Website maintenance cost: what you’ll pay and what drives it

What does website maintenance cost?

Website maintenance cost comes in two parts. First, the bills that arrive whether anyone touches the site: the domain, hosting, email and any paid add-ons. Second, the work: updates, backups, fixes and small changes, done by you, your staff or someone you pay.

For the work, published price guides give ranges too wide to plan with. GoDaddy’s 2026 guide puts small and medium business sites at $50–$500 a month, or $600–$6,000 a year. It puts online stores at $300–$1,000 a month. Hostinger’s guide says $35–$500 a month for small and medium business sites and $750–$5,000 for stores (when we checked in October 2026). Neither says where its numbers come from, and both companies sell hosting and website plans.

The spread isn’t a trick. Picture a five-page site on a hosted builder that changes twice a year. Now picture a WordPress site with 25 plugins, a booking form and a shop. They’re different jobs. So instead of one magic number, this guide shows what drives the price, how plans are sold, and the terms to compare line by line. For the jobs themselves and how often each one happens, see what website maintenance includes.

References: GoDaddy: How much does it cost to maintain a website in 2026? (opens in a new tab) · Hostinger: Website maintenance cost: Hiring a professional vs self-maintenance (opens in a new tab)

The bills that come whether anyone touches the site

Some costs have nothing to do with labor. They renew every month or year, often on different cards, and they’re the easiest to lose track of. Check which of these a care plan already includes, so you don’t pay twice:

• Your domain. A yearly fee to the registrar, the company you bought the address through. GoDaddy’s guide puts it at $10–$20 or more a year. For .com, .net and other generic domains, ICANN’s rules require the registrar to send renewal reminders to the registrant about a month and about a week before it expires. Country domains like .us follow their own registry’s rules. If your old web person is listed as the registrant, the reminders go to them. If a generic domain does expire, the registrar must cut off the address for a stretch before it can be deleted. Your website, and usually email on that domain, then stop working until it’s renewed.
• Hosting. The rented computer your site runs on. GoDaddy’s guide puts basic shared hosting at $5–$15 a month, and managed hosting, where the host handles more of the upkeep, at $20–$150 or more. It may be its own bill, part of a care plan, or part of a builder plan. Squarespace and Shopify, for example, both said every plan includes hosting when we checked in October 2026, and Shopify said its updates are automatic. Squarespace listed its plans at $12–$25 a month, paid yearly.
• The padlock, or SSL certificate. Let’s Encrypt gives trusted certificates at no cost, and software on the server can renew them automatically. Squarespace says it creates free certificates for all its sites (when we checked in October 2026). If a plan lists the certificate as a paid extra, ask what you’re getting for it.
• Business email. Usually a monthly fee for each mailbox, on its own bill. Hostinger’s guide puts it at $1–$6 per person a month.
• Paid themes, plugins and apps. Premium WordPress plugins, booking tools, form tools and store apps often renew monthly or yearly. Hostinger’s guide puts premium plugins and extensions at $4–$49 a month. When one lapses, the feature can stop getting updates or stop working.
• Card fees, if the site takes payments. These go to the payment company, not your web team.

References: GoDaddy: How much does it cost to maintain a website in 2026? (opens in a new tab) · Hostinger: Website maintenance cost: Hiring a professional vs self-maintenance (opens in a new tab) · ICANN: Expired Registration Recovery Policy (opens in a new tab) · Squarespace: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · Shopify: Web hosting (opens in a new tab) · Let’s Encrypt: About (opens in a new tab)

What drives the price of a care plan

Once the bills are covered, a care plan is mostly people’s time. These are the things that move the number. None of them is good or bad. Each is simply more to watch, update and test.

• The platform. A hosted builder runs the software for you, so there’s less to update. A self-hosted WordPress site has its core software (WordPress itself), theme and plugins to keep current. WordPress applies minor and security releases on its own on most sites. Major releases still need someone to click update, unless automatic major updates are switched on. Plugins and themes update by themselves only if their auto-updates are switched on.
• How many plugins and add-ons. Each one has its own maker and update schedule, and each is another thing that can clash after an update. Ten plugins is a different job from forty.
• What the site connects to. A form that emails you is simple. A booking calendar, a quote form that feeds a job system, or a payment page each need checking when either side changes.
• How often you change things. New prices every season, weekly specials, fresh job photos, new staff. This is the driver you control most. Pages you can edit yourself can cut it.
• How fast you need replies, and when. A faster reply time, or cover in evenings and on weekends, means someone has to be ready to answer. Ask what each one adds to the price.
• Backups. How often they run, how many copies are kept, where they live, and whether anyone tests a restore.
• The shape it’s in on day one. A site nobody has updated in two years needs catch-up work before steady care makes sense. Expect that to be priced as a first-month job or a one-off fix.
• A store or customer logins. Orders, accounts and payments raise the stakes of a bad update, so each round of checks takes longer.

References: WordPress.org: Updating WordPress (opens in a new tab) · WordPress.org: Version 5.5 (opens in a new tab) · Make WordPress Core: Auto-updates interface for core major versions in WordPress 5.6 (opens in a new tab)

How website maintenance plans are priced, and what to watch

First, take out anything that isn’t care. Some plans bundle marketing, SEO or ad hours. Those are separate services, so price the care on its own and compare like with like. And if a long list of changes is waiting, that’s a project, not monthly care. Our list of website improvements worth making before a redesign helps sort which ones matter.

What’s left comes in a few shapes. Each one can be fair, and each has a catch worth asking about:

• A flat monthly fee with hours included. Easy to budget, and it suits changes that come steadily. The catch: hours you don’t use may vanish at month end.
• A prepaid block of hours. You buy, say, ten hours and draw them down. Good when changes come in bursts. Ask when unused hours expire.
• Pay per job, or by the hour. No monthly fee, which suits a site that rarely changes. GoDaddy’s guide puts developer rates at $50–$150 or more an hour. The catch: nobody is watching between jobs. Updates and backups are on you, and an urgent fix waits until someone is free, sometimes at a higher rate.
• Care bundled with hosting. One bill, which is handy. Ask how much is hosting and how much is care. You’ll need that split if you ever move the hosting.
• Tiers, like basic, standard and premium. Compare the lines, not the names. A “premium” plan can be mostly reports and calls you won’t use.
• Contract length. Month to month or a year up front. A longer contract is only a good deal when the terms below are clear.

Reference: GoDaddy: How much does it cost to maintain a website in 2026? (opens in a new tab)

Line by line: the terms to compare in website maintenance packages

Two plans can list the same jobs and still be very different deals. The difference is in the terms: how fast someone answers, what an hour buys, what costs extra and what happens when you leave. For the jobs themselves and how often each should happen, use the task list in what website maintenance includes as your scope. Use the list below for the terms.

Put two or three plans side by side and ask each provider to answer these in writing. A cheaper plan with blank answers can cost more by the end of the year. The same questions work if your website is tied to custom software, like a job system or a customer portal. We cover the software side in who handles software maintenance and support after launch.

• Scope. A written list of what they look after and how often. A job that isn’t on it, like a monthly test request through your form or watching the domain renewal, isn’t covered, however obvious it seems.
• Reply times. How long until someone replies to a normal request, and to an urgent one. Ask what counts as urgent: the site down, a form not sending, a checkout that fails. And ask whether the time is for a reply or a fix. They aren’t the same promise.
• When someone answers. The days and hours, and in which time zone. Ask what happens to a problem that starts on a Saturday night, and what evening or weekend cover adds to the price if you need it.
• Security updates. How many days after release they go live. A plan that saves them for one monthly batch can leave a known weak spot open for weeks.
• Hours of changes. How many a month, what an “hour” buys, the smallest amount they bill (15 minutes or a full hour), and whether unused hours roll over. Ask too whether updates and checks come out of the same hours as your changes.
• What costs extra. Where a small change ends and a quoted project begins, the rate for work outside the plan, and whether urgent work outside the plan costs more. Ask for a price before any extra work starts.
• Their own mistakes. Whether a problem caused by their update is fixed free or comes out of your hours.
• Setup and catch-up. Any setup fee, and whether bringing an out-of-date site current is part of it or quoted on its own.
• The monthly note. A short record of what was updated, fixed and changed, and the hours used. Without one, you can’t tell what you paid for.
• Price changes. Whether the monthly price can rise during the contract, and how much notice you get.
• Your accounts. The domain, site admin and connected apps should list you or your business as owner, with the provider on their own login. If the provider hosts the site on its own account, get in writing when and how you can move it to yours.
• Notice and leaving. How much notice you give, whether a yearly contract can end early, and what you get when you go: a full backup, the logins and short notes on how the site is set up.

Where the money goes in four example businesses

These are made-up examples to show how the same questions land differently in different businesses. None of them is a quote.

• A 3-truck plumbing company. A WordPress site with 14 plugins and a quote form that takes photos from a phone. The site changes a few times a year: a new service area, a new truck photo. The money goes into updates, backups and a monthly test of the form. A small block of change hours is plenty.
• A café with weekly specials. A simple site, but the menu, hours and catering page change every week, and the order button links to Square. Most of the cost is change hours. Pages the staff can edit themselves often trim the plan more than any discount would.
• A furniture showroom on Shopify. Shopify runs the store software and hosting, so there are no server or software updates to pay for. The care is theme changes, product pages, sale banners, and checking that each added app still works. Each app may also carry its own monthly fee.
• A property manager with 60 units. The site has a maintenance request form that feeds a request list, plus an owner login. Here a broken form means a leak nobody hears about. Fast weekday replies, a monthly form check, and adding or removing staff logins belong in the plan. Expect it to cost more than a simple site with your services and phone number.

Reference: Shopify: Web hosting (opens in a new tab)

Do you need a paid plan at all?

Not always. A small site on a hosted builder, edited by someone on your team, may only need outside help a few times a year. Paying per job can make more sense than a monthly fee for care nobody uses.

Doing it yourself saves the fee, not the work. Someone still has to run the updates, check the site afterward, keep the backups, test the form and watch the renewals. Count those hours at what your time is worth. For example, an owner who bills $120 an hour on job sites and spends three hours a month on the website is spending $360 of time.

A plan earns its fee when the website brings in work: quote requests, bookings, orders or tenant requests. It also earns it when you run WordPress with lots of plugins, or nobody on staff wants to touch the site. The cost of skipping care rarely arrives as a bill. It shows up as a form that stopped sending in March, or a hacked page that has to be cleaned up before customers trust it again. If your site is down right now, start with what to check when a WordPress site breaks.

How to lower your website maintenance cost

Start by writing down what you already pay. Make one sheet with a row for each bill: the domain, hosting, email, certificate, each paid plugin or app, and any care plan. For each one, note the company, how much and how often, whose card pays, the next renewal date and whether a care plan already covers it. You may find a renewal you forgot, a plugin nobody uses, or a domain on someone else’s card.

Then, for three months, jot down every change you ask for and how long it took. That log tells you how many change hours you really need, the number most likely to move your price. Bring both to any first call. Quotes get sharper when the provider can see what you have.

Most savings after that come from giving your provider less to look after and fewer one-off requests. None of these cut corners on updates or backups:

• Remove plugins and apps nobody uses. Each one is another update to run and another renewal to pay.
• Make the pages you change most editable by your staff. Prices, hours, menus and photos are the usual ones.
• Save small changes for one request a month instead of sending them one at a time.
• Put every renewal on one business card with auto-renew on, and send the reminders to an inbox you read.
• Pay for catch-up work once. A site that is years behind costs more every month until it’s brought up to date.
• If a simple site rarely changes, ask whether a hosted builder would cost less to keep than the site you have.

How we price website care

These are our terms as of October 4, 2026. We don’t post package prices for monthly care. Your plan is priced in your quote. Three things from this guide set the price: what we look after, your monthly change hours and how fast you need replies. After a short first call, which is free, you get the plan in writing within 48 hours, and it starts within a week. In the first week, we review the site, get access and fix anything urgent.

Reply times are written into your plan before you sign. Calls run Monday to Friday, 7 am to noon Pacific, and we don’t promise 24/7 support or uptime. Each month you get a short note of what we updated, fixed and changed. Bugs in code we wrote are fixed without using your hours, and anything bigger than a small change is quoted first. Hold us to the same line-by-line list above: ask every question on the first call, and check the answers are in the plan you get in writing.

Every website we launch includes 30 days of fixes, and a plan can pick up from there. We also look after sites someone else built, after a review of how it’s built, who has access and what shape it’s in. If something is broken now and you don’t want a plan, a one-off fix is $750–$3,000 and takes 1–⁠2 weeks. If the review shows a new site would cost less than keeping the old one alive, a new website is $2,500–$6,000 over 3–⁠6 weeks.

Your domain and the apps we connect stay in your name. Hosting runs on our account, and you can take it over after payment. You own the code we write once it’s paid in full. See how our website maintenance and support works, or start with a free first call.