How much charge for website maintenance?

Hi all,
I am a little confuse about that if i want to get make website how much its cost should be. Is the cost of making website is more than maintenance of website?

The cost of making a web site is a large upfront cost, such as buying a car, or building a house. Just like with the other examples though, maintenance is a lower cost that occurs over the long-term.

It depends upon whether the website is created correctly in the first place and if so; the maintenance cost should be very little (in proportion) - depending upon nature of the project.

However, quite a lot of people end-up buying website designs (that sound low-cost) that are so badly made so that to “repeatability” alter them it costs the earth.

Poor site design leads to sites that are difficult to use, difficult to maintain, and expensive. Too often, site design gets very little attention until these problems manifest themselves.

Therefore make sure the main cost is the ground-up design and not constant updating. Although like was mentioned maintenance usually occurs over a “long-term” period.

Also from the point of the maintainer; what’s involved in the maintenance? This can range from “adding 1000 products a month, including all the photoshop isolation work” to “just be at the other end of an instant messenger in case I get into trouble”. Costs can vary wildly, and is usually based on the amount of time that is needed.

I agree with you up to some point. If the website is dynamic and need modification again then in that condition maintenance cost is more then creating cost.

How many hours will it take you to make the first five pages? (where most of the design effort goes). What do you want to earn per hour? That’s your minimum starting figure (whether its 2, 4, or 5 pages). Scaling up to bigger sites, some people charge by the page, others by the hour. Large sites can involve two or three sections with different features, so sometimes extra pages will be at a similar rate to the initial pages, but extra pages with an identical layout are usually a little bit cheaper (just a little bit, not a lot) Maintenance is usually by the hour - I have an editing rate for existing pages (easy money, it’s just typing) and a higher rate for creating new pages. It’s all up to you.

How much is a car? How much does a house cost? you need to give a little more info for anyone to give any advice.

Hello Guys,

When you enter into online world, only website creation is not important. The website should be updated frequently, so that more and more people visit your website regularly. Fresh and updated content keeps visitor’s interest intact for your website so they keep coming back to your site. Also the website should function properly so it needs be checked and maintained regularly.

Such updated and well maintained sites boost the search engine ranking as well. So I feel don’t just pay attention to the one time website development. Give more attention to the website maintenance once it is done and made live.

As far as costing is concerned, maintenance services are not costing much now a days, we only need to check the maintenance plan carefully and select as per our need. Also see what all services we are getting in a maintenance plan.

I personally feel hourly maintenance costs more if it is calculated carefully. Any other alternative to this?

Sara, well you could always charge a strict weekly or monthly fee depending on the amount of work required. For instance you could have a monthly fee with a certain number of “callouts” or “updates” included within the cost for that period (with extra’s or large updates being charged for individually). Maintenance of the website is dependant on a great deal of factors and what you think are reasonable things to be included, having a baseline price for the general “keep things running” with “bolt-on” packages for those needing more hands on updates over the period of time (at extra cost) may well work for you :slight_smile:

what you think? buying is absolutely more than maintenance that one. That’s why maintenance cost is comparatively less than build in first time.

Major problem in hourly plans is that how will we judge the authenticity of the time required to finish the job. We might get duped on that front.

Design companies are charging a bit too much for the simple repetitive work under the name of website maintenance.

So trying to find out a less complicated and affordable website maintenance solution. It will be a great help for small business websites.

That’s quite a vague question with multiple answers. it obviously depends on what you and your client agree on for the maintenance of the site. Would it be major changes each month or minimal, and there might also be another additional fee randomly some months if they want to create complete new pages that was not in your agreement.

Your maintenance fee should still be very low. For your initial design of the site you already charge the client a lot and you would like to keep them on as clients so asking them an enormous amount each month in order to do minimum changes on their site per month might push them away into another designers hands because you are too expensive.

In my opinion, you can’t make a set fee as you don’t know what each clients requirements are.


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