There are thousands of business owners who own a great-looking website but complain about its poor performance. They believe the website doesn’t perform well because it wasn’t built well in the first place. However, this is very unlikely because most of these site owners ignore the importance of regular website maintenance.
In simpler words, creating a website is not just a matter of development and deploying it on a server – post-development maintenance is an ongoing and integral part of the process that ensures the website’s overall health and performance in the long term.
And when we say integral, we mean it because if you’re not on top of the website maintenance game, your site would eventually fall prey to major and minor bugs.
Let’s talk about website maintenance in detail before heading down to the factors determining website maintenance costs.
What Is Website Maintenance?
Website maintenance can be associated with a long-term ongoing process of checking out whether or nota website is on top of performance. While a site is under maintenance services, bugs and errors are eliminated, necessary updates are made, such as website core and plugins.
Website maintenance further involves making all changes to the site through which you plan to reflect your business strategies. Ecommerce site could be a great example of this as they are required to continuously change products.
In the case of WordPress maintenance services and Shopify services, you might initially not feel the regular need. However, as your site continues to grow, you’d need to maintain it regularly as the loading speeds, navigation, user experience and other such factors would matter that time to keep your audience engaged.
A website that is regularly maintained reliable makes more revenue and ranks well on different search engines.
Here are some major aspects that help you determine overall website maintenance costs.
Factors That Decide Your Website Maintenance Costs.
When setting up a budget for your website maintenance services, you need to consider the following aspects as they highly influence your website’s overall website maintenance costs.
1. Domain Name
The domain name is the first thing that draws the users’ attention. Technically, it is the first thing that appears in front of them. Therefore, it is essential to choose a domain name that is catchy and easier to memorize.
On average, the domain name registration of a site would cost your up to $2 per month. You can also choose a yearly package here.
2. Site’s Hosting
Website hosting would allow your users to find you over the internet. Depending upon the type of your site, finding a suitable host is essential. Now there are generally four types of hosting variations that you can go for. Here they are.
- Shared Hosting: In this type of hosting, multiple websites run over a single server, making it the cheapest hosting option. It is also worth noting that such option is practical only for those who have a website with lower traffic rates. Once a website grows in terms of these numbers, you may need to get a higher package. On average, shared hosting can cost you around $25 – $90per year.
- Site Builder: Site builders could be easily defined as CMS such as WordPress or Shopify. Such options better suit people who run business websites or bigger blog. Also, they offer hosting services at quite competitive prices. A site builder would cost you around $40 – $180 per year.
- VPS: VPS stands for Virtual Private Servers. The major difference between VPS and other options defined here that the server in VPS is divided into small clusters. Cloud hosting is a great example. It is a great option because a user has total control over server’s resources. On average, VPS would cost you around $250 – $650 yearly.
- Dedicated Server: The most expensive type of hosting is a dedicated server, with an average monthly cost of around $1100 to $2500. Just like a VPS, a user has complete control over the server’s resources. It would a great idea to opt for a dedicated server if your website’s traffic goes over 100,000.
Choosing the relevant type of hosting depending upon your needs is quite essential as this factor signifantly impacts the overall maintenance cost. For example, going for a dedicated server for a small blog is a horrible idea as you’ll be much more that you utlize.
3. CMS (Content Management System) Updates
A CMS (Content Management System) can be defined as platform that you can use organize, create, plan, edit and publish content with great ease. WordPress, Shopify, Magento and Joomla are the most popular CMS today.
Using a CMS may cost you from free packages to $3000 yearly depending upon the package. A well-planned content marketing strategy can cause wonders for your business website.
4. General Website Updating
All the major and minor changes and upgrading on a website due to public or owners’ demand could be counted in general website updates. They are quitte useful for a website as they enhance the overall quality, look and feel of the website. Moreover, they add useful additional features to a website.General updates would cost you between $15 to $200 per month.
Analytics Reports
The overall performance of your website is tracked using analytics reports. These reports are created on a monthly basis and include insights related to your site’s performance including traffic rate, bounce off rates and Click Through Rates etc.
Note that you can’t ignore the importance of analytic reports because help you create effective marketing and content strategies for your website in the future. These reports as a part of website maintenance services may cost as cheap as $20 per month.
Wrapping It Up
So these were all the major factors that can impact your website maintenance fees. Note that you might not need to involve these factors in your maintenance plan depending upon your needs. Also, these cost may vary as the numbers are average costs.
