Understanding the Cost of Website Maintenance
Navigating the maze of website maintenance costs can feel like a game of strategy. Where making the right moves ensures your online presence remains robust and effective.
And getting it wrong… well, let’s just avoid that stress and dig into what’s involved in getting in right.
Overview of Website Maintenance Costs
The cost of maintaining a website depends greatly on what ‘type’ of website it is. A simple ‘business card’ type site is going to be dramatically cheaper to maintain than a large ecommerce store with 10’s of thousands of products.
But here’s a (very) general idea of the sort of range of maintenance costs:-
| Type of Website | Typical Monthly Cost (NZD) |
|---|---|
| Personal Websites | $7 – $35 |
| Professional Blogs | $35 – $105 |
| Small to Medium Business Websites | $50 – $700 |
| Multimedia Entertainment Websites | $420 – $3,500 |
| Corporate Websites | $280 – $6,300 |
| Small eCommerce Stores | $1,050 – $4,200 |
| Large eCommerce Stores | $2,800 – $5,600 |
So clearly we have a big range of averages here, and this is only a rough guideline. The monthly cost of website maintenance for big sites like TradeMe, eBay or even Amazon are far higher than this.
The takeaway point is: the fundamental cost of maintaining a website depends on what you want to build.
Monthly and Annual Website Maintenance Costs
So we’ve talked about the average monthly cost for website maintenance. Now let’s break things down a bit into what contributes to those costs.
Domain Name and Hosting
Domain names are cheap, with typical costs around $25 per year (we recommend sticking with .co.nz or .com unless you have a really good reason for using something else).
Web hosting can be incredibly cheap. Just be aware that most cheap hosting is pretty awful – they tend to cram an awful lot of websites onto every server.
But it doesn’t take much money to jump above this low quality level. Expect to pay around $25 per month for decent web hosting, and $50-$200+ per month if someone is managing that hosting for you (so still only ~$1200 for most of your yearly website maintenance cost).
Larger sites with more dynamic features and more traffic will cost more of course.
SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate (“https”) is not optional any longer. Prices for certificates range from free to around $125 monthly. Free is perfectly fine though even for most business uses.
Premium certificates, which mean an annual cost of up to $1,500 can provide enhanced trustworthiness for your website. So ecommerce stores in particular should consider these.
Website Design and Content Updates
The costs for web design maintenance and content updates can vary greatly. Regular updates and minor tweaks might cost around $25 to $100 monthly. Major redesigns or extensive content overhauls, however, will mean significant annual expenses in the thousands of dollars.
Technical Support and CMS Updates
Technical support and CMS (Content Management System) updates are crucial for website functionality and security. CMS updates might cost from $0 to $3,500 depending if you do them yourself or how critical website uptime is and if you have contracted emergency response times etc. Monthly costs for tech support can range from $1,500 to $3,000+ depending on the systems being supported – could be anything from email to critical payment systems.
E-commerce System Support
All e-commerce websites are fundamentally more complex than typical business websites. They have a lot more moving parts, and usually a lot more custom functionality. Everything costs more, from hosting to support required. Expect to at least double the cost as a result.
SEO and Marketing
Investing in SEO services and online marketing is obviously vital for driving traffic and engagement. There are an awful lot of beautiful websites out there that get absolutely no visitors at all.
Monthly costs can vary widely based on the strategies employed and the scale of the campaigns. This could range from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars monthly, reflecting the broad spectrum of activities from basic SEO adjustments to comprehensive digital marketing campaigns.
Miscellaneous Costs
Other potential costs include plugin and extension subscriptions (additional software that expands the functionality of your site), backup services, and additional security measures. These can add up but are often essential for enhanced functionality and security.
WordPress Website Maintenance Cost
WordPress is one of the most popular ways to build websites. Because it’s a very good platform for building all kinds of different sites.
It’s also very widely supported by the technical community. Meaning the costs of maintaining WordPress tend therefore to be very economical. So WordPress maintenance plans are usually in the range of $50-$250 per month.
See also: Is WordPress Good for Small Business?
Small Business Website Maintenance Cost
For a typical small business your website creation and maintenance cost is going to fairly modest. Especially when compared to the lifetime value it provides if done properly from the start. Around 70% of sites fall into the range of $3,000-$5,000. A lot of service business will recover that with a single new job created by that website!
Ongoing website maintenance cost is then typically only $50-$250 per month. With any larger costs only necessary if you make significant changes to your business or services.
Website Maintenance Services Cost
Our NZ website maintenance plans provide pro-level support from just $75. They provide high quality web hosting, plugin updates, backups, and 30 minutes of support time for whatever you need. Plus you get our expertise in your back pocket for whatever else you need. Our customers find just having technical and online marketing experts you can fire questions to is worth 10 times the price alone. It’s a very small price to let someone else take the day to day website management off your hands.
See also: What Is Website Management?
Website Maintenance Cost Per Hour
Most maintenance plans are priced at a monthly or annual rate. This may include some time to tackle additional tasks, or an allocation of a number of small tasks that can be done without any further expense.
These inclusive (or retainer) hours will often be at a discounted rate but usually you cannot save them up and they expire each month. Of course if you need additional maintenance work your provider will normally be happy to accomodate that, but you’ll need to ask for a quote or just arrange for this to be billed as it occurs. Expect to pay $75-$250 per hour depending on the tasks and the level of expertise.
In Short
Website maintenance is essential and unavoidable. However you choose to build and manage a site somebody somewhere will be monitoring and updating something. That could be you or your own staff if you have the knowledge in-house. Or more typically this is outsourced to someone who can take those headaches away.
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