5 Website Maintenance Costs, with Budget Examples
Your website is looking good, it works smoothly, and you are diligent in updating every three years, at most. But are you equally careful with your website’s regular maintenance? Are you aware of why you need to do maintenance to your website? And do you have any idea of maintenance costs?
Many website managers don’t add management costs to their monthly or yearly budget. We all know that building a new website (or updating an existing one) requires some investment, but it’s not just about creating a great website. They all need recurring expenditures to keep your website in shape.
If you’ve been ignoring your website’s maintenance to save some expenses or because you constantly forget to do so, you may be losing valuable traffic numbers and sales. O even worse, you possibly will have to pay for emergency repairs, which tend to be more expensive than most maintenance fees.
To avoid these consequences, down below, we describe some estimated totals for website maintenance costs and the possible fees for each element that require attention within your website.
Why is it important to maintain your website?
When you ignore your website maintenance, you may be at risk that some features start to fail, and therefore, you will need to resort to urgent repairs, which tend to be pretty expensive. Some of these possible failures are:
- Outdated technology: If you miss updating components like your CMS, plugins, templates, etc., you miss many new functionalities and improvements, including security updates, which may be critical for your organization.
- Site outages: If you have consistent failures within your website, you may have to face a complete outage, representing significant losses for your brand, and it may hurt your reputation. Plus, indeed, you will have to pay for a restoration.
- Reduced content and design quality: One of the main goals of periodical website maintenance is to make sure your content and designs are constantly updated. If you fail to do so, probably your website will start to look old and outworn.
- Slow performance: Website speed tends to slow down with time. That’s why it is vital to give it a little boost every specific time with constant maintenance.
- SEO: Search engine optimization punishes somewhat “unfit” or old websites regarding their contents, security, and speed. So, it is crucial to keep all these elements updated if you want to have a decent ranking.
Breakdown of the most important website maintenance costs
Now, let’s check out some of the most important website maintenance costs so you can sum up an estimated budget for each of them.
1. Domain registration (estimated website maintenance cost: 10 to 20 USD per year).
Even though it is possible to acquire a free website domain via a subdomain, this is not an advisable option unless you have a hobby or personal website.
Annual domain fees will depend on the domain registrar and the domain you end up choosing. For most cases, your price will always be within the range specified here.
2. Website hosting (estimated website maintenance cost: 2 to 500 USD per month)
All websites have different hosting needs, depending on their sizes. The more functionalities and performance, the higher the price will be.
Just to give some estimated prices, here are some examples for different types of websites:
- Small to medium blog: between 2 and 20 USD per month.
- Medium to large blog: between 25 and 100 USD per month.
- Small to medium e-commerce website: between 25 and 100 USD per month.
- Medium to large e-commerce website: between 100 and 500 USD per month.
3. Content (estimated website maintenance cost: 0 to 3,000 USD per month).
Content is crucial for marketing strategies: they help demonstrate your expertise and attract visitors via search engines. That is why it also deserves constant updating and monthly investment.
An estimated fee for blog content can be 0.15 USD per word. If you hire four posts, with 2.000 words each, you will have to invest around 1,200 USD per month. You will find a massive variety of fees for freelance writers, and this fee will also vary depending on your strategy needs and the type of website.
4. Design updates (estimated website maintenance cost: 0 to 1,600 USD per month).
A website design maintenance does not imply a complete look makeover. It’s about progressive work that is constantly done so that your website is always flowing and updated, with no need to change everything.
We’re talking about new images, infographics, sales banners or anniversaries, new photos for products, etc. You may complete some of these labors for free with online tools; others will require a professional.
5. Tech support (estimated website maintenance cost: 0 to 3,000 USD per month).
Monthly investment in tech support depends on multiple factors, like how much you will do by yourself, how much you will hire outside, and which updates are needed. General recommendations say that you must hire an expert for online forms, contracts, and online payments.
Several services offer occasional help for an estimated fee: 60 USD per working hour. You may also find fixed fees for regular maintenance.
Extra: Safety (estimated website maintenance cost: 0 to 100 USD per year)
Safety maintenance for a website can represent many different works and functionalities, for example:
- Spam
- Automatic backups.
- Repairs after a security hack.
- Malware
Breakdown of the most important website maintenance costs
If you add all of the above, how much would be your maintenance cost? The answer for this will always depend on what type of website you own. Here are some total estimates for different website categories.
You may notice that the higher range’s total estimated costs don’t match each component’s higher price range. This happens because higher ranges sometimes include expenses that are not required month to month, but occasionally: maybe every six months or once a year, for instance, design updates or additional plugins.
- Hobby website: 5 to 25 USD monthly.
For this case, the only fixed spend that you must calculate is the domain and hosting fees because it is usual that you do the rest of the maintenance.
- Personal or blog website: 5 to 25 USD monthly.
Maintenance costs for this category are very similar to hobby websites. Website building tools like Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace have pretty identical fees.
For both of these cases, a breakdown of maintenance costs would look like this:
Domain registration cost: between 10 and 20 USD annually or between 1 and 2 USD monthly.
Hosting cost: between 0 and 2 USD monthly.
Website design cost: 0 USD monthly.
Tech support cost: 0 USD monthly.
Additional plugins and tools: between 0 and 10 USD per month.
- Enterprise website: 35 to 300 USD monthly.
Depending on your needs and website size, you will locate in the lower or higher price range.
Costs would look like this:
Domain registration cost: 10 to 20 USD per year, or 1 to 2 USD per month.
Hosting cost: 0 to 20 USD monthly.
Website design cost: 0 to 100 USD per month.
Tech support cost: 0 to 100 USD per month.
Additional plugins and tools: 0 to 50 USD monthly.
- E-commerce website: 150 to 1,500 USD per month.
This website’s exact maintenance needs will depend on its size, which means the number of products for sale.
For small e-commerce:
Domain registration cost: 10 to 20 USD per year, or 1 to 2 USD per month.
Hosting cost: 30 USD per month.
Website design cost: 0 USD monthly.
Tech support cost: 0 USD monthly.
Additional plugins and tools: 0 USD monthly.
For large e-commerce:
Domain registration cost: 10 to 20 USD per year, or 1 to 2 USD monthly.
Hosting cost: 80 USD per month.
Website design cost: 0 USD monthly.
Tech support cost: 0 monthly.
Additional plugins and tools: 0 to 50 USD monthly.
- Large enterprise website: 1,500+ USD monthly.
Websites this size are the most expensive to support: they need numerous and sophisticated functionalities and infrastructure. Breakdown of costs would look like this:
Domain registration cost: 10 to 20 USD annually, or 1 to 2 USD monthly.
Hosting cost: 300 USD per month.
Website design cost: 100 to 200 USD per month.
Tech support cost: 100 to 200 USD per month.
Additional plugins and tools: 100 to 200 USD monthly.
Final Thoughts
You must include your website maintenance in your monthly and annual budget, especially if it is your organization´s website.
Althought some maintenance labors can be done for free, it is advisable to spend some money on vital elements like web hosting, security, and content that may boos your ranking in search engines.
Website maintenance costs vary greatly depending on your type of website, and whether or not it includes an e-commerce section. No matter how small your business may be, be sure to keepeverything updates to avoid serious failures that could end up in extra repairs.
