In part 1 of this article we looked at the initial setup costs of building a website: getting yourself a domain name and organising a website design. There are, however, other areas to consider.
Web Hosting
Web hosting can be extremely complicated but it need not be. For most businesses a simple web hosting plan from a web hosting company such as 123-Reg or Media Temple will be more than sufficient. Web hosting companies sell file space on their servers and bandwidth to those servers. Web hosting plans are priced according to the amount of file space you want and the amount of bandwidth you need. Generally speaking, the larger your website, the more you’ll have to pay for web hosting.
Website Build and Maintenance
So by now you’ve got yourself a domain name, a great looking design and a web hosting package but you need someone to put the whole thing together. Website build is likely to be your largest cost. Website developers can take the designs you’ve had made and build them into the web pages that people can access. If you’ve elected to build a large website with a lot of content then you should be looking at using a content management system, it’ll be a website developer than will construct or configure a content management system for you to use.
Website maintenance costs incorporate content based activities: such as updating the content when there are changes to your organisation and adding new content; and technology based activities such as upgrading software, improving website security, adding functionality to the content management system etc.
These areas mentioned are the main cost areas of a website build but it is a high level overview and by no means an exhaustive list: each website build will have it’s own additional pricing pain points. A website designer and/or a project manager would be able to discuss the options with your business in much greater and specific detail.
