Websites continue to be a popular channel for businesses in Singapore. As more and more offline businesses are getting online, there is a caveat that most business owners ignore. Business owners wrongly assume that setting up and running a website is a one-time cost.
This wrong assumption has led to many reality checks for business owners and hidden costs that hurt them in the long run.
This article is made to bust the myths about website maintenance and to give business owners the true picture of the cost of maintaining a website in Singapore.
Cost to Maintaining a Website in Singapore
Domain Name
Without a domain name, there is no website. Picking the right domain is getting harder by the day because of dwindling domain names. This is a demand-supply business and the domain names in demand will have a higher price tag.
Buying hosting on Vodien for a .com domain will set you back by $20, but the same for a .sg domain will set you back by $60. If you are a Singapore focused business, you’ll have to cough-up the higher cost because of excess demand and low supply.
There are cheaper domain extensions like .net, but these aren’t for every business, they are predominantly for Internet providers, Infrastructure companies and Email companies.
So if you don’t belong to the above category, then a .com or a .sg extension is what you’ll need to buy. This is a yearly expense and completely unavoidable.
Hosting
The second big expense is the hosting. Buying hosting can be a bit tricky because most business owners don’t understand the plans they need. There are hosting providers that are developer friendly which might be cheaper, but it won’t be user-friendly and is not recommended for most business owners.
Another question that plagues business owners is, How much disk space to purchase? This depends on whether you want a shared hosting or a dedicated hosting.
Shared hosting is where you share the server with other websites and with a dedicated server, you get your own. Obviously, the dedicated server is more expensive, but the benefit is, you get a faster website.
Hosting in Singapore in this case is…
Source: mangomattermedia.com
Generally, for a simple informational website, the cheapest hosting plan that costs $10 will do. For businesses that have a lot of traffic and activity on their site, then a bigger plan is advised.
That might set you back anywhere from $20 to $60.
Dedicated hosting is very expensive and starts at $200 and goes all the way up to $1500. But most businesses don’t need dedicated hosting, especially when starting off.
Building the site
The hard part is always building a site, but thanks to advances in web development, there are numerous options to make a website.
Site Builders
Site builders like Wix and Weebly are ever popular because of their easy to build options. They literally are plug and play solutions and you can have a fully functioning site ready under a few hours.
There are free options, but if you truly want to have a full-fledged site, then you need to upgrade. It starts from $5 a month and goes all the way to $20 a month.
WordPress
One of the most popular options because of its flexibility is WordPress. WordPress also have design options, unlike any other platform. If you go to Themeforest, you’ll have a wide range of theme options that cater to various segments. You can get very specific designs and features depending on your business.
A good theme will set you back by $60. It goes all the way to $100+
WordPress Plugins
WordPress is a great CMS that gives the flexibility of chopping and changing things depending on your requirements. Although it can make an amateur feel like a professional, a lot of the premium features are paid for. Plugins don’t come cheap. Some of them cost hundreds of dollars for a lifetime license.
For example, the popular Yoast plugin is free, but if you want the premium features, it will cost you $89 as a one-time fee.
High-quality images and videos
This is a cost that nobody factors in, but when you are making a new site you’ll need high-quality images. These copyrighted images don’t come cheap.
For example, an image on Shutterstock can cost you $10 for each photo.
Videos also play a vital role in explaining your product to your customers. A good video with a voice-over and simple text overlays will cost you $50 from platforms like Fiverr. A much more pronounced video can cost you anywhere from $500 to $1000.
Web Maintenance and Changes
If you have an up and running website and you get consistent business from online channels, then it’s very likely you’ll make constant changes to your website.
There are a few ways your website can be maintained. You can either appoint a service to do this or do it yourself. Doing it yourself has its limitations. If you had to hire a web design service, then these are the popular services most companies offer.
- Creating a page
- Replicating an existing page
- Making changes to a page
- Updating WordPress and the plugins
- Deleting unwanted plugins
- Adding a specific plugin and checking to see if it works
- Backing up the site
- Creating a sidebar, widget.
- Changing small details on a page like a typo, name change, number change etc
- Add social media links to the site
- Add a video or image
- Add a pre-designed slider
- Adding a product on Woocommerce (For E-commerce companies)
- Content creation
Some services charge $500 / month for about 9 hours of work.
Summary of the website maintenance cost
| Service | Cost |
| Hosting | $10 / month on average |
| Domain Name | $20 (.com) and $60(.sg) / Yearly |
| Site builder | $5 or $10 / month |
| WordPress Theme | $60 / one-time |
| Plugins | $50 to $100 / one-time |
| Site Maintenance | $500 / month |
| Copyright images | $10 per photo |
| Explainer videos | $50 to $1000 |
Check out our preferred web hosting in Singapore here.
Cost of Website Maintenance in Singapore – Other Services
Apart from the standard website maintenance that was mentioned above. There are a few other things that most websites will require in terms of a monthly effort that comes under website maintenance. Here they are.
#1 — SEO Services / Content Writing Services
A lot of companies that offer website maintenance services also provide you SEO and Content Writing services. This is very important for a brand new website to start ranking on Google and getting some traffic. If you cannot hire a person for SEO services, then you can always outsource it to the website maintenance company.
#2 — New Features to the Sites
If your site is functional and you are looking to add more and more features, then you don’t have to deal with independent freelancers every time. If you hire a qualified agency that deals with website maintenance, they can add the new features for you as well.
#3 — Running Campaigns on your website
These days websites don’t run without any new campaigns. If you want to create new campaign or run partnerships with other brands, then you will have to create dedicated pages with separate coupon codes or a different website flow. For all of this you can get it done rather cheaply with a website maintenance company.
#4 — Adding new products to the store
If you run an e-commerce company, then you might have a requirement to add new products to the store on a regular basis and if you don’t have a full time hire who can do this, then you can subscribe to the services of a company that can do this on your behalf on a regular basis.
Final Thought on Web Maintenance Cost
As you can see, the cost of maintaining a website in Singapore isn’t simple and straightforward and will burn a hole in your pocket if you don’t pay attention.
The best way to embark on a website journey is to plan ahead and see if the online channels will give you the ROI you want. There’s no point in investing on a website that is going to be idle.
Do check out our WordPress Maintenance Plan Here.
Contact us today to see how we as a Digital Agency Singapore can help your business GENERATE MORE LEADS through awesome growth tactics.
Read also:
Cost to Building a Mobile App in Singapore
Cost to Building a Website in Singapore
Novatise
We help SMEs in Singapore to create digital solutions to increase sales and productivity. At Novatise, we work in a lean environment as such, no sales person is involved.
