A website is an essential part of the digital face of your company. But just as a physical store incurs costs for maintenance, light, heat and adjustments, there are also ongoing costs associated with owning a website and maintaining a website, if you want it to remain efficient. These costs vary depending on several factors, including the complexity of your site, traffic, and your specific needs. On our site you will find transparent prices for websites, adjustments and maintenance. But we think an extra blog post is in order to explain the costs of running a website and how you can make this investment pay off.
Hosting
Hosting is one of the most important costs of a website. These are the costs of putting your website on the internet and keeping it available for your visitors. Depending on the size of your website and the amount of traffic it generates, hosting pricing may vary. At Stormlabs, the costs of hosting are included in the maintenance contract. The hosting is in fact the rental price for the server, which is located at the web hosting company, on which the software runs that executes the scripts (including WordPress) and puts your website on the screen. The more bells and whistles your website has, the more computing power and memory this server needs to run your website smoothly. So don’t miss out on the discount packages that you can find online and run your website for a few euros per month or even less! These packages often have insufficient computing power and memory to run a WordPress website. At Stormlabs we have been working with Web-oké since 2014, this Dutch web host provides us with excellent service and attaches great importance to sustainability.
What? Keep your website online
How many? Monthly cost: € 10 – 25
Updates
To keep your website running smoothly and up to date with the latest technologies and security standards, regular updates are necessary. The cost for these updates may vary depending on the complexity of the updates and the frequency with which they are required. That is why this cost is also included in your maintenance contract with us, so no one will be faced with surprises. One month there is a little more work, the next a little less. The updates are probably the biggest expense when running a website with a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress.
Although WordPress has made the update process very simple in 2023, it must be performed at least every two weeks. For major updates, a backup should be made first. Afterwards we have to retest certain functionality. Unfortunately, it also happens that certain layout problems are caused by an error in a new version? Then why update at all? Via updates you not only get new functionalities, but you also keep hackers out. Vulnerabilities are often discovered and fixed in updates. Due to the popularity of WordPress, such websites also attract people with less good intentions. So why choose WordPress? You can read that here.
What? Update plugins
Monthly cost: € 50, count on a multiple when an update causes a problem.
Secure
Updating is part of securing, but the story doesn’t stop there. Protecting your website from malware, hackers and other threats is essential to ensure the safety of your data and that of your customers. Besides hijacking your homepage, you also don’t want to make the news about how your customer data got into the hands of hackers. By the way, did you know that according to the GDPR legislation you must take adequate measures to protect the data of your customers?
At Stormlabs, we have several lines of defense against hackers. The first is Cloudflare, a service that stands between the visitors and the website itself. The second layer is a security plugin on WordPress that stops attempts to break in and notifies us when we need to perform an urgent update. The third layer is the anti-virus/anti-malware tool that our web host has been using on all its servers since 2023. We can proudly say that not a single site has been hacked since 2014. But unfortunately we have had to intervene a few times to avoid this.
What? Secure your website against hackers
Monthly cost: € 0, as long as nothing happens…
Adjustments
Your business is alive and so should your website. New texts, optimization, adding new realizations, new photos, opening hours, you name it. As your business grows and changes, you may want to update or improve your website to keep it aligned with your brand and business goals. This also involves work. You can certainly do certain things yourself, WordPress is certainly user-friendly enough for that. But to relieve our customers, we carry out up to 4 smaller adjustments per month, included in our “Performance & Security” maintenance contract.
What? Make changes to your website
Monthly cost: depending on the adjustments. Count on an hourly rate of € 50 – 75
SEO & SEA
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Advertising (SEA) are two crucial aspects of your website’s online visibility. SEO makes your website easy to find by search engines, while SEA focuses on paid advertising that makes your site more prominent in search results. Costs for SEO and SEA can vary greatly depending on your goals, the competition in your industry, and the specific strategies you use. At Stormlabs we know better than anyone which strategy suits your company & objectives. Technically, it is not a necessary cost to keep your website in good shape, but we mention it here anyway.
What? Be found in search engines and attract visitors
Monthly cost: Varies enormously. An average SEO & SEA package can cost € 2000 per month.
Although it is difficult to determine an exact monthly cost for a website due to the many variables, we can say that managing a website is an ongoing investment. Whether you’re just starting to build a website or looking for ways to improve your existing site, it’s important to consider these costs in your budget. Remember that a well-maintained and optimized website can contribute to the long-term growth and success of your company or product.
In our opinion, the absolute minimum investment for keeping a single WordPress site up and running is € 60 per month.
