Introduction
Website Management is the process of keeping a website in tip top condition. Website management involves a web professional performing a number of functions on your website each month to make sure it runs smoothly at all times.
Website management can be broken down into 4 main areas:
Website Management Explained (4 Sections)
1. Website Maintenance
People often think website maintenance and website management are the same, but website maintenance is only a small part of the larger website management service.
Website Maintenance involves routinely checking on a website’s vitals. Typically, it includes checking that the website is up to date, all pages are functioning properly, all plugins and themes are on the most recent stable version, mail is functioning correctly and that the website uptime is over 99.9% on a month to month basis.
Fig. 1 – Website Maintenance & Updates
What does website maintenance cost in Ireland?
The cost of website maintenance varies widely depending on the size and complexity of your website. Typically, a normal website can expect to pay somewhere between €29/mo – €49/mo for maintenance.
2. Website Security
Website security is an important consideration for any business website. Whether you are accepting payments, taking contact enquiries, or providing information to your customers, you need to know your website is safe and secure and does not pose any threat to your business or your customers.
Website security has become much more simple in recent years, and our security packages involve monthly website backups, website maintenance, internal firewalls, routine security manual sweeps, reliable hosting and website encryption.
3. Website Hosting
Website hosting refers to the hardware and software responsible for serving your website to your customers. High speed, localised hosting in Ireland means your website can perform at its full potential. When considering a hosting provider, you should consider the following factors:
1. Location – You want to host your server as close to your customers as possible to reduce the latency of the connection. For example, if you are operating in Ireland, make sure your website is hosted in Ireland.
Fig. 2 – Website Server Hosting
2. Reliability – You want an internationally recognised and accredited hosting provider, such as Amazon. We have an AWS private server for our clients which is ISO9001 certified and can handle any usage requirements a client may have.
3. Support – You want to be sure that if your site goes down, you can make contact with someone any time of the day or night and get your site back online in minutes. Our team provides around the clock backups and we’re never more than a few minutes away from our desk.
What does website hosting cost in Ireland?
You can expect to pay anywhere from €10+ per month for a standard business website hosted in Ireland. Though, like many things, you often get what you pay for, so the focus should be on the value of the hosting, as opposed to the cost alone.
The 3 factors above (location, reliability & support), coupled with your visitor numbers will determine the cost of your website hosting.
4. Website Development
Website development (also known as website upgrades or website improvements) are usually annual retainers for small website improvements. Website development retainers are useful for clients because it gives them peace of mind that if they need something small done quickly, they can have the work done same-day. It also gives them a direct line to a dedicated developer, allowing rapid changes to happen at any stage.
Our standard website development retainer would include 30 minutes per month of ad-hoc development. Although, larger sites with more complicated functionality sometimes require more development allocations.
Heard Enough?
Website management is a combination of a number of distinct sub-services. Combining these services to varying degrees is common for SMEs because the requirements fluctuate to such a large degree. One of our most popular packages is the “Standard Bundle”, it covers everything mentioned above, i.e. website maintenance, hosting, security and development (6 hours annually).
Learn more about our website management package, or get in touch below.
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