How to Cut Costs for Your Websites and Online Businesses
Launching a website for your business is a must in this day and age. But one of the common reasons people tend to shy away from it is because they feel it is expensive to build and maintain a site. We often do not realize how many things we have to pay for before a successful launch and end up spending more than our initial budget. If you are one of them and looking for ways to reduce the overall cost for your websites and online businesses, you are in the right place!
Of course, there’s no final fixed cost when it comes to websites. It depends on your budget and the steps you take to develop and maintain your site. But, I have some tips and tricks up my sleeves to share with you, so that you cut some load off your pocket.
Take notes; your bank account will thank you for this!
Domain
Every website owner needs to include the cost of a domain in their budget. A domain name, simply put, is the address of your website. For example, www.joomshaper.com. Here, joomshaper is the name of the domain, and .com is the domain name extension. There are two ways to get a domain name for your website:
- Buy a new one
- Or, buy an existing one (very expensive, especially, if it's popular and valuable)
Take a look at our pick on some of the companies that offer pocket-friendly domain names.
GoDaddy: GoDaddy is known to provide the best affordable deals when it comes to domain names and web hosting. You can buy cheap domain names from them for as low as $1.38! Generally, the price range starts from $2 that can go up to $20 or more per year depending on specials or discounts.
NameCheap: The company is providing a NameCheap $0.98 domain name, which is less than a dollar! Generally without any specials/discounts the newer TLDs such as .club, .online, and .site can cost anywhere between $10 and $25, whereas traditional TLDs like .com, .net, and .org are usually priced between $6 and $15.
Hostinger: Another great alternative would be Hostinger 99 cents domain name. They offer popular TLDs at the best price. Like GoDaddy, they also offer 30 days money-back guarantee if you do not get the service they promise to deliver. Amazing, right?
Cloudflare Registrar: You can also register your domain name with Cloudflare Registrar and they will charge you the wholesale price with no markup! It offers the same service as other domain name registrars without increased renewal fees. The best part is it also includes security features such as DNSSEC and two-factor authentication for free.
Now that you have an idea of how much a domain name can cost you, here are a few tips to save money on it:
- Get a free domain from hosting provider
- Transfer your domain to a better value domain provider
- Look out for offers/deals
So, now you know how to save money on domains!
Hosting
To run a successful online business, you need to invest in a powerful and reliable web hosting service. But, it doesn’t have to cost you a fortune! Most people make the mistake of paying their hosting companies for the services they are not even using. If you are just starting your website, you can choose cheaper plans that are meant for beginners and small businesses. Here are a few hosting services you can compare and find your best fit:
Hostinger: They offer cheap web hosting starting at $0.80/per month. The package claims to have unlimited disk and bandwidth, 99.9% uptime, 3 available hosting plans – shared, VPS, or free, 24/7 customer service, and a 30-day money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied with the service.
GoDaddy: GoDaddy is a very reliable host at a reasonable price. Their hosting plans start from $2.99 that can go up to $12.99 per month. They offer unlimited bandwidth, 99.9% uptime, and 30-day money-back guarantee.
Other than these, there are also other renowned hosting providers like DigitalOcean, Vultr, etc. that offer the best deals at the best price. You can check out some of the affordable hosting plans in 2020 HERE.
Whichever plan you choose, make sure to keep the following tips and tricks in mind. They can save you a lot of money on hosting!
- Choose a shared hosting plan if you’re just beginning
- Wait for the special day offers like Black Friday/Cyber Monday
- Use coupon codes
- Buy hosting services for a longer period
- Or, transfer hosting to a new hosting provider instead of a renewal
- Ask for discounts
Website Design
One of the easiest ways to keep your website cost in control is to use a pre-made template. Yes, instead of investing time and money on professional website designers, you can easily create premium sites with the help of templates. For example, we offer hundreds of templates to choose from for all businesses. Modern tools like SP Page Builder and layout bundles also allow you to build amazing sites, and the best part is they are incredibly customizable.
Your website needs to be tailored to your business niche, your services, and your goals in general. It is extremely important to acknowledge what you want your site to accomplish before jumping to a solution. You don’t want to fall into the loop of website design and re-design, that would be a huge waste of time and money!
Site Functionalities
Instead of spending hours on manual coding, you can add advanced functionalities to your site using extensions. Most Joomla extensions are completely free to download and use, however, some will charge money depending on their functionalities. Which is still a great deal. You won’t have to invest time and resources on testing, as extensions ensure mostly bug-free functionalities. Popular free extensions like Akeeba backup, Asynchronous Google Analytics, Creative Contact Form, etc. offer high-quality service without costing a cent!
Speed and Security
Nothing is more frustrating than a slow and under-performed website. Instead of spending a fortune to better the overall performance of your site, try Cloudflare. Cloudflare’s CDN plan protects your website from security threats and speeds up your website. According to Cloudflare, on average a website using Cloudflare loads twice as fast, uses 60% less bandwidth, has 65% fewer requests and is more secure. That’s enough credibility to use it, right?
The good news is you can start with their free plan to speed up and add security to your site and it also offers basic protection from attacks like DDoS and a shared SSL certificate.
Payment Methods
Your website needs to have some sort of payment method in order to receive payment from your consumers. And that comes with a price too! While companies like PayPal help you get paid online, they too charge a fee per transaction. Typically, it costs between 0.5% to 5% of the transaction amount. The percentage might look really low but can add up to a big amount real quick if you are expecting multiple payments throughout the day/month (e.g. an eCommerce store).
While it is important to include various payment options for user convenience, you can follow these best practices to balance out the cash flow:
Choose a low-fee payment processing service: Sure, you have the option to choose popular payment processors like PayPal or Amazon Pay. But, there are also other affordable payment tools like Stripe, WePay, Dwolla, etc. available in the market to consider. From letting you open an account with them for free to charging a fee per successful transaction only; these payment processors can help you save setup or monthly fees.
Factor the fees into the pricing: Once you choose the tool that fits you the best, you can factor the transaction fees into the pricing of your goods or services. Please keep in mind, this step is only applicable if it fits your business model.
Accept multiple forms of payment: Depending on your location and type of business, try to include multiple forms of payment on your site. Apart from the traditional card payments, encourage your customers to pay with cash upon delivery or via mobile wallets.
Maintenance
Regular maintenance of a site is necessary to ensure it runs smoothly and continues to be successful. From time to time, you might need to declutter your database, update the extensions, take backups, or update the core CMS, and you’ll find a number of ways to get these done. Fortunately, there are tons of free tools to take regular backups of your website.
Most web hosting companies also offer free, automatic backups within their hosting packages. From your web hosting control panel, you can self-manage the backups according to your needs.
Support
We all know how vital it is to provide effective customer support to run a business successfully. If you are running a small business or do not have the budget to hire support persons just yet, including FAQs can take the burden away from customer service lines. Create an effective FAQ with clear answers to questions you get over and over again. This will help you and your site visitors save time and resources - a win-win solution for both ends!
Also, add well-written documentation for the products or services you are offering on the site to maximize your Return on Investment and reduce the load on the support persons.
It’s surprising how small cost reduction at each step can help you save a huge amount at the end. We hope with the approaches we have mentioned above you can cut down the cost and successfully launch a new website for your business. Did we miss anything? Don’t forget to share your feedback with us in the comments section. Good luck!
