Website Maintenance Cost in 2022: A Detailed Pricing Guide
A website has become the most integral part of a vast number of businesses worldwide. They invest a lot of money in creating and launching an awe-inspiring website.
By doing proper marketing, they start getting traffic and sales on their website. However, many businesses think their work is over, but the real work starts after that. You need to continuously maintain your website.
Generally, everything you do after creating a website falls under website maintenance. Every website requires maintenance to run efficiently.
If you neglect website maintenance, then you may lose your traffic and sales. There is also a chance you might pay more for emergency repairs.
On the contrary, if you are maintaining your website regularly, then the cost of website maintenance is less compared to emergency repairs.
Besides this, there are numerous benefits of maintaining a website, such as better traffic, fast loading, better security, updated content, and more. After knowing all these benefits, you might have a question, how much does it cost to maintain a website?
In general, the website maintenance cost depends on a lot of things. Here, we have done in-depth research and found what goes into website maintenance.
Therefore, we will walk you through the estimated website maintenance cost and factors that affect the website maintenance cost.
Without further ado, let’s get started:
How Much Does it Cost to Maintain a Website?
| Factors Affecting Website Maintenance Cost | Costs |
|---|---|
| 1. Domain Name | $1 to $20 per year |
| 2. Website Hosting | $2 per month |
| 3. SSL Certificate | $7.99 per year |
| 4. General Updates | $20 to $125 per hour |
| 5. Content Updates | $0.15 to $5 per word |
| 6. Website Design | $20 to $40 per hour |
| 7. Technical Support | $20 to $60 per hour |
| 8. Tracking and Analysis | $5 to $15 per month |
| 9. Marketing | $100 to $5,000 per month |
Website Maintenance Cost By Category in 2022
| Type of Website | Average Monthly Website Maintenance Cost |
|---|---|
| Professional Blog | $25- $75 per month |
| Small Website | $35 – $100 per month |
| SMEs Website | $125 – $500 per month |
| Corporate Website | $200 – $3,500 per month |
| Custom Business Website | $350 – $4,500 per month |
| Small eCommerce Website | $500 – $ 2,500 per month |
| Custom eCommerce Website | $500 – $5,000 per month |
8 Primary Website Maintenance Cost
1. Domain Name
The domain name is the first recurring cost for your website. It consists of a unique "URL" on the internet which represents your business. It is not a one-time purchase. You have to pay annually to renew your domain name to ensure ownership of the same, or else you will lose it.
The cost of a domain name varies based on the extension (.com, .net, .co, .net, .in, etc.) and the registrar you opt for your business.
On average, the price of a domain name starts at $1 and can go up to $20 per year.
2. Website Hosting
Website hosting is the place where all the details of the website are live and stored. If you don’t possess hosting, then nobody can access your website. Hence, website hosting is a crucial part of website maintenance costs.
It is yet another recurring cost that you need to consider to keep your site active all the time. The cost of website hosting depends on the type of hosting and the hosting provider you choose.
Some of the most popular types of hosting available in the market for a website are as follows.
- Shared Hosting
- VPS Hosting
- Dedicated Hosting
- Cloud Hosting
The cost of hosting a website starts from $2 per month.
Various businesses choose cheap hosting and then suffer in the later stages. Here, it is recommended that you should never go with cheap hosting. Instead, you should choose the best type of hosting as per your business needs and future goals.
3. SSL Certificate
Security is one of the major concerns for all websites. It doesn’t matter what type of website you have, but offering the best security to the users is essential. That is where the need for an SSL certificate arises.
SSL stands for secure socket layer. It helps you to keep your website and your site visitor’s data protected. By getting an SSL certificate, you can receive and transfer data to the users effectively.
Google gives more importance to secure websites. Hence, you should consider SSL in the website maintenance cost.
To check whether your site has SSL or not, you need to check two things. First of all, the site should be ‘HTTPS’ & not ‘HTTP’ secure. Secondly, you have to check the padlock sign before the URL.
If your site doesn’t have these things, then you should buy an SSL certificate as soon as possible.
Various sites offer the SSL certificate for free. However, most of the sites on the web choose to go with a paid SSL certificate as it provides more benefits than the free ones.
The average cost of an SSL certificate starts from $7.99 per year.
4. General Updates
Keeping your site up-to-date and secure is necessary to attract new users and keep them hooked on the website. Whether you have a small or a big website, it is crucial to update the site regularly.
If you are using the CMS (content management system) in your website, then updates related to CMS, themes, and plugins are included in the general website update.
The cost of general website updates varies on the site you are using. Here, if you are using free plugins and themes, then it is absolutely free. However, if you have integrated paid themes, plugins, etc., it has its own license costs.
If you decide to hire a developer to update things on your website, then it might cost $20 to $125 per hour. Further, most companies invest 2 hours a month for these updates.
5. Content Updates
Your website design is one of the most important things. The second most important thing is the content. The entire content on the website, such as website pages, blogs, etc., is required to keep users engaged. Moreover, up-to-date content helps you rank well in the leading search engines. Therefore, it is a part of the website maintenance cost.
If you are good at creating content, then you can do it yourself. However, you require the help of a freelance writer or content writing agency at some point in time.
Hence, you should hire a good content writer. The charges of a good writer start from $0.15 per word and can go up to $5 per word or more. Here, if you want to update more pages, then content update costs will be higher.
6. Website Design
Website design is one of the essential factors behind the success of any business. It indicates the visual representation of a brand. It is the first thing that users see before accessing content and other elements. Moreover, design highly affects search engine optimization and attracts more traffic.
When we consider website design, it doesn’t include the whole website redesign but a part of it. These things include blog posts, background images, colors, and more.
You have two options to update the website design. Firstly, you can update it using any of the design tools. However, it will consume a lot of your time & effort.
Secondly, you can hire a professional UI/UX designer. It is one of the best way to update website design as they have years of experience designing websites for multiple industries. The cost of hiring a UI/UX designer is about $20 to $40 per hour. Further, the cost varies based on the designer’s location & experience.
7. Technical Support
It is yet another thing that falls under the website maintenance cost. There are times when you are facing issues related to the features or functionality of your website.
All of these issues need to be addressed instantly to keep users on the website. If you fail to do so, then you will lose users.
The cost of technical issues relies on the amount of work you have. If you have small errors and you can resolve them yourself, then no need to hire someone.
On the contrary, if you have issues every month and want to save time, then you should outsource the work.
The majority of website maintenance service providers offer different packages for technical support. You can choose the best plan as per the needs of your website.
Here you can hire someone for as low as $20-60 per hour. Further, if you want technical support every month, then you can purchase a website maintenance support plan for the entire year.
8. Tracking and Analytics
Even though it is a crucial part of every website, various businesses and startups neglect the tracking and analysis of their website. Due to this reason, many service providers have included tracking & analysis in their website maintenance packages.
By tracking and analytics, you can determine some of the crucial metrics of your website, such as the total number of visitors, average session time, and average bounce rate of your site.
Apart from these, you can measure the essential metrics of your website. These things can further help you make better decisions to achieve your business goals.
In general, the website tracking and analytics reports cost around $5 to $15 per month.
9. Marketing
The ultimate goal of a business is to sell products/ services through the website. Hence, it is very much crucial to reach a wider audience. For the same, you need to focus on the effective marketing of your website.
Here, there are various methods through which you can do marketing of your website. It can be search engine optimization(SEO), email marketing, social media marketing, paid marketing(PPC), etc. Hence, it is really challenging to determine the exact cost of marketing a website.
The amount of time and money you can invest in marketing is unlimited. However, your marketing cost must be in line with your business. To achieve this, you need to know your current position in the market and then set specific goals for the future. Based on your goals, you can allocate money for website marketing.
Lastly, the average cost of website marketing can be between $100 to $5,000 per month.
Wrapping Up
Here we have estimated the cost of maintaining a website. By summing up the cost of the above-listed factors, you can calculate the website maintenance cost.
But there is no exact cost for maintaining every website. Basically, you have to pay 10-20% of the overall website development cost. Based on your budget and future goals, you can make sufficient investment in website maintenance.
If you are still confused about the website maintenance cost, then don’t hesitate to contact us.
WebyKing provides website development services to businesses and startups around the world. Moreover, we possess a highly skilled team of professionals. Hence, we can analyze your site and provide you with a free quote.
