One of the most important components of owning a website is the server it is hosted on. In order for a website to go live on the internet it has to be on a server (hosted). We’ve see way too often that business owners tend to go for the cheapest servers/hosting out there – that is a huge mistake. 

The big server/hosting companies companies that bombard the airwaves generally tent to have poorer quality servers and that will cost you time frustration and yes – even money. You will lose visitors to your site with poor server speed. Your site will take too long to laod and they will go elsewhere. We’ve delt with many hosting companies that continually have outdated software used to run your website at it’s best performance.

Errors on a website affect your ranking in the search engines, speed affects it, long loading times affects it, site timeouts effect it and the list goes on. Sure you might save some money because its cheap hosting but the loss of business going to your competitors is a hidden cost that most business owners tent to overlook.

One of the biggest mistake dive shop websites make is not having an SSL Certificate. Google states that it will give less ranking wot sites that are not secure with and SSL.

When you visit a site you will see in the address bar just before the domain there will be one of two versions of your website’s security:

 A secure site showing that it has an SSL Certificate

 A non-secure site howing that it does not have an SSL Certificate

Which website would you feel more confident about your data and personal information? 1st impressions are crutial oin the internet and you don’t want to make this mistake.

Visitors do not like to stay on websites that state that the site is “Not secure.” This is a simple fix and usually cost about $75 plus installation. We don’t charge to install them but some companies so. So maybe you want to save $75 a year and not bother with an SSL. That savings quickly turns into costing you more because visitors went to your competitions website and spent money on their “secure” site. Not having an SSL is costly!

There are many ongoing tasks that a healthy a website need to take care of. All of these cost either time or money and since time is money here are some items and their related costs.

Daily/Weekly Software Updates – Regular software updates are crutial due to  hacking that happens on a daily basis. As they happen the developers release updated versions of their plugins and core updates to help prevent the hacking going forward. It’s a never ending fight  and not updating when it is ready is dangerous for your site. 

Malware Protection – With the proper malware protection your website can stay healthy and prevent malware attacts that happen every second of the day throughout the world. 

Daily Backups – Dail backups are important for when a server goes down or a hacking occurs. There is nothing worst than not having an up-to-date backup when it is needed most. Lost data is costly! 

If you were to purchase software to do all these you would pay over $100/month plus you would have to manage it. If you are not familiar with backing up and restoring to the cleanest version you could break your site and server. To give you an idea of monthly costs, we do all this work for all of our clients and we charge $100/month with all the items included.

Your average monthly cost for maintaining your website is about $133/mo or $1600/yr.

Here is the recap:

Hosting: $325/yr

SSL Certificate: $75/yr

Security, Backups and Maintenance: $1200/yr

We have see many business owners try to spend a little as possible on their website. The use poor quality hosting, no backups, no security and rarely update their softwares. It shows on so many levels with things like slow site speed, not getting found in search engines, hacked pages and more. The biggest mistake is that they think it’s just a website and in their case it usually is just that.

Your website is what represents you to the world – what is your site saying about you and your business?