. Therefore, choosing the right hosting plan is important.
3. CMS (Content Management System) Updates
A CMS (Content Management System) can be referred to as a platform that allows the users to plan easily, manage, upload, and edit the content on a website.Some of the most popular examples of CMS are WordPress and Joomla.
Note that a result-producing marketing strategy would eventually boost your conversion rates. A CMS could cost anywhere from $0 – $3000.
4. General Updates
General updates may include all the minor updates made regularly to the website on the audience’s demand.These updates also play a significant role in enhancing your site’s look and feel and removing all the minor bugs. General updates of a website may cost you somewhere between $15 – $105 per month.
5. Analytics Reports
Through analytics reports, you can assess the overall performance of your site over a period. The insights here may include details like traffic rate, bounce-off rate, and page speeds, etc. In simpler words, they’re the output of SEO strategies and efforts you put on your website.
These reports play a vital role in further planning and creating SEO strategies for a site. A website analytics report may add $5 – $20 per month to your website maintenance budget.
Conclusion
So, there you go, now you know the major factors that influence your website maintenance costs. It is worth noting that you may not require all of these services in your maintenance package.
Also, it is important to remember you neglecting maintenance services may cause trouble in the long run. Therefore, it is important to stay on top of the maintenance game to keep your site in perfect running condition.
