How Much Does It Cost to Start a Dating Website?
Online dating is widely accepted by people worldwide. They prefer to find a match online for friendship, hookup, or a serious relationship. Hence, the online dating industry is growing at a tremendous rate.
As per pew research, around 30% of U.S. adults have used a dating site or app until now. The revenue of online dating in the year 2020 was USD 602 m, and this revenue is going to reach USD 755 m in the year 2024. (Statista)
Considering the increasing demand for the dating industry, if you are planning to enter the dating industry by launching a dating website, then one of the core questions that might appear in your mind is:
How Much Does it Cost to Build a Dating Website?
To answer your question, we will explain the estimated cost of building a dating website using various essential factors.
Estimated Cost of Starting a Dating Website
Generally, the estimated cost of starting a dating website is around $5,00 to $7,000.
The first thing that might occur is let’s create a dating website using a builder. However, we highly suggest you never use a builder because you will find it challenging to scale your dating website in the future. Moreover, there are serious drawbacks of using builders, such as less security, limited mobile experience, etc.
Instead of using builders, we recommend two options. Firstly, we suggest you create a dating website by purchasing a template and then customizing it as per your business. Secondly, you can build a dating website from scratch.
Using both these methods, you can develop a dating website that is highly scalable, reliable, and secure.
WebyKing has years of experience building websites for varied industries worldwide. Hence, we know the estimated cost of building a dating website.
Here, we have researched and found some of the essential factors affecting the costs of starting a dating website.
So, let’s begin.
Factors that Consider Dating Website Cost
1. Features of Dating Website
Features of dating websites have a massive impact on the cost.
Here we will walk you through some of the basic features without which your dating site looks incomplete. Therefore, you should include these features on your dating website.
- Signup & Profile Creation
- Filters
- Messaging
- Safety Features
- Monetization
- Admin Functionality
- Responsive Design
2. Domain and Hosting
After deciding on the features, the next thing you need for your dating website is domain & hosting.
The domain is mainly the address of the URL that users will enter into the browser to access the website. Hosting is a service used to store files and various other things for your dating website. A hosting service provider offers to host websites worldwide.
The cost of a domain for a dating website would be around $10-15 per year. In comparison, the cost of hosting can range between $36 to $350 per year. You may have a question, why this much difference in the cost of domain and hosting?
Because the hosting cost depends on the type of hosting you purchase and from which company you purchase it.
As of now, different types of hosting are available in the market. These include Shared, VPS, Dedicated, Cloud, & WordPress. You should choose a hosting service that suits your dating website.
3. SSL Certificate
It is a digital certificate that offers authentication for your dating website and initiates an encrypted connection. Every website requires an SSL certificate to store users’ data safely, check ownership of the website, stop attackers from building a fake version of the website, and build trust among users.
The cost of an SSL certificate can be cheap as well as expensive. Here, you should choose an SSL certificate based on the type of dating website and your overall budget.
Ideally, the SSL certificate cost starts from $7.99 per year.
4. Dating Website Design & Development
After purchasing a domain, hosting, and SSL certificate, the next essential thing is to design & develop a dating website.
There are two ways to design & develop a dating website; they are listed below:
Template: If you are looking for a cost-effective option, you can purchase a ready-made template for your dating website.
Later, you have to customize it as per your requirements. For this, you will require help from a freelancer or a development company. The cost of customizing a template starts from $500.
Custom: If you want to create a feature-rich, scalable, and reliable website, you should consider developing a custom dating website.
For this, you need to design your dating website from scratch. Later, convert that design into a full-fledged dating website.
To design & develop a custom dating website, you need a team of designers, developers, project manager, QA analyst, etc. Therefore, you should approach a professional website development company.
The cost of a custom dating website depends on the total number of pages, features, functionalities, and current & future requirements.
Ideally, the website development cost starts from $3,000 according to features and functionalities.
If you are unable to decide between the template and the custom website, you can refer to this blog on custom website vs template.
5. Third-Party Services
A dating website matches users based on different algorithms. Hence, you need to integrate third-party services to ensure that users can find matches efficiently. However, this is optional.
For instance, if you want to provide users with updates via SMS, you need to integrate a communication API like Twilio.
Similarly, if you match users based on their location, you have to integrate a location-based API.
If you want to add some premium features and introduce subscription plans, you need to integrate a payment gateway to pay for these services.
The cost of third-party services depends highly on the requirements of your dating website.
6. Dating Website Maintenance Cost
After developing your dating website, the next essential thing is to maintain your website to get a constant flow of users. If you fail to do so, you will lose the users.
In general, the dating website maintenance cost is 10% of the overall dating website development cost. For instance, if the cost of developing a dating website is $5000, then maintaining it would require $500 per year.Conclusion
We hope that you got the estimated cost of building a dating website. Based on the budget and your timeline, you can either build a website using a template or from scratch.
If you are still confused about the overall cost of starting a dating website, you are welcome to share your requirements with us, and we will provide you with a free quote.
WebyKing offers professional website design and development services to businesses and startups globally. Hence, we can understand your idea and deliver the best dating website as per your needs.
Frequently Asked Questions