It’s a good idea to identify the ongoing expenditure associated with keeping a website online. It can sometimes be a misconception that once the site has been built and paid for – that’s it. However, there are some ongoing costs you should be aware of and paying on time to avoid complications. Our blog explains…

Domain name

Your domain name is your websites address and identity. In our case, “niftybear.co.uk”.

Purchasing a domain name is easy and the process can be competed in minutes on popular sites such as 123 Reg and GoDaddy. Typically, companies will offer you a fantastically low price for purchasing your domain for the first year – some as low as 99p. Whilst still cheap, be aware that the price of your domain is likely to increase after year one to roughly £10 to £30 per year.

You may also be interested in purchasing domain expiration protection. This will protect your domain if for whatever reason, you are unable to renew it straight away. Some providers will put it up for sale immediately if you have not paid for renewal. This is the last thing you want because somebody could potentially buy your domain and it will no longer be available. You can get domain expiration protection from a majority of domain supplier.

Hosting

In order for a website to be live, it needs to be hosted on a server. Most commonly, web design companies use trustworthy cloud based servers to store your website and it’s database (all the files that have been put together to build your website).

The price of hosting varies depending on your website. For example, if you have a very high-tech and large site, you’ll use more bandwidth and therefore will need to pay for more affluent hosting. If on the other hand you have a small and crisp site, hosting can be low cost.

On average, you should expect to pay between £10 and £45 per month for hosting.

SSL certificate

An SSL certificate is something that sites should always have. This will allow users to securely interact with your website and the information exchanged will be encrypted. In order for a website to be SEO friendly, and if you deal with online financial transactions, it is highly recommended that you get an SSL certificate.

SSL certificates vary in price but can cost anything between £10 and £100 per year.

General maintenance 

At Nifty Bear Web Design, we build our sites on WordPress – one of the most popular CMS systems in the world. WordPress sites are built using a collection of plugins and extensions. For example, if you want a carousel on your website, the most effective way to get one is to use a plugin and adapt it accordingly.

In order for plugins to continue to work properly, they need to be regularly updated. The developers of plugins are always looking to improve them and make them secure against potential security breaches. Therefore, it’s very important your website is regularly updated.

The price of ongoing updates will vary depending on your web developer. However, you should expect to pay anything from £20 – £200 per month, depending on your exact requirements.

Backups

Unfortunately, where there are websites, there are hackers. We can confirm firsthand that if a website is hacked, it can have disastrous effects. Therefore, it’s important to take precautions to make a hack unlikely.

In order to limit the chances of being hacked, Nifty Bear will set up a series of security barriers – as standard and included in the price for all of our websites. This includes a monthly website backup that can be used to re-upload your site to a previous date.

Additional backups and protection is available and if you are interested in finding out more, please contact us today.