For a long time, inflation in web-based costs was hidden by investment capital. The goal was reach, not immediate profitability, and seriously, for almost two decades of early web history, that was the case.
The last ten years, higher costs have crept into the web development world for subscribers of software, hardware, data, and talent. Efficiency has masked some of those costs – if an upgraded software did the job that two software packages did before, but only cost 50% more, then the increase of one software package at the loss of another didn’t reflect an additional cost. But such cannibalizing is much more rare today.
So, unfortunately, is the continuation of quality free online services. Investment by companies to capture marketplace with “free” has greatly reduced, and the advertising model alone doesn’t pay the freight usually as well – take a look at any formerly free online newspaper you like.
Just this week, Wordfence announced their first price increase in 2 years, and it’s significant – about a 25% increase. I am positive their costs have increased, because who hasn’t had cost increases? And in the online security industry, scope has increased as well. Wordfence is my preferred WordPress security option at this time, and we almost always use the premium version for our clients. It is very much worth the future price in my opinion. And it improves regularly, both in quality and in scope. I have no complaints about this price increase at all.
But it is an example of what we see everywhere – software, hosting, affiliated domain services, etc. That is leading to web developer price increases as well. Look for more of it in 2025.