I am amazed at the amount of money website designers try to charge their clients for hosting and maintenance. It might have made sense back in the day when websites were not user friendly, but isn’t the whole purpose of using a CMS like WordPress to make updating user friendly?
Let’s take a look at the typical hosting/maintenance plan and see what the real costs in both time and money are…
Web Hosting
There is nothing special here, as most brand name hosting companies charge around $8/month for an unlimited hosting plan. If you have any issues, they are really good at helping you fix the problem as well. Cost: $96/year Time:0
Unlimited Email
Standard feature of most hosting accounts. Cost: $0 Time: 0
Weekly backup of your site delivered to your email
In its simplest form, a FREE plugin the developer installs on your site. Literally set and forget for them. This is something that should be priced into the design of the site, if you want it. Cost: $0 Time: 0
Google analytics Reporting
Another item to be priced into the design of the site. All that is required is registering your site with Google, where you are given a code to be inserted into the design html code. Then they have access to all the data at the Google Analytics website. 30 minutes to set up a report and set it to email you on a schedule and there you have it. Now, should you pay to have this all set up, YES. Once. Not every month. Cost: $0 Time: 0
Monthly software and security updates
Once again, this is something WordPress has worked hard at to make very easy for the end user. Log on to your site once a month and WordPress will tell you exactly what needs updating on your site. Click a button for each item and the update is done AUTOMATICALLY. That’s it. Cost: $0 Time: 3 hours / year
Simple content changes
This is tricky by how the designer defines “simple.” Is simple changing a picture…Yes. What about some copy changes…Yes. Reworking a page layout…Probably not. Adding a new page…No. The question for you is how many changes are you going to need and can you do them yourself. The answer to the later is YES you can. That is why most web designers will offer you access to online training videos to teach YOU how to handle these simple changes. Or, if you just don’t feel comfortable doing them yourself, the designer should offer you an hourly rate to make the changes. Cost: $0-360/ year Time: 0-6 hours / year
Summary
As small business owners, our time and money is in limited supply and needs to be allocated wisely. If you are computer or time challenged and want to have someone else manage all these things…Great. At least now you know what is really involved and you can make an informed decision.
If you have the time and feel comfortable with basic computer software, you know now how easy it can be to manage your WordPress site yourself.
It is important to understand that there is nothing wrong with a company offering these services like this. They are providing a service that people are more than willing to pay for. My intent is only to show that there are options available to you and it’s important you are made aware of them.
Our Misson
is to provide small businesses with the best business printing, promo, and web products possible. We work with premier suppliers, and are dedicated to providing you with top quality business printing and promotional products to help ensure the success of your business.
Together with our experienced and highly trained suppliers, we are ready to take on your marketing needs. No matter what your budget is, we have a solution for you. Preserve your competitive advantage in the market and improve efficiency simply by making use of a single service provider to satisfy all your branding requirements.
