Your website is an online business asset that helps you engage with potential buyers and close them while your actual ‘shop’ is closed. Therefore, it is important that your website is in sound health always. To this end, you need to have a plan and budget for website maintenance while building the website itself. This article explains the website maintenance cost in Nigeria for small and big businesses.
How much does it cost to maintain a website in Nigeria?
All things considered, it costs around ₦12,000 – ₦200,000 yearly to maintain a corporate or small business website in Nigeria. Tech companies’ websites or blogs that get a lot of monthly visits like Paystack and legit spend around ₦800,000 – ₦30,000,000 on website maintenance every year. The amount you spend to maintain your website also depends on the website type. The table below shows the amount it costs to maintain different website types yearly.
| Type of Website | Maintenance Cost (Yearly) |
| Personal Websites e.g. personal diary blogs, portfolios, landing/sales pages | ₦12,000 – ₦100,000 |
| Corporate Websites (Small business) e.g. company website | ₦30,000 – ₦300,000 |
| Monetized Blogs e.g. news, gossip, sports blogs | ₦50,000 – ₦3,500,000 |
| Small-scale eCommerce Websites e.g. eCommerce website for small businesses | ₦30,000 – ₦500,000 |
| Corporate Websites (Big business) e.g. company websites for popular businesses, schools, etc. | ₦100,000 – ₦10,000,000 |
| Large-scale eCommerce Websites e.g. eCommerce websites that accept vendors – Jumia, Konga etc. | ₦2,000,000 – ₦100,000,000 |
Read more: How much does it cost to build a website in Nigeria?
What is website maintenance?
Website maintenance involves the continuous monitoring of the overall health of your website along with regular updates and optimizations to ensure that your website is in the best state to give visitors a great experience and lead to conversions for you.
Should I hire someone to maintain my website in Nigeria?
Website maintenance is tricky.
You should request complete disclosure from the person or company that designed your website so that you can make minor edits when necessary.
A web designer in Nigeria can offer you free maintenance for a period of time.
However, as you grow your business after the period of free maintenance, you’ll probably need a lot more than minor edits.
You won’t be able to free up the time to do complicated edits yourself.
Therefore, you need to discuss website maintenance with your web designer right from the start.
If you are not satisfied with how they charge for this, you can work with another web design company to perform regular updates and optimizations on your website.
How many times should I order website maintenance in a year?
This depends on where your website falls in the categories in the table above.
For instance, the website of a big company like Jumia rakes in loads of traffic as well as everyday updates from their vendors which must reflect on their mobile app.
They also run a programmatic advert that heavily depends on what they have on their platform at any instant.
Oh, and since they handle financial transactions, they are a prime target for hackers.
Therefore, to run smoothly, they need 24/7 maintenance jobs by web design and development experts of different specializations from outlook to security.
At the barest minimum, a small business website in Nigeria needs yearly maintenance which covers domain name, hosting, and security (SSL) renewal. However, if your website was built on a platform like WordPress, you might want to subscribe to a monthly maintenance plan with your web designer that covers plugin updates.
What is included in website maintenance costs?
Website Hosting
Your website is an intricate arrangement of content; text, images, video, etc. Your website content (and information about how they should look on your website) need to be stored somewhere.
Hosting companies like Namecheap and Hostinger rent out space to you on their physical server for you to store your website files and information.
Therefore, you need to pay for your hosting monthly or yearly – depending on the subscription plans your hosting company offers.
Website hosting in Nigeria costs around ₦7,000 – ₦75,000 yearly for personal and businesses. How much you pay for hosting in Nigeria depends on whether can work with a local hosting company like Qservers or an international one like Hostinger.
The table below shows some hosting companies and how much they charge yearly for shared hosting services of the same level in quality. The local hosting companies are Nigerian hosting companies.;
| Hosting Company | Type | Yearly Hosting Fee |
| Qservers | Local | ₦12,000 |
| Whogohost | Local | ₦11,000 |
| Hostinger | International | ₦30,000 |
| DomainKing | Local | ₦27,000 |
| Web4Africa | Local | ₦24,000 |
| Namecheap | International | ₦18,000 |
| Hostgator | International | ₦45,000 |
| HostNowNow | Local | ₦12,000 |
| Siteground | International | ₦75,000 |
| Bluehost | International | ₦50,000 |
Domain Name
Your domain name is your address online i.e. what people type on their web browser to get to your website.
There are three types of domain names;
- Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) including popular extensions like .com, .net, .org, and the less popular .biz, .info. The cost of gTLDs depends on their popularity, in fact, some people have bought some domain names with the hope of selling them for exorbitant prices in future.
- Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) include country-specific extensions like .co.uk for establishments in the UK, .ng or .com.ng for Nigerian companies. Therefore, they are usually bought for use in said locations. If you are looking to expand your business across borders, .com is the safest domain name extension.
- Sponsored Top-Level Domains (sTLD) include extensions that are limited to special bodies like government parastatals (.gov, .gov.ng) or educational institutions (.edu, .edu.ng). People looking to register such domain names need special licences to validate their intentions.
Website domain names cost around ₦1,000 – ₦40,000 depending on the popularity of your domain name (companyname) and preferred extension (.com, .io, .ng, etc.)
SSL Certificate
When users type your domain name or click links on your website, they are asking your hosting servers to send them files you kept with them (hosted with them).
The internet is full of cyber criminals who intercept files and data.
Therefore, it is important to protect your website visitors.
SSL – secure sockets layer is an internet tool that sheaths files and data as they move from the hosting to web browsers.
In addition to security, SSL certificates improve your chances of being ranked for relevant terms as Google shuns websites without SSL certificates.
Most hosting companies offer plans that include free SSL certificates in the first year.
Also, SSL certificates can cost between ₦3,000 and ₦60,000. The more secure your users need to feel, the more you pay for SSL. For instance, an eCommerce website with financial transactions needs to pay more for security than a simple portfolio website.
A website secured with SSL has;
- A padlock on the left-hand side of the URL box
- HTTPS:// in front of the domain name
When you click on the padlock, you should see a message prompt that shows you the ‘Certificate is valid’.
Plugins
These are software extensions added to your website on platforms like WordPress.
Plugins enable your website to perform special functions like;
- Chat with visitors – Live chats, WhatsApp Chat
- Collect leads – forms
- Receive payment – payment gateway
- Add products to your shop
- Rank for set keywords
Plugins are created by web developers to serve these functions.
Most plugins have a freemium model that enables you to use limited features for free. If you wish to do more, you need to pay for a licence to access premium features.
Premium prices for full plugin features range between ₦3,000 and ₦100,000 yearly. However, some plugins require you to pay only once for lifetime access.
SEO work
A website can’t attract visitors by itself.
You make efforts to drive traffic to your website, from something as simple as adding your website URL to business assets like business cards, flyers, etc. to promoting your website using Facebook and Google Ads.
While online paid promotion on social media and search engines drive targeted traffic to your website, they cost money and the results are short-lived.
You need a strategy that drives traffic to your website for free.
That is search engine optimization (SEO)!
You can start SEO while building your website by requiring your web designer to add metadata (title and description) to every page they create.
SEO work in website maintenance includes;
- Optimizing site speed
- Posting blog articles to expand keywords you rank for
- Updating site maps and working on Google Console suggestions
- Requesting crawls for new pages
SEO service in Nigeria costs between ₦50,000 and ₦250,000 monthly depending on how intensive the work you want to be done on your website.
General Support
Nothing is perfect, anything can go wrong.
Therefore, it is important to have a great relationship with your web designer.
If you run a business where all the action happens on your website, it is important your website is live and kicking all the time.
To be sure of this, you need to discuss website maintenance with your web designer.
This includes regular checkups and backup to make sure you can return your website to previous editions while you figure out potential issues.
Monthly website support costs between ₦10,000 and ₦80,000 depending on how complicated your website is.
FAQs about website maintenance costs
Here are answers to popular questions small business owners ask about website maintenance and its costs.
What is website maintenance?
Website maintenance is a regular exercise of examining and optimizing your website according to what is standard in your niche as your business grows. For instance, website maintenance guarantees that your site includes the latest pictures in your gallery or updated prices of your products after a promo. Website maintenance is just as crucial to your business as balancing your finances monthly.
Why should I outsource website maintenance?
While you save money by running website maintenance alone, some tasks may be complex. Since you are not a web developer, some problems may outweigh your understanding. Also, while hiring a web designer for your website maintenance is an additional cost, it saves you time, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business. Avoid breaking your website by dabbling in things you don’t understand; keep your website working all year round.
How often should I run maintenance on my website?
At the barest minimum, you must run a maintenance check on your website every year. Yearly maintenance allows you to manage tasks like;
- Renew your hosting, domain name, and SSL certificate
- Update all the plugins on your website
- Optimize security and website speed
- Update website content for changes
However, small businesses need more than the above tasks to maintain a profitable website. Yes, your website should add to your revenue. For instance, a search engine optimization service may help your website rank better on search engines and drive quality traffic to your business.
Things change for your business over the year, and You must update your website about your business. It is weird for your social media content to say something while your website says something else. This is another reason you should have someone on standby managing your website.
Which factors affect website maintenance costs?
How much you pay for website maintenance depends on;
- website size
- website complexity
- web designer’s experience
- cost of items used
The cost of website maintenance ultimately depends on how robust your website is. For instance, the amount it costs to maintain a one-page personal website will be comparably lower than how much it costs to maintain a 200-product eCommerce website.
How much does website maintenance cost per month?
Monthly, it costs between nothing at all to millions of Naira to maintain your website. How much it costs to manage your website every month depends on your type of business and what your website maintenance package includes.
If you run DIY maintenance, it would cost you only your time and effort to update your website monthly. However, if you run a website that includes products you need to pay for, like plugins or email subscriptions, you need to pay for these monthly if you are not subscribed to the yearly package.
How much does website maintenance cost per year?
It costs around ₦12,000 – ₦200,000 yearly to maintain a corporate or small business website in Nigeria. Tech companies’ websites or blogs that get a lot of monthly visits like Paystack and legit spend around ₦800,000 – ₦30,000,000 on website maintenance every year. The amount you spend to maintain your website also depends on the website type. You may pay monthly subscriptions for updates and tech support, but you can do most things yearly.
Do you need a website?
It makes no difference reading about the website maintenance cost in Nigeria when you don’t even own a website, right? Hence the question.
Having a well-maintained website is one of those things every small business owners in Nigeria need to do.
If you are ready to take that step and need help, I am here for you.
The thing is; a website built by a digital marketer is different from that built by a web designer.
I will work on your website with your users always on my mind.
Therefore, the end product will be an awesome website that drives results for you.
Visit my web design page to learn more about my website design services.
Cheers!
