Website Maintenance Fees

[jbensous]

How much to charge? The company I am building a site for wants me to do monthly maintenance. They need me to update content and upload docs as needed throughout the month, as well as administer the shopping cart. How much should I charge them for this? Or better yet, what should I give them for the 500.00 they want to pay?

[dwilson]

A contract that includes recurring monthly work is worth more than a one-time deal. I would plan a few more hours/month for them than the number of hours for which I would normally charge $500.

e.g. if you would normally charge $50/hr, then plan to do 12 hours work/month on this contract.

Whatever you do, you almost have to bring it back to the amount of TIME you are spending on the job. When I worked with a hosting company, one service we offered was a contract to do x hours/month of maintenance. The customer would email or call as the month progressed. Usually they would want more done than they were actually paying for, and we'd tell them when the time was used up. Then they could either pay for more work or let it slide until the next month. Worked pretty well with some clients.

Look forward to seeing the other responses you get on this one.

[rogerd]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, jbensous. I'd divide the $500 by your regular hourly rate and tell the client you'll spend up to that number of hours each month making their changes, doing maintenenance or SEO that you initiate, etc. If they need some major work that will take more time, then you'll bill the addtional hours at the same hourly rate... You are lucky to have a client that realizes they will need some ongoing help. We find it often takes a real sales effort to explain this.

<added>Looks like Dwilson posted similar advice at the same time - he makes a good point about giving the client flexibility to postpone some changes to save money.</added>