As an ecommerce business, your website’s reliability is an important factor in maximizing revenue.
After all, if your website experiences downtime or critical errors, customers won’t be able to place orders. In the long run, an unreliable ecommerce site could seriously impact the success of your business.
Thankfully, these risks can be mitigated with proper website maintenance practices. But how much will it cost?
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Why Ecommerce Companies Need Website Maintenance and Support
Most ecommerce companies have experienced situations where their site has crashed or stopped working properly. It’s stressful and detrimental to your sales.
If you haven’t been through it yet, trust us, it will happen!
When your website is not working properly, your users may be unable to purchase from you, browse your site, and contact you.
You’ll find yourself scrambling to fix the issue yourself or hire an overpriced professional to perform an emergency repair. It’s not a fun situation and you’re losing sales in the meantime.
However, unreliable websites and frequent downtime do not have to be the reality of your ecommerce business. Managing and maintaining your ecommerce website effectively can reduce the likelihood of these problems occurring.
How Much Does Web Maintenance Cost in Ecommerce?
Ecommerce websites are known for being difficult to maintain. With so many product pages, visitors, and software integrations, keeping it all running smoothly can be a challenge.
Most ecommerce companies hire a website maintenance company to help manage these technical aspects of their site. Large ecommerce sites may have their own in-house team for website maintenance.
The cost for ecommerce website maintenance typically runs between $250 and $10,000+ per month.
When broken down based on website size, you can expect these maintenance costs:
- Small ecommerce website: $250 – $500 per month
- Medium ecommerce website: $500 – $2,500 per month
- Large ecommerce website: $2,500 – $10,000+ per month
There are many factors that categorize your ecommerce store as small, medium, or large, such as number of products, monthly visitors, revenue, and more. Consider your unique situation to determine where you might fall within this range of costs.
Although it can be expensive, the consequences of neglecting website maintenance are high since your website reliability can drastically impact your sales. You’ll want a premium website maintenance service that proactively minimizes the risk of downtime and errors.
Essential Components of Ecommerce Website Maintenance (Cost Breakdown)
There are many activities involved in website maintenance, which ultimately comprise the cost. Since every ecommerce site is unique, the activities performed will be different depending on your situation.
To help you determine the maintenance costs for you site, we’ll explain the main components involved in website maintenance.
1. Domain Name Renewal
When you started your website, your first expense was probably your domain name. Most domains are very cheap to purchase, but sometimes can be expensive if it’s a sought-after name.
Regardless of your purchase price, the cost to renew your domain name for your ecommerce site is very cheap.
Renewing your domain name for your ecommerce site will cost between $10 and $20 per year. This ensures that you retain ownership of your domain name.
Although domain renewal only take a few minutes and is very cheap, it is the most important annual website maintenance activity!
2. Website Hosting
Your website hosting provider stores all of your website’s files and databases and makes them available to the public via your domain name.
Almost all ecommerce companies work with a third-party hosting company, rather than hosting it themselves. Common hosting companies are Amazon Web Services, GoDaddy, and Bluehost.
Your website hosting cost will vary a lot depending on your ecommerce website’s traffic and file usage.
Most ecommerce websites can expect to pay $30 to $150 per month for website hosting. This cost can be even higher for large ecommerce sites that must handle large spikes of traffic.
Be sure to choose a reliable, secure hosting provider. Do not choose the cheapest option!
3. Software Updates
When developers create new features or fix security issues with their software, they will push these releases out as software updates.
It’s important to stay on top of these software updates to improve website security and functionality.
There are many services available to help you manage your ecommerce software updates. This could either be paid software or help from a website maintenance service.
The cost for managing your ecommerce software updates typically range from $25 to $500 per month.
Different website platforms will have different software management needs (e.g., WordPress, Shopify, Square), so you should research what is required for your own ecommerce site.
4. Site Optimization
Website optimization comes in many forms, but all aspects are important for your ecommerce store’s success. It includes any activities required to keep your website running at maximum performance, such as database cleaning and page speed optimization.
You can expect ecommerce website optimization to cost between $100 and $2,500 per month.
There are lot of factors that could influence this cost, which is why the cost range is so wide. For example, if you’re uploading lots of new products and deleting old pages, there may be a lot of page and image optimizations needed to keep everything running optimally.
5. Inspections, Troubleshooting, and Repair
Preventative maintenance can help minimize website errors, but eventually you’ll run into some issues with your site.
As an ecommerce site, your website’s reliability and uptime are crucial to maximize your revenue. If your website experiences any interruptions, your sales will also be affected.
Monthly error troubleshooting and repair can cost an ecommerce site anywhere from $100 to $10,000+ per month.
Yes, that’s a huge range, but let’s explain why.
Think of all the huge ecommerce websites that exist, such as Amazon, eBay, and Etsy. These sites get millions of visits per month and have hundreds of thousands of products. Imagine what it take for these companies to troubleshooting and repair website issues every month.
Although these are extreme examples, there are tons of high-traffic ecommerce stores that require full-scale teams to handle troubleshooting and repair.
On the other hand, there are also ecommerce sites that only have a handful of products and don’t receive much traffic, therefore do not need much troubleshooting.
Consider your own site’s situation to determine how much resources you need to devote to page inspections, troubleshooting, and repair.
6. Firewall Protection and Malware Scanning
Website security is very important, especially for ecommerce stores.
Since your site deals with sensitive customer data, it’s your responsibility to keep it protected and secure.
A web application firewall, malware scanning, and other website security protections will cost between $0 and $100 per month.
Yes, there is free software available that you can use, but as an ecommerce site we recommend choosing a paid tool for ultimate protection.
7. File and Database Backups
A great way to keep your ecommerce site protected is by taking frequent backups of your website. This will protect your data in the event of a critical site error or website hack.
Software to manage backups can cost between $0 and $50 per month.
Although free software will get the job done, your ecommerce store can benefit from the features offered by paid software, such as real-time backups and off-site storage.
How to Reduce Your Ecommerce Website Maintenance Costs
Ecommerce maintenance costs can add up over time, especially if your site experiences frequent issues.
Properly maintaining your site is the key for reducing your website costs in the long term. It will help prevent large, unexpected website repair bills. It also helps minimize downtime so your revenue can keep rolling in around the clock.
To reduce your ecommerce costs, you should develop a website maintenance plan for your web team to follow. However, most ecommerce companies cannot afford to hire a web team internally, so a website maintenance company is generally the most affordable option.
You can also perform website maintenance yourself, however this will distract you from your other responsibilities and you may not have the expertise to do it properly.
FAQs About the Cost of Ecommerce Website Maintenance
Getting Started With Ecommerce Maintenance
We hope this article helped you gain a better understanding of ecommerce maintenance costs.
As we mentioned, there are plenty of variables that determine this cost, so you’ll want to think about all the components of your website and what it will take to maintain each of them.
It’s important to prioritize maintenance to help your ecommerce website maximize uptime and sales, so we recommend getting started today.
If you’re still not sure how much maintenance will cost for your own ecommerce website, we are happy to provide a free 20-minute consultation to help you determine your needs.
