With all of us facing sticker shock every time we drive by a gas station or hit the grocery checkout line, the price of things is top of mind these days. It seems like practically everything is outrageously expensive, and getting outrageous-er by the day. Since we’re in the business of building websites, we’ve taken a closer look at what sites are costing and how inflation is affecting the math of a site build.
The Core Components
- Domain Name: You have to purchase and periodically renew your site’s domain name. This is usually a $10-30 per year cost and we haven’t seen any major jumps in the price of this service in the past year.
- Theme: Many WordPress sites use a theme to provide a framework for your custom site build. For the most part, we use themes that are included with our hosting provider (WP Engine) but a custom theme might cost anywhere from $50 to $250 or in some cases more. Themes have not dramatically escalated in price.
- Plugins: Even a very basic WordPress site will use several plugins to work properly. For instance, you may need Gravity Forms to create and manage form entries, Popup Maker to include announcements or special offers, or even our own custom Photo Gallery plugin to organize and display patient before and afters. Free versions of most plugins work for the majority of our clients, though in the past year we’ve seen several previously free plugins reduce what is offered for free in an attempt to force the need to sign up for their paid versions.
- Design: To capture what you’re about and what makes your brand special, you need a custom website design. The cost of graphic design services can vary widely, but we’ve seen some big increases in the past year. There continue to be many inexperienced designers who offer their services on the cheap, but a quality design from a seasoned pro is costing more.
- Development: Developers assemble all the pieces of your site into a finished, functional product. Like most skilled workers, their hourly rate is on the rise. Another factor influencing the pay for developers is the war in Ukraine, where a surprising number of offshore developer talent resides. Fewer developers and strong demand has led to double-digit wage growth in the past year.
- Hosting: Shared hosting can cost you as little as $5/month, but realistically a medical practice that needs reliable uptime and site security will need to invest more for a HIPAA-compliant solution with a dedicated server. Paying $40-$50/month is a small and necessary ongoing cost of having a website. Hosting prices haven’t gone up dramatically in the past year.
- Maintenance: For sites built it WordPress, it is critically important to keep the plugins you’re using up to date. Stale plugins are a security threat, and hackers can use them to gain access to your site. Besides that, it is important to monitor site load times and other technical factors and make periodic updates so that the site runs efficiently, just like regular tune ups for cars.
Putting It All Together
As you look at all the ingredients that come together to produce a website, you may have noticed that none of them are getting cheaper. After all, what is these days? Most aspects haven’t been hit with large cost increases, while a few have.
At this point, we can hear you saying: OK, just tell me what it costs already! Fine, be that way! The medical sites we have quoted over the past year ranged from $3,500 to $11,350. That’s a pretty big range, but even within the area of medical practice websites, there is significant variation in what’s needed. Clients who are heavily focused on design, those who have huge photo galleries, and those who want custom features will be on the higher end of the scale.
And another note: we’ve seen practices spend far more than this with other agencies. Sometimes they get their money’s worth, but more often they don’t. Unfortunately there are dozens and dozens of agencies offering medical website builds. Many of them are upstarts with little if any experience dealing with the needs of medical practices specifically. Their inexperience, and the perception that doctors have deep pockets, can be a recipe for very high bills.
Medical Website Cost – Future Forecast
Where will things go from here? Everyone has an opinion about the economic conditions we’ll face in 2023 and beyond. We expect wage increases to flatten, and since personnel is the major cost of building a medical website, we don’t expect prices to tick up considerably. This is also in line with the likely flattening of practice revenue after several years of explosive growth. Many practices will want to hunker down and wait for revenue growth to recover before spending on anything that doesn’t feel “essential.”
While we are certainly biased as people who build websites, we caution practices that an investment in a new website may be more important than you realize. For many practices, even an investment on the high side would easily be paid off with the booking of just a few additional patients. If you have a dated design that isn’t showcasing all of your services or showing your best results, you are missing opportunities to bring in new patients. If your medical practice does slow down a bit in 2023, it could be the perfect time to devote some attention to updating your website and realigning your online marketing so you are in the best position to bring in as much new business as possible.