There are seemingly countless estimates of how much it costs to build a website. Each found that the answer can vary significantly based on what kind of site you’re creating. Is it a business website or a hobby site, or do you need an eCommerce store? Building the website is only the beginning, however. How much does it cost to maintain a website once you’ve built it? What are the recurring fixed costs and highly variable operational costs differences, and where can you get the best value? Has this changed drastically in 2024 compared to the years past? Let’s dive into the details and pick apart how much it costs to maintain a website in 2024.
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What are the Benefits of Website Maintenance?
Much like regular car maintenance, keeping on top of your website is not only beneficial but in certain cases, mandatory. While load times and user experience are nice to have, a website cannot exist without renewing your domain or server. The benefits of website maintenance include, but are not limited to:
- Smoother Performance – Eliminate glitches and downtime by removing outdated and unused plugins and integrations.
- Faster Loading Times – Optimizing your images, cleaning up code, and updating software help speed up your page load times.
- Increased SERP visibility – Faster load times and cleaner code are crucial to SEO. This will typically give you stronger SERP rankings.
- Improved user experience – Needless to say, up-to-date content, and fast-loading pages are huge when it comes to user experience.
- Enhanced security – The biggest reason for regular maintenance is to patch up security holes and save yourself unnecessary headaches.
- Higher cost savings – If you experience a cyberattack, prepare to spend a lot of money and time to recover.
Despite there being many more benefits, these six points alone should express just how crucial regular maintenance is. As such, we’ll discuss what needs to be done, and answer how much does it cost to maintain a website.
Cost per Type of Website
The biggest differentiator in terms of cost will depend on the type of website you require. To simplify we’ll provide a cost range with a realistic scope. If the difference is vast, we’ll point out when those extremes apply. Naturally, going with a custom solution can and will typically balloon these costs depending on your specific case. We will also exclude operational costs which we’ll outline below, as these will vary massively based on how much of this work you end up doing yourself.
| WEBSITE TYPE | MONTHLY MAINTENANCE COST |
|---|---|
| Personal Website or Blog | $10 – 25 |
| Professional Blog | $25 – 75 |
| Small and Medium Business (SMB) Website | $35 – 500 |
| Multimedia Website | $300 – 2,500 |
| Corporate Website | $200 – 3,500 |
| eCommerce Website | $500 – 5,000 |
As you can see, the monthly cost can vary significantly. In particular, eCommerce websites that require shopping cart and credit card integrations have higher associated costs. Next, we’ll break down associated costs, ones you cannot avoid, and where you might save some money through smart choices.
Recurring Website Costs
Recurring costs happen on an annual or monthly basis and there are several unavoidable expenses. We’ll break down these costs, as well as operational costs, where you might be able to make some savings.
Annual Costs
Domain Name: $19 – $60 per year
Think of a domain name registration as the GPS coordinates to your website. It is your virtual address where people come to visit your site. Without it, nobody can reach you, which is why this is one of those unavoidable costs. You will most likely be familiar with the more common domains such as com, .net, or .org. Many of these are available to everyone to register. Others like .gov, .mil, and .edu are restricted to government, military, and education institutions respectively.
Additionally, there are specific country-level domains. More popular examples are .de for Germany, .co.uk for the United Kingdom, and com.au for Australia. These are typically reserved for citizens and entities of said countries. Then there are open top-level domains such as .io, .me, or .co. You will typically see these used by tech startups or individuals. Smaller businesses get these to get a good one-word .io, whereas virtually all the one-word .com domains are taken. Getting a niche domain can also be more memorable making your advertising much easier.
As you can see, there are many domain options at your disposal, each with its associated renewal costs. These should typically range between $19 and $60 per year. Be aware of any .com price below $10. Pay close attention to an * attached to that price, and then read the small print. What you’ll typically find is a cheap initial registration price. These often require you to sign up for multiple years and have a significantly higher renewal price. The renewal price is the true price you should be comparing.
SSL Certificates: $0 – $850 per year
An SSL is a protocol that ensures data sent between your server and your visitor’s browser cannot be intercepted. This makes it impossible for hackers to read customer information. This in turn makes it a non-negotiable feature of any business website dealing with customers. Beyond keeping data secure, SSL certificates enhance trust between your visitors and your website and directly improve your SEO rankings.
Even if you don’t have a checkout or sensitive information, you can always get a free basic SSL certificate. For eCommerce platforms, you will need an SSL with advanced features, which are typically more expensive. For basic sites, an SSL should be free or up to around $10 per year. Expect to pay around $40 to $90 per year for multi-domain SSL certificates. For eCommerce sites, the creme de la creme SSL certificates can range from $300 to $850 per year.
Monthly Costs
Monthly costs, as the name implies, reoccur each month. You can typically get most of these services for a long-term discount at a pre-paid rate. You can expect to get 10-20% off if you sign up and pre-pay for a full year or two. Be aware that in doing so, your renewal will also happen for the same period. It’s a wise move to make a note of that in your calendar ahead of the renewal date.
Web Hosting: $7.99 – $3,600 per month
If your domain name is an address, your hosting is the property on which you build your house or business. Just like your address tells people where you live, your domain name points to your server. This tells visitors where to find your website. As such hosting is an unavoidable expense, though it can vary drastically depending on your needs. Hosting options typically fall into three categories. These are shared hosting, virtual private servers (VPS), and dedicated servers.
These options have some crossover, and you will be comparing VPS vs Shared hosting or VPS vs. Dedicated servers.
Shared Hosting: $7.99 – $60 per month
Sometimes referred to as “web hosting”. This is the cheapest option and by far the most limited option. You share your resources with hundreds of other customers. This is probably the biggest culprit in terms of renewal price-gouging. It’s advertised as cheap, which many people fall for. Shared hosting prices range from $7.99 to $60+ per month. We typically advise going with a VPS plan if you can afford it. On a shared host, your site will be at the mercy of everyone else sharing that server with you. However, if you’re tight on budget, our shared hosting plans offer by far the best value you’ll find anywhere. We’ve ensured that even our shared hosting uses premium enterprise server equipment with fully managed support and no overselling. This is an unbeatable long-term deal in terms of value when money is tight.
VPS Hosting: $10 – $500 per month
VPS hosting is the middle ground and typically the optimal choice for the vast majority of websites. With a VPS, you get your own CPU cores, RAM as well as storage. This means that you cannot be impacted by other people, as you’re the only one on your server. You must ensure your hosting provider gives you dedicated CPU cores and dedicated equipment. This means no one else can use the components you’re paying for, even if you don’t use them. Again, pay special attention to any “limited-time discount deals” and look closely at renewal prices. Be mindful of comparing prices that lock you in for years when comparing them with monthly rates. Our suggestion is to compare month-to-month post-renewal prices to get the best idea of what you’re getting long-term. VPS prices range from $10 to $500+, depending on if you choose DIY or fully managed hosting with dedicated server-level resources.
Dedicated Servers: $300 – $3,600 per month
Dedicated servers are just a bigger VPS. They have the highest resources and are typically only required by larger corporations and big eCommerce sites. Dedicated server prices range from $300 to $3,600.
Additional Variable Costs: $0 – $7,500 per month
How much does it cost to maintain a website? How long is a piece of string? When it comes to additional variable costs, there is a world of difference. It’s fairly straightforward to get a domain name (address), and hosting (plot of land). The combination of what you choose to host on your server (buildings) and software used (materials) numbers in the thousands. However, we can give you a few loose guidelines to put you on the right path.
General Websites Upkeep: $0 – $200 per month
General upkeep includes things like software, plugins, and theme updates to cover security loopholes, limiting vulnerability exploits and downtime. It also includes regular file and database backups and recovery in cases of emergency. This is part of website maintenance that is typically ignored by most website owners. Unfortunately, it is also something everyone is willing to pay big money for if and when something goes wrong. Ignoring general upkeep will cost you a lot more in the long run. General upkeep costs can vary from $0 – $200 depending on how much of this work you do yourself. Having fully managed hosting negates this cost entirely!
CMS: $0 – $3,500 per month
A Content Management System (CMS) is one of those highly variable elements. As such, the associated costs will also follow suit. You can use some of the more popular free options, such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal. Alternatively, you can go for premium eCommerce platforms such as WooCommerce or Magento. Then there are feature-full ERP systems that have an inbuilt CMS such as Odoo or ERPNext. Maintenance monthly costs for a CMS will range from $0 – $3,500
Plugins: $0 – $50+ per month
Similar to CMS plugins can vary vastly in cost. Considering you can have hundreds of plugins plugin costs can be anywhere from $0 to $50 and well above. As a rule of thumb, only ever use plugins if absolutely necessary. Each plugin can potentially open up vulnerabilities and can drastically slow down your site.
Email Hosting: $0 – $18 per month / per user
Professional email services can cost as much as $18 per month per user. For bigger businesses, this cost can start to add up. If you have a VPS or dedicated server of your own, you can get this service for free. This can be on the very same VPS that you use to host your website and other services. This is one of the key reasons we almost always recommend a VPS as the best hosting choice. The value simply is unbeatable.
Tech Support: $0 – $3,500 per month
Yet another major variable service where the cost can significantly vary based on the services required and provided. There is also the question of round-the-clock support availability. Smaller sites might not have much need for tech support beyond the initial migration and installation stages. For eCommerce and big corporate sites, this can replace the need for in-house IT support or enhance your IT capabilities. The costs for tech support can range from $0 to $3,500 and even more. This is something where again, fully managed support can minimize or fully eliminate this cost.
Operational Costs
Now that you have your domain, hosting, and website, it’s time to add content and share it with the world. For a personal resume site, this will entail a single write-up, and that’s it. You don’t need to do anything else. For an online business, however, you’ll need to make constant updates. If you plan to compete and make sales online, your operational costs can quickly balloon. Dozens of full-time employees and hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the size of your business. To make this somewhat useable to most readers, we’ll bypass these extremes and focus on small and medium sites only.
Content Updates: $0 – $3,000 per month
Updating your content and adding new content. For a restaurant website, this might entail a few menu items and open time changes per month. For a blog or news site, this will be your bread and butter. You may handle some or most of the writing work personally, but content creation and updates help you stay competitive. Without fresh content, your competitors will outpace you, and you’ll slowly begin to lose business. If you do this work yourself, you pay with your time instead of money. If however, you choose to outsource content updates, prepare to spend anywhere between $0 to $3,000.
Search Engine Optimization: $0 – $5,000 per month
Similar to content updates, SEO, and digital marketing in general, is mandatory for any business. We include social media, email marketing, and paid ads under this loose umbrella. We will exclude any paid ad spend, as this can vary drastically depending on the competition within your industry and location. Running a website and updating content without optimizing for search rankings is a lost opportunity. Marketing your site helps you get discovered and gain traffic. You should set aside a budget unless you have the know-how and the time to do the marketing yourself. If you aren’t an expert, outsourcing your marketing can range from a few hundred bucks to $5,000 per month and more.
Visual Design: $0 – $3,000 per month
Visual design can entail photography, graphic design, and video editing. For certain business types and websites, these will be mostly or entirely unnecessary. For more visually prominent sites, this will entail the bulk of the content. In most cases, you might get a few stock photos, pay for AI-generated images, and do minor image editing. You can outsource a graphic and video designer or do it yourself, so typically, most sites should require up to $3,000.
Hidden Fees
Hidden fees are the final aspect of how much it costs to maintain a website. Add-on expenses that aren’t shown upfront and features that should be included in the base price are considered hidden fees. Some of the more common costs include:
Arbitrary Limitations
Arbitrary Limitations are unnecessary constraints placed on your service for the sole reason of having you upgrade to a more expensive plan. If a hosting provider limits the number of websites, they’re likely imposing arbitrary limitations. The only exception to this would be with shared hosting as it would simply be impossible to financially provide such a service otherwise. With a VPS or dedicated hosting, however, there should be no reason for these limits if your hardware can handle the load. If your provider limits the number of visitors or page views per month, they’re arbitrarily limiting your service. This is true for all service types. Make sure to review the terms and conditions for any such limitations before buying.
Additional Data Usage Charges
Data transfer is typically metered or unmetered. If it’s unmetered, it means your hosting provider isn’t tracking how much data you use. You will never have to worry about data charges in this case. If the data is metered, however, there are two ways your provider can go with it. One is to simply charge excess fees and these are typically significantly higher than your monthly allowance. The reason for this is to promote upgrading to a higher plan. The alternative is to simply shut off your service for the remainder of the month or limit certain elements, such as creating files or receiving emails. Considering most hosting providers now offer unmetered data, you really should never have to deal with this issue.
Hidden Migration Fees
This one can be a little tricky. Many hosting providers will offer “free migrations” if you’re moving to their service. However, what they neglect to mention is that this is a one-time deal. They move your service, and you’re stuck. If you want to host two, ten, or fifty sites on the same VPS though, you’ll be charged $30 extra per migration or more. Needless to say, migrating or adding email accounts or similar will incur even more fees. This is something to look for carefully in terms and conditions, especially when it comes to managed migrations.
Control Panel Costs
Certain control panels are free to use and then there are premium options that you’ll have to pay for monthly. These costs can vary based on the type of control panel and how many users you want access to. If you have fully managed hosting, where the provider installs and sets up everything for you, you’re typically better off not using a control panel at all. These control panel costs are dictated by the developers of those specific control panels and are an added cost you’ll have to pay for.
Scheduled Backups and Restoration
Backups and restoration aren’t something you’ll typically consider when you run or think of how much it costs to maintain a website. In reality, backups and restoration could be the very definition of website maintenance. It’s something you never think of until things go wrong. This could be due to a cyber attack, an employee mistakenly deleting a crucial file, software errors, or many other reasons. Sometimes you simply make a mistake and need to revert to an earlier version, or need to check back how things were for verification purposes. Regularly scheduled backups take time and additional storage space. Not having a backup when you need it is typically catastrophic. You’d be willing to pay any money for a backup at such a time. As such, make sure that this is an included service with your hosting provider, and note how many times per month or week scheduled backups happen and how long they’re kept for.
Professional Caching and CDN
Now we’re getting into the territory of bigger or multinational sites that have users from all over the world. In comparison to other website maintenance costs, an additional $10 or $20 might be pocket change to some. However, this is an additional cost that’s rarely mentioned. You can get a free or a pro Cloudflare CDN plan and the difference is simply the features that will be included with each. Again, these costs are directly passed on from the original software or service provider.
So, how much does it cost to maintain a website in 2024?
So, how much does it cost to maintain a website in 2024? We’ve outlined the variable and constant costs, as well as hidden fees and operational costs. Naturally, the total will depend on several factors such as the type of website and business you run. Your location and competition within your industry can come into play in a big way, especially with SEO and paid ads. Finally, one of the biggest factors with costs will be operational costs and your capacity to manage the work yourself. Additionally, having a fully managed hosting provider can consolidate many of these expenses and mitigate a massive chunk of the cost.