What does website maintenance cost?

Website maintenance is the monthly price of keeping a site online, safe and current. It varies more than build prices do, because it depends less on how the site looks than on what it is built with. Two sites that look the same can cost very different amounts to look after.

Ours, as it reads on our monthly plan page: USD 79 a month, covering hosting, an editing page of your own, security updates and small changes. Below is what sits behind any maintenance price, so you can compare offers on what they do, not just what they cost.

What maintenance usually covers

• Hosting: the computers that serve your pages, and the bandwidth when people visit.
• Security updates: keeping the software the site runs on patched.
• Backups, and someone able to restore one.
• Small changes: new prices, hours, a photo, a paragraph.
• Monitoring: someone notices when the site is down or a form stops sending.
• Renewals: the domain and the security certificate, so neither lapses by surprise.

Why some sites cost more to maintain

Most of the cost is in the moving parts. A site built on a content system with a database, a theme and a dozen plugins has many pieces that each need updates, and an update to one can break another. The language many of those systems run on is a good example: PHP release branches get two years of full support and then two years of security fixes only, after which they are no longer supported (https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php). A site that is not moved to a supported version in time keeps running on software that no longer gets security fixes.

A site made of plain files with no database and no plugins has far less to patch. That is how ours are built: plain HTML served from Cloudflare's network. That is why our plan is USD 79 a month, and why the site does not develop faults while nobody is looking.

What maintenance usually does not cover

Ask, because the line between "maintenance" and "new work" is where most surprise bills come from:

• New sections or new kinds of pages. On our plan these are quoted first, so you know the price before anything is done.
• A redesign. We quote it first and never charge the build fee twice. More in what does a website redesign cost.
• Content writing, photography and paid ads, which are separate services almost everywhere.
• Your Google Business Profile and reviews. Ours is a separate plan, Local presence at USD 199 a month, which includes everything in the monthly plan and replaces it rather than adding to it.

Questions to ask about any maintenance plan

1. What exactly counts as a small change, and how fast is one done?
2. Who applies security updates, and are they included or billed by the hour?
3. If something breaks after an update, who pays to fix it?
4. Is there a minimum term, and what happens if I stop?
5. If I leave, do I keep my domain and the files of my site?
6. Are software licenses or plugin subscriptions billed on top?

Our answers: prices, hours, photos or a paragraph are small, and small ones are live in minutes; security updates are included; automated checks run before every publish, and a page that fails one does not go out; no minimum term; you keep the domain, which is in your name, and the files of your site.

Can I do it myself?

Yes, if the site is simple and you have the time. Put a monthly reminder in your calendar for updates, backups and a test of your contact form, and check that your domain is set to renew. The cost is your hours; the risk is the month you skip it.

If your current site costs too much to look after

If you pay for frequent fixes, plugin licenses or an hourly developer, a rebuild (USD 1,800 once) moves your content to a site with less to maintain, and keeps every old address working. Starting fresh, a new website is USD 1,500 once. Full price picture: how much does a website cost.

Tell us what you pay now and what you get for it.

Written with AI help. Sources: php.net (linked above) and our own published plans and prices, checked 2026-10-29.