What’s the Average Website Maintenance Cost You Need to Budget?

What’s the Average Website Maintenance Cost You Need to Budget?

When you start looking for SEO services to grow your customer base and sales, you must also take into consideration the annual average cost of website maintenance that you have to budget. Once you created and published your site on the Internet, you will have to consider monthly website maintenance fees that will cover everything from web hosting to technical assistance.

In this article, we will go into detail and explain to you all the elements that make up the cost of maintaining a website for a business. These are expenses that you cannot cut back because they will affect how your website works and even its availability live online for customers to find it.

What Are the Elements of the Cost of Maintaining a Website?

How much does it cost to maintain a website? The answer varies from business to business. If you operate an ecommerce website, the average web maintenance cost is higher than for a simple presentation landing page for your business.

These being said, here are the elements to consider budgeting for the yearly costs:

Domain Name

The domain name represents the address which users type in the website browser to find your website. This website maintenance price is paid first when you are registering your domain name and then on a yearly basis to renew your domain name registration.

In most cases, you can reduce the cost of maintaining a website by choosing a hosting provider who will also register the domain name for your business. The average hosting cost with domain name is:

• Between $1 and $20 per year for domain registration
• Between $10 and $90 per year for renewal
• Optional - $5 per year for domain privacy protection.

Web Hosting 

The hosting service represents renting a server where your website will be stored. Thus, hosting providers rent storage space on their physical servers, offering several levels of service:

• Shared hosting – ideal for a small website, where the server resources are shared with other websites
• VPS (virtual private server) hosting – offers small to medium sized websites dedicated resources on a server
• Dedicated hosting – for large websites, this hosting package offers an entire server for a website

In this case, the website maintenance fees vary significantly. Shared hosting may cost up to $4 per month, VPS hosting – up to $80 per month, while dedicated hosting can cost up to $300 per month.

SSL Certificate

This is yet another mandatory website maintenance cost for any business web page. The acronym stands for Secure Sockets Layer and represents a protocol that encrypts the communication between the web server and the web browser.

Paying for a SSL certificate is necessary for the protection of your client’s data, especially if you are running an ecommerce website. Also, this certificate is an important ranking factor for SEO. The best website maintenance price option in this respect is purchasing a lifetime SSL certificate or finding a hosting service that offers a free SSL certificate.

Email

Having a professional email address for your business involves extra cost. The price for business email attached to your domain name varies between $1 and $18 monthly per user.

You should not try to cut back this type of web maintenance cost. It helps you build your brand image and increase your customers’ confidence in your company. Consider this: would you buy from a company that has a Gmail email address?

Website Design

Your business needs a website that has a professional design and offers optimal functionality to users. The costs depend on your choice: using a website builder or hiring a professional web development and design company. You will pay higher website maintenance fees to an agency, but you are certain that your site is designed and maintained by a team of experienced professionals. 

Ecommerce

The cost of maintaining a website you use for selling products has special elements compared to other websites. Ecommerce websites need payment gateways and inventory management features. Thus, the average cost of website maintenance for ecommerce features is between $19 and $1,000. This large gap is explained by the price charged by payment processors: a fixed fee plus a percentage per transaction.

SEO and Marketing

Finally, the cost of maintaining a website includes the service fees for content creation, SEO, and various digital marketing activities (including social media ads, creating landing pages for promotions, etc.) 

Here, the price varies a lot depending on your choice: managing your own SEO and marketing, hiring freelancers or hiring a professional SEO agency.

Need Help Calculating the Costs? Let Our Experts Do the Job for You

The average web maintenance fees can be managed efficiently by hiring professionals who will offer you a package of necessary services for an affordable cost. At Direct SEO, you benefit from the experience of a team of professionals who know everything about SEO, local SEO, content management, and other related services.

We are located in Austin, TX, and serve businesses in our local area and nationwide. Contact us today to get an estimate for your business needs: 512-551-2306!