Maintaining a website may seem like an easy task. However, you will notice that it takes time off from your workday. In addition to that, there are various tools that you can use when estimating your maintenance cost.
You need to consider how much you can afford to spend on your website maintenance before deciding whether to do it yourself. Some people will contract with an agency, while others will try and use DIY methods.
We’re now going to explain what WordPress website maintenance is and the benefits of paying a professional to do it for you. Next, we’ll explore how much website maintenance costs, taking into account various platforms, and services in order to help you figure out which option is best for you.
What do you need to know about website maintenance?
To put it simply, website maintenance is the process of keeping your site in proper working condition. It’s an essential part of website sustainability and security.
Website maintenance includes many different processes that run on a continual basis. These can include checking for and installing updates, monitoring uptime and security, and optimizing content. The more specific tasks involved depend on the type of website you have- e-commerce sites typically require more complex needs than blogs.
How to know if your WordPress website needs maintenance?
Perhaps you view it as a wise decision to defer preventive maintenance and only tackle issues when they arise. After all, if you spent thousands of dollars to have your website created in the first place, it can’t need much work.
If you want to reduce website maintenance costs and keep your site performing optimally over the long term, you need website maintenance. You can either buy a car when it’s already broken down and needs work or have it tuned up when it works right.
How neglecting website maintenance can lead to expensive disruptions and disaster. For Example:
- If you don’t put the proper measures and monitoring in place, emergencies will continue to happen.
- The cost of repairing a website is unpredictable because there are so many ways that it may become compromised.
- Old updates might lead to compatibility issues, causing you to go through expensive, time-wasting redesigns or reconfigurations. To avoid this, always keep your WordPress up-to-date.
- What are the costs of downtime on your website?
- Data breaches can result in high monetary losses, but they also negatively impact your company’s reputation.
Even though impromptu issues may not be as serious as White Screen of Death, they still need to be troubleshot. Spending time on them comes at a cost.
There is a significant difference in cost between protecting and failing to protect your website. Proactively securing your site reduces the chance of being hacked, which also impacts how much work it takes to maintain the site.
Keeping your website secure is not the only task of maintenance, there are also other things that need to be done on a website such as SEO and performance. Website maintenance is an important task for your company or organization because it saves money in the long run.
WordPress Website maintenance – why you should pay for it?
Investing in a third-party WordPress maintenance service is an effective and affordable way to keep your website secure.
It’s worth spending time and money on the upkeep of your WordPress website. There are big benefits from regularly maintaining it, including better performance and an easier workflow. Including:
- Maintaining active security, uptime, and performance with fast response times
- Superior user experience and SEO due to security improvements, performance optimization and will save you money.
- You can focus on your other commitments, improve efficiency and reduce stress in your business.
- Updating your blog and website design with fresh content, keep users and Google happy.
- Ongoing assistance from plugin, theme, and core developers with regular updates
- We protect your WordPress website investment by performing routine backups
As DevriX explained, maintenance will save you more money in the long run. Firstly, it costs less than repairing a broken site which is expensive. Secondly, it can also help your website generate more revenue as well.
Starting with the mindset that website maintenance is an inherent and necessary element of your website, you can avoid questions about whether or not maintenance is needed. It’s simply a matter of who will do it.
Find out how much it costs to maintain a website
The average cost of a website depends on a few factors. Among these is:
- Purchase the hosting plan ($0 to $350 per month)
- Domain Registration ($10 to $20 per year, it depends on the domain name)
- Platform / CMS costs ($0 to $40 per month)
- One-time website design and development ($2500 to $10,000 you can hire a website developer or outsourcing)
- Website Support & Maintenance ($0 to $1000 per month)
Website type impacts each of these factors most. For example, costs with small business website maintenance are going to be less than those for complex enterprise or e-commerce sites. Let’s take a closer look at each element.
What are the different types of website maintenance?
If you are not able to take care of your website yourself, or you’re managing your own complex website as well as managing multiple sites for your clients, the following numbers give you an idea of how much it would cost to outsource WordPress website maintenance to a third party.
WordPress blogs (Personal & Professional)
Hosting can cost as little as $10-$50 per month and is affordable for small blogs. With such a low price, you can invest in hosting with security measures to ensure that your content is never inaccessible. Make sure that you research different companies to find the one with the best price and features.
A small business blog that publishes new content will require more rigorous coverage, but if sensitive transactions don’t take place on the site it will be cheaper to maintain. For example, Our Maintenance plan runs for $67 per month and covers 4 task submissions and all updates (WP core, plugins, and Theme) on WordPress sites.
Corporate / Company Websites
If the content on your website doesn’t change often and most of the marketing is automated, then a $97 per month plan can suffice. Websites that have contact forms, marketing, and other standard configurations will need higher quality service, with a priority placed on uptime, speed, and security.
WooCommerce and other complex websites
If you have a website with advanced functionality, like an eCommerce store, you will need to maintain the site more often. The maintenance plan should check in on the site more frequently and should also be able to respond to any issues quickly. You can expect to pay $200 to $1,000 per month for this kind of maintenance service. Compare these features and costs against the Performance and Custom Whitelabel plans offered by WP Small Fix.
Custom coded websites
These websites are the most expensive to maintain because they require more hands-on management. This means the maintenance company needs to do more manual work which will lead the cost to increase by an exponential degree based on how big the site is and how much customization it has. Some agencies may charge up to $2,000 per month for this service.
WordPress Website Maintenance Costs
The Content Management System (CMS) you use to build your site influences the maintenance costs that you will be responsible for. Many website builders offer all-in-one solutions that include the cost of hosting and domains in their plans, which means you won’t have to worry about general maintenance.
Online website builders / CMS have too many limitations. They’re designed for simple blogs and small websites, rather than scalable blogs with heavy content. A self-hosted CMS such as WordPress is preferred for anyone who needs more control over the software and posts desired.
With WordPress, you can start your blog with a powerful and free open-source CMS. There are a lot of hosting solutions to choose from, and most have the features listed. Cloudways’s Managed WordPress plans start at $12 per month and include a ton of maintenance and security features. Similarly, SiteGround’s Managed WooCommerce Hosting starts at $11 per month and is optimized for e-commerce sites.
There are a lot of choices for WordPress website maintenance and you can either do it yourself or hire someone. The professional way to get this done is through a website maintenance plan provider such as WP Small Fix with plans ranging from $67-$137/month depending on your needs.
What do the website maintenance fees include?
There are various factors that will determine the costs associated with the upkeep of your website. These are; what type of site you have, what platform you built it on, and if you do the work yourself or outsource it.
Here is a list of the services that usually come with professional website maintenance:
- 2 to 20 Hours of support provided (Small editing and content setup tasks)
- Updates are included (Core, Plugins, and theme)
- Regular backups
- Security audit and improvements
- Speed performance and uptime monitoring
- SEO setup
- Pro plugins, tools, and themes
A website maintenance contract costs approximately 15%-25% of the exact development cost, meaning that the annual expense is somewhere between $1,500 and $2,500.
There are a range of options to choose from if you want to outsource your Website support and maintenance. You can find an option that suits the size and complexity of your website at WP Small Fix.
No one is worried about how much time the service provider spends on their task. Instead, focus on what they can do for you in a long run. WordPress website maintenance packages are typically based on the values of a company and not the amount of work they do. In other words, don’t judge based on hours, pay for more on a premium Plan if your website needs it.
Conclusion
You might not know it, but abandoning your website can be costly. It can hurt your site’s performance, SEO, security, and more. Once you decide you need to maintain your website, the next step is determining whether to handle it yourself or outsource it to a third party.
If you let an expert such as WP Small Fix handle your WordPress maintenance, you minimize the risks of having a poorly maintained and fast site. This will result in more visitors, longer user sessions, and higher conversion rates.
Utilizing an expert provider of WordPress website maintenance services, can help keep your site speed optimized, highly secure, and in Google’s good graces. Plus you’ll have someone constantly working to manage the tasks that keep your site up to date and maintained. This will lead to higher conversion rates, longer sessions, and more visitors.