Average monthly website maintenance fees
If you are reading this, then congratulations you are already winning. Monthly website maintenance is highly critical not only to a website but it is important for your business success and overall brand survival.
Average monthly website maintenance fees and costs vary around the world, you can expect to pay anywhere between R300 to R5000, the costs can be paid monthly, quarterly, or annually.
But before you pay for annual or monthly website maintenance do you even know what you are paying for?
Table of content
- What is website maintenance?
- What does website maintenance include
- Website maintenance checklist
- Why do websites need maintenance
- Why Website maintenance is important
- Website maintenance costs and fees
What is website maintenance and Average Monthly Website Maintenance fees?
What is website maintenance? Website maintenance is the process of checking to see whether your website is healthy and performing well.
A website just like a car has to go through routine checks, and unlike a car, the updates(upgrades) of running tools (plugins/ software/ firmware) are more frequent.
For example, I am sure you have complained a few times when you had to update a mobile application that you recently installed on your phone, we dread that message but the same goes for your website, it needs to be regularly updated.
It’s about keeping up with security updates, updating your content so it’s fresh and recent, and making sure your website visitors are happy. … Think of a website as something that needs to be oiled regularly and website maintenance is that oil. So if you are searching for an average monthly website maintenance fee, it would help to know what does that includes, let us observe…
What does website maintenance include
Website maintenance includes a variety of maintenance functions, and not all websites are the same in size, make, and technology applied.
It will also depend on the industry, for example, a banking website will have to go through regular tight security updates as opposed to a dog walker website.
With that said it also depends on whether the website accepts payments or keeps client data, remember the examples above are only covering website security, so it is important to know some various functions and tools that are involved in ensuring a good running website. Below we can look at the average website maintenance checklist.
Website maintenance checklist
Website maintenance checks can vary from agency to agency and be split up daily, weekly, or monthly. Every website is different and so does every industry, you are welcome to contact us to give you a detailed checklist for your website.
One of the easiest ways to spot a potential problem on your website is by regular analysis and to form a functioning method of website reporting. …
The checklist can be broken down daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.
Regular Website Maintenance Checklist
- Check Page errors
- Update core website software & plugins
- Analyze Website Performance
- Check & remove spam content
- Broken Links
- Redirects and 404 Errors
- Test Website Forms
Uptime Logs - Website loading speeds
- Validate website(HTML,CSS,Accessibility,Mobile optimization,etc)
- Backups
- Security
- Test Website Speed
- Check Website Links
- Update content and more…
Why do websites need maintenance
Why do we have to maintain websites, can’t they just run on their own?
The answer is simple, they need maintenance so they can function properly.
Did you notice on the checklist above how many moving parts a website needs to function? if one fails it can affect your entire website.
For example, a malfunctioning checkout form can affect your whole check-out process. For an online store that can result in loss of revenue and a negative user experience. Prevention is better than cure, it applies also to a website. A regular form test can prevent a negative rating and loss of revenue, most of which can never be reversed if left unchecked.
Why Website maintenance is important and my expected Average Monthly Website Maintenance fees
Websites need to be maintained to maintain and increase :
- Great user experience
- Smooth operations
- Website security
…and to keep up with the ever-changing technology space just to name a few.
Regularly updating and maintaining your website is crucial to ensuring that your site is running at full capacity. A website that is not regularly updated will not perform or compete with a website that is regularly maintained.
Just like a car, if we are driving the same type of car, same model and make, you will have a great driving experience on a maintained one than one that is not maintained.
Google performs regular analysis on websites, a process that is called crawling. This process is to index pages and check for errors on indexed pages and any website that has errors receives a negative score which in turn gives that website a negative ranking.
An example from something that we experienced. We had a website that we were working on an SEO contract, the client had a website maintenance deal with another agency, which is not an issue then.
We had worked hard to rank her website in the top 10 in a very competitive niche when we suddenly saw the website rankings dropping. Because of our continuous analysis systems in place we were able to track the issue in 10 days to notice that it is not a Google algorithm issue but an issue that is from the website.
It is important to understand that ranking or page rankings fluctuate and it is normal, but to a trained eye, one can pick up if the issue is not an algorithm issue. That is when we asked for the maintenance reports and noticed that her agency was not doing full-scale maintenance and had been leaving simple tasks which can be deemed simple but are critical, like checking if your website is mobile optimized.
What had happened was, the host server had an error(Hosting company) and was serving the website as non-secure to mobile devices (HTTP instead of HTTPS) I know it sounds technical but let me break it down, the website was either appearing as unsafe to mobile phone users and was fine on desktops, an issue that can be picked up only with regular maintenance and if one of the users complained but guess what… Google was not showing the website to mobile users so they could not complain.
We solved the issue for her, fixed the error and in just two days, the website started gaining the positions again. That is the importance of maintenance and the importance of ensuring you are with the right company or if you are doing it yourself you ensure you do the right job. The error did not only cause her to lose traffic (mobile phone browsers) it also caused her to lose revenue on lost clients. Lack of maintenance can quickly escalate to a bigger financial problem.
Average Monthly Website Maintenance fees and costs.
Maintenance fees and costs can range from agency to agency, mainly due to the amount of work and the agency’s reputation.
Maintenance fees in South Africa can range between R300 to R6000 either monthly, annually it depends.
We make it easy for our clients with different packages to suit your budget and fit your website. Not all websites are the same, not all industries are the same, we even do evaluations and help you to choose the right package for you, based on your needs.
Below are our Website maintenance costs and fees.
Flash Basic Plan
- Plug-ins Manual Updates
- Website On time Monitor
- Core System Updates
- Speed Tests & Recommendations
- Basic Website Statistics
- Basic Monthly Reports & Stats
Essential Plan
- Plug-ins Manual Updates
- Website On time Monitor
- Core System Updates
- Speed Tests & Recommendations
- Basic Website Statistics
- Basic Monthly Reports & Stats
Standard Basic Plan
- Plug-ins Manual Updates
- Website On time Monitor & Reporting
- Core System Updates
- Speed Tests & Recommendations
- Basic Internal Links Checks & Tests
- Basic Broken Scripts & Back end Functionality
- Basic Content Updates (Not Page Additions)
- Standard Website Statistics
- Basic Monthly Reports & Stats
Business Pro Plan
- Plug-ins Manual Updates
- Website On Time Monitor (Tracking & Reporting)
- Regular Core System Updates
- Regular Device Optimization Updates & Upgrades (WordPress)
- Checks & Repairs Mobile Optimization Errors (WordPress)
- Standard Speed Tests & Optimization
- Regular 404 & 301 Errors Resolve
- Regular Security Scans & Analysis
- Regular Offsite BackUps + Cloud Backups Storage
- Standard Internal Links Checks & Tests
- Broken Scripts & Backend Functionality Regular Maintenance
- Regular Content Updates (Not Page Additions)
- Business Website Statistics
- Business Monthly Reports & Stats
Additional Services
- Domain Renewals
- Hosting Service Renewals
- Landing Page Designs & Dev
- Email Campaign Setups
- Broken Scripts & Back end Functionality
- Web Page(s) Addition
- Content Updates (Not Page Additions)
- Fix Mobile Optimization Errors
- SSL Renewals & Installations
- Technical Website Solutions & more
Conclusion...
In conclusion, one can not ignore the importance of website maintenance. It is a choice that an individual has to take from an informed frame of mind.
So while searching for average monthly website maintenance fees and costs I am sure that you know what to look for, that is an agency that will help you with services that will benefit you, a business that will go all the way in ensuring your website is safe, and running proper always. And if you are intending to do website maintenance yourself, you know exactly what to do or what to look at based on the information we shared.
It is often true that prevention is better than cure, you can save thousands of rands caused by a security breach or in lost revenue due to a crashed website by just paying a few hundred bucks monthly, and rest easy knowing that as technology advances so do your business website.
Please leave a comment below and let us know your website maintenance experiences, if you are maintaining your website yourself please tell us how the process has been.
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