How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost?

Breakdown

Some companies have taken the time to break down the different costs of maintaining a website. I don't aim to do that here, but I do want to explain the costs and the “why” for some of the top ticket items. Here is a few to consider:

• Tech Support -> $0 to $3000 per month
• Content Management System -> $0 to $3500 per month
• Hosting -> $2 to $500 per month

I am quite familiar with providing each of these, so I want to delve into this, since we offer our own Website Maintenance package.

Tech Support

What could possibly go wrong?

Great question. It used to be that back in the day, WordPress sites were getting hacked right and left! I actually helped with malware removal on a bunch of sites, and also restored backups to others.

However, many website owners need help with DNS, or they need some other related software upgraded. This type of stuff is part of our specialty. Operating servers and installing/upgrading the dependent systems has been part of my playbook for many years now. I've worked on RedHat based Linux distros, Debian based distros, Gentoo, OpenBSD, and my top choice: FreeBSD.

But I need someone who I can communicate with

I've handled thousands of customer support cases. And then, I stopped. And during that time when I stopped, you know what I thought about? I had an itch, wondering, "what are our customers needing?" or "what do our customers think of this change?" Because of this, I realized that I want to talk with you about what your website needs.

Although English is my first language, I've dabbled a bit in Spanish, Hebrew, Chinese, Greek, and Latin. So even if you can't speak the lingua franca of today, I should be able to muster enough memories to figure out what someone is trying to communicate.

The Cost

So what really is the cost of technical support? Well, if you utilize our website maintenance package, we through in 4 hours of support per month. Otherwise, for the type of support I mentioned here, I'd charge somewhere north of $50/hour. So I guess it all comes down to how much is going to go wrong in a given month.

Quick-tip: Don't let your domain expire. Saves a lot of confusion.

Content Management System (CMS)

WordPress

To be frank, WordPress is not my favorite CMS ever. But I do recognize the power it gives to the end user. In fact, even business gurus will praise WordPress for the user-friendly aspect. If you just need a platform that has general needs, then WordPress has you covered. It's just based on PHP, which is fine, I guess. :-)

Seriously though, WordPress is used by many businesses and organizations (like whitehouse.gov).

Django

My favorite platform of choice is Django. Why? It is based on the Python language, and it allows a developer to build a custom database-driven website quickly. It provides authentication as well, which is a big plus. Also, Django has it's own admin portal, so you get direct access to your data. The only downside, is that it's not specifically tailored to blogging, so it's a bit more technical to use. For me, that's where it's at. For others, it may be an over-engineered solution.

Others

There are other CMS's out there, but these are the ones that I'm most familiar with. However, I've seen lots of things throughout my life. Laravel, Ruby on Rails, Elixir, etc.

Funny enough, when it comes to web server stuff, I can pretty much fix anything. So if you just show me what you got, we'll trace it down (literally...digitally).

The Cost

Well, to be honest, WordPress is open-source. So is Django. You can download either of those for the cost of the electricity you're using.

But the real cost comes in getting those things setup right. A good UI/UX and frontend guy is worth having. That'll run you over $100/hour probably. If you are making active updates to your website (design changes, or adding content), then yes, $3500 could be a legitimate price. However, if you have little to no changes, and you are producing your own content, then that price tag may not be the case.

Hosting

Part of our website maintenance package is website hosting.

Seriously, the word "hosting" runs through my mind multiple times every day. Just for fun, here are the web servers I've used:

• Apache
• Nginx
• relayd (OpenBSD)
• httpd (OpenBSD)
• Python's HttpServer
• nc
• Custom stuff I've written in C
• mini-httpd (FreeBSD)

And probably more. And that's just the web servers.

Web hosting has been in my blood since about 2006-ish. I was young then, but a friend and I bought a pallet of these old beatup computers from an auction, and I used them for web servers. I started with Debian, installed Apache, and I was off to the races.

You know, for a time I didn't want to even look at computers. I thought it was geeky. But I had a huge problem. I knew how Linux servers operated (before it was cool). This landed me a few jobs.

The Cost

This is a tricky one. The secret is, you can get away with a lot using a $2 shared hosting plan. You optimize your database, and setup the indexing right, and that may take you a good ways. But, there are some things to consider:

• Is your website being monitored for uptime?
• Is your website being monitored for performance?
• Who is updating the software that your website uses (not the web server, but the website dependencies)?
• Who is dealing with DNS changes (if any are needed)?
• Do you know how to add additional security to your site?
• Do you know how to restore backups of your site?
• What do you do when you have questions about any of that?

From the WebFX article I linked earlier, the price for hosting goes up to $500/month. And I can tell you now, if you play your cards wrong, things will continue to go well beyond that. If you are spending that much on hosting, let's talk. Our website maintenance package may well be just what you need.

Conclusion

Well, the pricing I mentioned at the start makes sense in some (but maybe not all) conditions. I've attempted to position our own services in a place that makes sense in the current market.

I'll leave you with a story. There once was a company that paid for a basic hosting plan at a popular hosting company. That company was later sold to a bigger company. The bigger company laughed at the fact that the website operated on such a measely plan. They then proceeded to increase the complexity and cost of the website operation, whether or not it was the right thing for the website and its users.

The moral of the story is: your website is about you and your users. Don't make it more complicated than it has to be. I am here to help make things simple for you, because I have seen a lot of the nooks and crannies of web hosting.

Valete!