When building a new website, one factor to consider are the various costs. These include the costs to get started, the costs upon going ‘live’, and any ongoing (recurring) costs. MidState Design typically sends out a quote with each of these costs itemized.

Costs versus Time

MidState Design will help you find the right balance of costs versus time

They include:

  1. Down payment to get started building the site. (Payment 1 of 2)
  2. The expected final payment upon going live. (Payment 2 of 2)
  3.  Hosting cost for 1 year. This is a recurring expense.
  4.  Maintenance cost for 1 year. This is a recurring expense.

Not included in these costs are the price of the domain. This is because domains are registered at 3rd party companies and the pricing is beyond the control of MidState Design. Pricing can vary wildly. Domain name registrations are renewed on a yearly basis unless the registrant has paid for several years in advance. Some examples of third part domain name registrars are GoDaddy, NameCheap, WildWestDomains, Tucows, etc.

Now back to the initial four costs…

Not all clients have maintenance packages. Some prefer to do maintenance themselves. ‘Maintenance’, depending on the plan, can include performing updates, edits, adding pages/posts, addressing issues that arise, and so on. There are also some extra features that come with MidState maintenance packages which self-maintained sites do not get for free.

Hosting costs, on the other hand, are the cost of leasing space, resources, and support for keeping your site online, providing email, and so on.

Please keep in mind that each of these have a cost on my end as well. This is by no means a ‘pure profit’ scenario.

Hosting: The dedicated server and various scripts that are on it are not cheap by any means. There is also a lot of time that goes into configuring, updating, and maintaining the server itself. Beyond that, there is the support time. All of this is factored into hosting costs.

Maintenance: As mentioned on the page for maintenance packages quite a few services are offered for a small amount of money. Many of the features that come in the form of add-on’s  are paid for on my end on a monthly basis. Built in video tutorials are a good example of that. Maintenance is more than just running simple updates. That’s usually the easy part. Things can, and do go wrong. Part of what you’re paying for is the assurance that your site will be made whole in the case of some catastrophic failure. (This could be due to bad updates, user error, hacking, etc.).  When someone with a maintenance package requires changes to the website it is almost always done without any further charge. This saves the client from receiving multiple bills for updates and edits over the course of the year and also gives them the peace of mind that they don’t have to figure things out on their own. There are many other benefits beyond this, like the security guarantee. Redundant backups, etc.

 

COSTS RECAP

Once your site has gone ‘live’ online you should expect to have a few recurring costs. These include hosting, maintenance, and domain renewal.

Time is money, so the definition of ‘cost’ depends on how you go about taking care of your website. What is not advisable is building a website and then leaving it un-maintained. Dynamic websites are a lot like computers in that they require periodic updates to keep them fully functional and secure. One sure way to lose your investment is to have a ‘set it and forget it’ approach to your WordPress site.

 

CONCLUSION

Like anything else in life, nothing worth having comes without costs. A little investment on the part of a website owner can be the difference between having a fully functional site that lasts for many years, or having to rebuild from scratch because they dropped the ball. MidState Design cannot offer free updates/hosting and remain in business anymore than a mechanic could do so. It costs many thousands of dollars to pay for the server, scripts, plugins, themes, and other necessities of running this business. MidState does not skimp out when it comes to such things. Doing so can lead to disaster.

It’s truly up to you to take steps to ensure your online existence will be as trouble free as possible. MidState Design is here to help. Feel free to contact me if you have questions, or if you want to learn about options available to you to keep your website happy and healthy!