2020 Website Maintenance Cost Guide: How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost?

If you have got a website then you need to maintain and update your site. Because a website is one of the essential aspects that help the business to drive more traffic, acquire more customers, and more. Not only that but it also acts as the front door of your business. That’s why it’s important for businesses to create a separate website maintenance budget. But the question is how much does website maintenance cost?

If you are looking to find the answer for the same then make sure you stick to the last line as we are going to highlight every small detail about the website maintenance cost for small businesses website to a fully-fledged ecommerce website maintenance cost. Today almost every businesses hire an experienced website design company to maintain their website because they are aware of the fact that a small downtime or any other issues can impact their website as well as business. So without any further ado let’s start with understanding the website maintenance cost. 

Table Of Content: 

An Overview Of Website Maintenance Cost

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You must have heard the quote “Prevention is Better than Cure” so when it comes to websites the maintenance is as essential as the website design and development process. Most of the website owners have found that repairing a faulty website is not only costly but also damages the business images and functioning.  That’s why it’s important to know about website maintenance costs. 

Today more than 80% of the shoppers prefer to shop online making your website one of the crucial steps in the sales funnel. And it takes about 0.05 seconds for a user to decide whether your website is right for making the purchase or not. To stay competitive you need to ensure that your website is up to date and performing well in the competitive environment without any flaws. 

A well-maintained website can offer you many benefits in terms of traffic, conversion revenue. If you’re investing time and money by hiring a reliable WordPress web design company to maintain your website then it can help your website to load faster, rank better, drive more traffic, boost sales, and most importantly save the money that other websites invest in repairing the faults. 

So if you are scrolling to the internet to find website maintenance costs then you have landed on the right article. In this article, we are going to highlight the different factors that influenced website maintenance costs. The website maintenance cost that a business needs to pay depends on the type and size of the website. 

Why is website maintenance important? 

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When it comes to websites everyone is aware of the importance of having a well-structured website for the business. But in today’s vulnerable marketplace simply having a website for your business is not sufficient. To be successful and competitive you need to ensure that you are regularly updating and maintaining your website ensuring that it is running with full potential.  

Your website is just like another machine that requires regular maintenance to function and operate properly. If you are using your car regularly but when it comes to maintenance you don’t care about checking the fluid, breaks, and more then there will be a time when you will get stuck just because your car stopped running. 

In the same way, if you don’t want your business to get stuck at some point then we recommend maintaining your website regularly. Well, there are various reasons why you need to maintain your website for better performance and results. 

1. Help you to Improve Security 

In today’s vulnerable world we don’t have to mention how important it is for the business to secure its website from unwanted security issues. Most of the small websites and businesses think that their website is small so they shouldn’t worry about security. But in reality, they are the ones more open to inviting hackers and intruders on their website. Mainly if your website is using CMS platforms like WordPress drupal then you need to ensure that it is protected from unwanted security breaches. It’s not because the platforms are vulnerable but due to the high number of users, hackers get attracted toward those platforms more. Maintaining your website regularly ensures that your website is protected.

If you are looking to improve your website security then make sure to check our blog on
WordPress Security Guide: 8 Tips To Secure WordPress Website In 2020
5 Best WordPress Security Plugins To Use In 2020

2. Optimizes site visitor experience

As we have mentioned earlier your website acts as the front door of your business so you need to ensure that it’s up and running without any flaws. Regularly updating and maintaining your website helps you to optimize the user experience and encourage users to trust your website. If your website is frequently coming across unwanted downtime then it creates a bad impression and there are chances that your potential customer may abandon your website and never return back. Not only that but having a poorly functioning website discourages users to take the desired action. So to maintain your website you can always take the help of a highly experienced WordPress website design company that maintains your website regularly ensuring that it doesn’t come across any unwanted problems. 

3. Updated Backup 

Most of the time even after a lot of effort a website comes across some security breach that affects the website’s working and functioning. That is the time when backup matters the most. Having an updated backup of your website helps you to eliminate the risk and make your website up and running for the user within a short period of time. Even if your system crashes or some unwanted issue occurs to the website source program. Having an update helps you to easily recover within a short period of time. That is the reason why we recommend you to hire a reliable and experienced website design company that can help you to maintain your website regularly. 

4. Cost Saving 

Many website owners and businesses complain that they have to get their websites rebuilt because of a security breach or fault in the main source code. It can happen with any website on the world wide web there are chances that hackers can attack your website and delete all the information on your website or due to your own mistake, all your hard work can go in vain. Without backup, you need to get your website rebuilt back from scratch either by hiring a developer or a website design company. On the other hand, if your website is updated and maintained regularly then you can avoid those costs by having an updated backup of your website. So, to maintain your website you need to put in some money but it’s always considered the cost is much cheaper than building a website from scratch. 

5. Optimized website speed 

Today every plugin, app, and extension is rolling out new features with a goal to optimize the user experience. But due to compatibility issues, there are chances that your website load time can get affected. The worst part is that site owners don’t realize when their website load time got impacted because the cache makes the website load faster on devices where the site has already been opened before. 

So if a new visitor opens your website and finds that it’s taking too long to display the elements on the web page then they may abandon your website and never return back on it. Maintaining your website regularly allows you to check the website speed regularly so that it doesn’t impact your website traffic and conversion. If you have hired a reliable WordPress website design company for your website maintenance then they will ensure that the website is up and running with optimized speed. Even if the website comes across a load time issue, they will fix it within a short period of time so your business revenue does not get affected. 

By now you might have a clear idea about why it is important for businesses to maintain their website for better performance. Next, we are going to give a detailed idea about the cost to maintain the website.

How much does website maintenance cost? 

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Before we get started by determining every small detail about website maintenance cost. Liest start with understanding the basic cost of maintaining a website. The website maintenance cost can not be determined using any formula or calculator but one can find the right cost depending on a few factors and mostly on the size, complexity, and function of your website. 

For example, the maintenance cost of a basic WordPress website can be comparatively low than the cost to maintain a custom-coded ecommerce website. A small business with a basic WordPress website can pay the maintenance cost between $100 to $1000. On the other hand, a custom-coded website functioning with more advanced features can pay the website maintenance cost between $1000 to $60,000 per year.

Remember the cost and performance go hand in hand. If you are creating an enterprise-level custom-coded ecommerce website to target a large group of the audience then you need to pay more to maintain your website. If you are looking to know the estimated cost to maintain a website depending on the size of the website then make sure you stick till the last.

Most businesses with a good number of site visitors prefer to hire a WordPress web design company that can maintain and update their website regularly for better performance and results. 

Before we start highlighting the estimated cost to maintain a website depending on the size of the website. We are going to high some of the important factors that influence website maintenance costs. 

Important Factor That Influences Website Maintenance Cost

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Your website maintenance cost is dependent on various factors. Below we are going to highlight different factors that can decide the website maintenance cost depending on when the price range may vary. 

1. Domain name 

The first in the list we have the domain name. A domain name is the address of your website that is used by the user to find your website. The domain name doesn’t cost much as it can range between  $10 to $20 per year. Depending on the type of domain you are selecting for your website the cost will vary for example if you are selecting the niche-specific name in the address then the domain name can be a bit costly compared to an uncommon name. 

The cost of the domain is not only dependent on the name but also the expansion you are selecting for example xyz.com can cost but higher than .net. Domains are not considered as a one-time purchase. Most of the websites on the internet register the domain name based on an annual basis. If you don’t want your domain name to be taken by others then you need to make the purchase every year.

If you have already purchased a domain for 3 or  5 years then you don’t have to include the cost in the current budget. But if you are someone who pays for the domain cost every year then makes sure you include the costing in your maintenance budget. And remember the renewal price of the domain is always higher than the price you purchased at the beginning (the introductory price). 

For example, if you brought the domain for $5 in the beginning then the renewal cost might be but higher. Most of the introductory domain name costs range between $3 to $12 on the other hand the renewal price of the same domain can range between $10 to $20 a year. 

2. SSL certificates

Next on the list, we have another important factor that every website should consider while making the maintenance budget. Security is one of the primary concerns of every website and having an SSL certificate installed on your website can help you to secure your website from unwanted breaches or vulnerabilities. 

An SSL certificate is also known as a Secure Socket Layer helps the website to encrypt the information keeping the visitor’s information safe and secure. No matter whether you are running an ecommerce website or a standard website, keeping your website secure not only helps you to secure your website but also helps your web pages to gain a higher ranking in search results.

If you have an SSL certificate installed on your website then in the URL of your website you may find a lock symbol that indicates your website is secured and safe to use. Including an SSL certificate on your website also helps users to trust your website. The cost of including an SSL certificate on your website can range between $0 to $100. 

Today if you want to succeed in the competitive marketplace then you have to give assurance to users that they are accessing a safe website. Because today most of the users abandon the website after finding the website not secure. Most of the hosting providers already offer the basic version of SSL protection without any cost. However, if you are running an ecommerce website or a website where users exchange the data then we recommend upgrading it to a stronger level of SSL protection. 

If your current website is using an SSL certificate offered by the hosting provider then you don’t have to include the cost in the maintenance budget. But if your website is using the paid version of SSL certificates then don’t forget to consider it under website maintenance cost. 

3. Web Hosting 

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Next after SSL, we have another most important factor that can influence the website maintenance cost is Web hosting. Today every user is aware of the importance of web hosting mainly for those there are using CMS platforms, or website builder platforms like WordPress, Drupal, and more.

Web hosting is the crucial aspect of your website as it determines how fast your website will load, the performance of your website, the total visitors it can handle, and more. In short, we can say web hosting sites are an important part of website maintenance costs. Selecting a good hosting provider and a powerful hosting plan for your website can increase your maintenance cost as well. 

Some of the popular hosting providers are Bluehost, SiteGround, HostGator, InMotion, and more. The cost of hosting is totally dependent on the type of hosting you are using for your website. Some of the recently started websites prefer to use shared hosting where multiple websites use the server, and it costs between $2 to $8 per month. 

But if you are running a large website that gets hundreds and thousands of site visitors then we recommend you to either use VPS or a dedicated server. To run a website in VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting you will be sharing the server with other websites but you get complete access to your server resources. It happens because the hosting provider divides the server into multiple virtual servers and it will cost you between $240 to $600 per year.

On the other hand, if your website is shifting to a dedicated host then you will be getting a dedicated host specifically for your website. The dedicated server is considered to be the most costly hosting option compared to shared and VPS which will cost you between $1200 to $24000 per year. 

If you are looking to know more about the pricing structure of different hosting providers then make sure to check our blog on 5 Best WooCommerce Hosting Providers In 2020 For Your Online Store

4. Email Hosting 

The email hosting cost is very less compared to all the other costs but if your website has a custom email server then you need to pay between $8 to $50 per year. It accommodated the email address of your website like john@yourdomainname.com. Same as SSL the email hosting also comes for free with most of the web hosting but to access more features websites prefer to pay more for email hosting.    

Most of the business does not consider the cost but email hosting is considered another factor that can influence the final maintenance cost. If your website doesn’t have an email for your domain name then we recommended getting it for your website as it increases the credibility and makes your business look more professional. On the other hand, if you are running the website for personal use and don’t wish to include the cost in the maintenance budget then you can skip this and move to the next option.  

5. CMS Update Cost (Content Management System) 

Today content plays a crucial role in driving traffic on the website and without a content management platform, it will be difficult for you to publish the content. Using CMS you can structure your content, add various media, and more without accessing the code. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and more are some of the popular and widely used CMS platforms across the world. 

Sometimes businesses get a custom-built CMS for their website and others make use of these platforms mainly the word[press. We all know that WordPress is one of the popular and widely used free CMS platforms but other platforms like Joomla, Wix, Magento, and more come with a paid plan. 

Depending on the CMS you are using, your website maintenance cost will also include the CMS subscription cost that websites need to update every year as most of the CMS doesn’t offer a one-time purchase feature. So make sure you identify the cost that you are paying to CMS every year as it can cost between $0 to $3500. Once you are aware of the plan then you can include it in your website maintenance budget.

6. Tech Support 

If you are running a website then it is common that you may come across small issues or problems that need to be fixed with the help of a tech person. Some of these problems include server error, fault with a website builder, and more. So both the website builder and web hosting provider have an in-house team dedicated to helping the website solve technical issues.

When it comes to creating the maintenance cost budget then make sure you include technical support costs. For solving minor issues the service provider always offers a support team for free. But if you are looking to get more tailored support for solving technical issues i.e. from small coding mistakes to major technical issues then you can either opt for the support plan offered by the provider or you can hire a website design company that can help you to get rid of those technical issues. 

Most of the time websites prefer to outsource and pay from the website maintenance services so that their website doesn’t come across any technical issues. If you are getting a website built with a WordPress web design company then these technical support plans can come along with the package. Some of the website design companies offer both SEO and tech support in the website building package making it easy for the website owner to stick to one place. The tech support plan can sit your between $1000 to $4000. 

If you wonder why technical support is important then remember it enhances your website functioning ensuring that your website runs flawlessly without any technical errors. Before you partner with any website design company make sure to check their review and reputation for better results. 

How Much does it cost to maintain a Blogging website? 

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There are many new bloggers out there that are looking to know the website maintenance cost for a blogging website. If you are one among them below we have categorized the maintenance cost of a blogging website into three categories. The maintenance cost for a small, medium, and large blogging website. So let’s take a look at each one of them individually and determine how much it costs to maintain a blogging website.

Small Blogging website ($50 to $250 /yearly) 

As we have mentioned earlier the cost of maintenance is very much dependent on the size of your website. If you are running a small blogging website with less than 100 site visitors then the website maintained cost won’t go beyond your budget. 

On average, the maintenance cost of running a small blogging website can range between $50 to $250 /yearly. The maintenance cost includes the hosting cost, domain cost, plugins, or extension cost (if you are using it), and the SSL certification cost (which is mostly free). The site owners create these types of websites and the Maintenance part is also taken care of by the site owners saving the extra cost that is paid during outsourcing. 

Most of the money in this type of website goes toward the domain and web hosting. Apart from that web hosting providers offer a free SSL certificate so site owners don’t have to buy a separate certificate for their website. To save money you can ensure that you stick to the free tools and themes for your website until your website starts growing. 

Medium Blogging Website ($200 to $600 /yearly) 

A medium blogging website that gets traffic between 100 to 1000 monthly visitors can plan the website maintenance cost budget between $200 to $600/ yearly. Most of the medium-sized business maintenance cost goes toward the web hosting, domain name, and sometimes the paid plugins or extensions they are using for the website.  

The website and the content inside the website are created by the site owner itself so there isn’t a monthly or yearly plan involved in the content creation or the CMS monthly subscription. Not only that but the technical part is also taken care of by the site owners (as there are very few technical activities involved).

But there are times when they come across a small technical glitch or often need attractive web pages for that they hire a freelancer but it doesn’t get included in the maintenance cost because of its not a recurring payment.

Medium-sized blogging website maintenance cost generally includes: 

  • Domain renewal Cost ( $10 to $20 /yearly) 
  • Hosting ( $3 to $20 /monthly) 
  • Technical support ($0 – $50 /yearly) 
  • Additional plugin cost ($0 – $10 /month)

Large Blog Website 

A large blogging website that gets more than 1k monthly traffic can have the website maintenance cost between $500 to $3000 /yearly. These websites invest more in driving more and more traffic on their website so they need to have a powerful hosting for their website. Some of the large blogging websites also invest in things like creating infographics, visuals, videos, web pages, and more.

The content and maintenance part is also taken care of by the website owner but some of them even hire a content writer to produce more SEO-friendly content for their website. Apart from that they also make sure of various paid tools and plugins that can increase the cost of running a large blogging website. 

Large blogging website maintenance cost generally includes: 

  • Domain renewal Cost ( $10 to $20 /yearly) 
  • Hosting ( $3 to $20 /monthly) 
  • Website design cost ($0 – $1000 /year)
  • Technical support ($0 – $50 /yearly) 
  • Additional plugin cost ($0 – $10 /month)
  • SSL certificate cost ($0 – $10 /month)

How much does it cost to maintain an ecommerce website? 

With more and more offline businesses shifting to online it’s common to find two different types of e-commerce websites small scale and large scale. The maintenance cost of an e-commerce website differs from the cost of blogging websites. So we have categorized the maintenance cost of an e-commerce website into three different categories: 

Small Ecommerce Website ($200 – $1000 /yearly)

A small ecommerce website that is selling up to $55k per year can have a website maintenance cost between $800 – $2000. These types of e-commerce websites generally target the local customers making and handled by the e-commerce website owner itself. There are various platforms like woocommerce, Shopify, volusion that allows users to create an ecommerce website but among them, woocommerce is a free and most widely used plugin that does not have any recurring payment. So the website owner has to pay toward getting the domain name, hosting, SSL certificate, and more.    

Let’s take a look at small ecommerce website maintenance cost generally includes: 

  • Domain renewal Cost ( $10 to $20 /yearly) 
  • Hosting ( $3 to $20 /monthly) 
  • Website design cost ($0 – $500 /year)
  • Technical support ($0 – $50 /yearly) 
  • Additional plugin cost ($0 – $10 /month)
  • SSL certificate cost ($0 – $10 /month)

Medium-sized Ecommerce Website ($500 – $3000 /yearly)

The mid-sized ecommerce website maintenance cost goes between $500 to $3000 monthly. Websites that are selling up to $100k per year fall under this category. The maintenance cost is mainly divided into getting a premium theme,  domain, and other paid tools. Most of the medium-sized ecommerce businesses make use of premium themes and plugins to enhance the website functioning and all of them have recurring payments. 

So Let’s take a look at medium-sized ecommerce website maintenance cost:

  • Domain renewal Cost ( $10 to $20 /yearly) 
  • Hosting ( $3 to $20 /monthly) 
  • Website design cost ($500 – $2000 /year)
  • Technical support ($0 – $50 /yearly) 
  • Additional plugin cost ($0 – $10 /month)
  • SSL certificate cost ($0 – $10 /month)

Enterprise-level Ecommerce Website ($5000+ /yearly)

From the name you can easily recognize that these types of websites are built with the help of an ecommerce website design company. Most of the enterprise-level ecommerce websites sell more than $500k per year and need advanced features and functionalities with attractive appearance. A Large scale ecommerce website involves various functions and with the increase in the number of paid functions, the price also starts increasing. To know more about the enterprise-level business maintenance cost you can reach out to our ecommerce website design professions

Let’s take a look at enterprise-level ecommerce website maintenance cost generally includes: 

  • Domain renewal Cost ( $10 to $20 /yearly) 
  • Hosting ( $200+ /monthly) 
  • Website design cost ($10000+ /year)
  • Technical support (5000+ /yearly) 
  • Additional plugin cost (2000+ /month)
  • SSL certificate cost ($500+ /month)

Conclusion 

By now you might have a good idea about how much it costs to maintain a website. We have highlighted two different types of website maintenance costs the most the website owner looking to know. Apart from that, we have also highlighted some of the important factors that influence website maintenance costs. So you can make use of this guide to make your website maintenance budget. However, if you need further help related to website maintenance then you can always reach out to our WordPress web design professional that can help you to maintain your website