It’s a question we hear a lot: should we hire someone full-time, or just use monthly support? The short answer: it depends. The longer answer? This guide. Let’s break down what each option actually costs, what you get for your money, and which makes more sense for most New Zealand businesses.
The Real Cost of Hiring In-House
Hiring a web developer sounds great on paper. You’ve got someone on hand to make updates, fix bugs, and handle new features.
But the numbers stack up fast.
- Average salary: around $65K–$85K per year
- Add 8–15% for KiwiSaver, leave, overheads
- Plus costs for onboarding, equipment, downtime, and management time
Once you add everything up, you’re looking at $6–8K per month, minimum.
What Monthly Support Actually Costs
A solid support plan from a local team typically costs:
- $100–$500 per month for small to mid-size sites
- Up to $2,000 per month for complex or enterprise-level support
Most packages include things like:
- Updates and bug fixes
- Plugin maintenance or app support
- Light design and dev tweaks
- Performance and accessibility checks
- Priority support
Even at the higher end, this is still far cheaper than hiring. And you often get access to a broader skill set too.
Key Tip: Hiring in-house costs around ten times more than monthly support. Unless you’ve got a constant stream of complex work, support is probably the smarter spend.
When to Hire Someone Full-Time
Hiring makes sense if:
- You have constant dev work (think 30–40 hours a week)
- You want someone embedded in your team and culture
- You’re building or maintaining a large, evolving digital product
It’s a long-term move, and a costly one if the workload isn’t consistent.
When Monthly Support is a Better Fit
Support is ideal if:
- You need regular updates, but not every day
- You want expert help on hand, without the overhead
- You’re focused on steady improvements, not full rebuilds
- You want flexibility as your needs change
This model works well for small to mid-sized businesses, marketing teams, and ecommerce stores. It also makes it easier to scale up or pause if priorities shift.
Real-World Example
Let’s say you’re running a Shopify store. You want regular product page updates, accessibility tweaks, bug fixes, and a few content changes each month.
Hiring someone full-time would cost around $80K+ per year.
A support plan covering all of that might cost $400–$800 per month.
Unless your workload justifies it, support is a better return on spend.
What to Do Now
- Write down the website work you actually need
- Estimate how many hours that would take each month
- Compare the real cost of hiring vs monthly support
- Talk to a few providers to see what’s included
- Run a 1–2 month support trial and see how it works
Support is not just cheaper. It’s smarter, faster, and easier to scale.
Hiring makes sense if your business is big enough to keep someone busy full-time. But if you're managing a marketing site, ecommerce store, or content platform, monthly support will likely give you more value and less stress.
Ready to offload website tasks and want a sharp, reliable team to handle them? We’re here. Let’s talk.
