By Mo Hussein
2 min read
The four ongoing costs
When you've just paid for a build, nobody wants to hear about more bills. You should still hear about them before you sign, not after. There are four:
- Hosting and services: the servers, the database, file storage and anything that sends emails or texts.
- Keeping it up to date: security fixes, updates to the building blocks it's made from, and changes to browsers and phones.
- Support: someone to call when something goes wrong.
- Small changes, because your business won't stand still once the system is live.
Why you can't skip the updates
Modern software is built on shared components, and those components get security fixes all the time. Leave a system untouched for a couple of years and it's like never servicing the van. It keeps going for a while, then the repair is bigger than all the services you skipped would have been.
How to keep it small
Most of the running cost is decided at the start. Proven, boring technology is cheaper to look after than whatever's fashionable this year. Managed hosting means nobody's patching servers by hand. Fewer moving parts means fewer things to break, and good logging means a problem gets found in minutes, not days.
A retainer or pay as you go?
A monthly retainer suits a system your business relies on every day. Updates happen on a schedule and support is already lined up. Paying as you go suits something smaller and stable. It costs less in a quiet year, but you're waiting in a queue when something breaks. Neither is wrong. Pick the one that matches how much it would hurt if the system went down on a Monday morning.
Ask before you sign
Whoever you work with, ask for the expected monthly running cost in writing alongside the build price. Ask what's included, who holds the hosting accounts and what happens if you part ways. If you'd like to talk through what yours might look like, book a discovery call and we'll go through it.
