There are some unavoidable costs when it comes to building and maintaining a beautiful website, which is an integral part of your business’s success in 2020’s digital landscape. 

Website development can easily cost thousands of dollars and website prices vary depending on your designers and developers. 

All too often, the focus becomes getting the job done for the lowest price possible – but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. This can end up being a costly exercise if you have to spend thousands to re-do the website to fix mistakes.

It is all about striking the right balance and investing in a website which will produce a constant stream of leads and sales.  

In this blog, we explore all website related costs to make sure you get the best value for money.

Domain

The first thing you will have to pay for when building a website is your domain. Domain registrations cost around $20 per year and must be renewed annually. 

Your domain registration is like leasing an apartment, if you don’t renew it in time someone else can lease it, so make sure you remind yourself to pay it on time!

Hosting

The second thing you will need to pay for is a hosting service. Think of web hosting as the montly cost to keep your website running – similar to paying a mobile phone provider for your monthly service. Hosting costs can vary, they depends largely on your website traffic, size of the website, and website speeds required.

While domain registrations have a set price, web hosting comes with many different options depending on your requirements.

If you are a small business who just wants a basic website as a form of an online presence, you should be looking at shared hosting at roughly $15 per month.

While you can get cheaper hosting for as little as $3 a month, you really do get what you pay for with web hosting. On the cheaper plans there are often no automatic backups, your website will be slow and customer service will likely be non-existent. 

If you are more serious about getting the very best out of your website (and of course have the budget for it) you would be looking at a Cloud hosting solution which could set you back anywhere between $40-$100 per month depending on the size of your website and the traffic it receives. Cloud hosting is a premium form of hosting and is optimised for speed.

Make sure your website host has “Let’s Encrypt” or another similar free SSL service. An SSL certificate is what makes your website secure, which is identified with https in the URL instead of http. Search engines appreciate websites that are secure by ranking them higher in the search engine rankings. Some hosts will charge $100 or more per year for an SSL certificate which is money wasted – you’re much better off spending money on good hosting and regular maintenance. 

At Webstein, we offer a range of managed hosting packages to suit your requirements and budget. We take care of everything technical, so you can focus on running your business.

Website

Your main investment will be in the development of your website itself. There are many website builders on the market such as Wix, Weebly and Squarespace which will allow you to build a website yourself. These website builders are fine if you are happy to pick a template and add your content to it.

If you want your own website with a design suited to your business, you are best to engage an experienced web designer who can discuss your business goals with you, and develop a site that not only looks amazing, but acts as the lean mean selling machine your business needs.

Well thought out website design is important, as it is how you convert clicks into leads and articulate your brand story to customers. It really is worth paying a professional to make sure your website is designed perfectly to encourage your customers to take action. 

Create a successful website with Webstein

Here at Webstein, we value transparency and our goal is to always provide value to our clients.

Our team will ensure you stand out from the crowd with flawless designs translating to higher conversion rates.  

Regardless of the type of website your small business requires, we will talk you through the web development process, maintenance and design costs to ensure your money is well invested.

Our easy to update websites start from $800+ GST which includes a custom design to best suit your needs and business goals. 

We hope this provides some insight into how much it costs to create a website, what is worth paying for, what you should expect to pay in the current market.

For further advice drop us an email at [email protected].