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Website maintenance pricing

Website maintenance cost in 2026: market ranges & our published rates

Short answer: most small-business websites cost $50–$250 a month to maintain professionally, and ecommerce sites $500–$2,000 or more. Below is what drives that number, what the money actually pays for, and our own rate card, which starts at $89 per site per month.

By Naveen Kumar, founder & lead engineerUpdated 9 min read

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Small business$50–$250Typical monthly market range for professional maintenance.
Ecommerce$500–$2k+Typical monthly range for a store, before hosting.
Our plans$89 / $179Per site per month. Published, no quote required.
ContractMonth to month30 days' notice, no auto-renew trap.

Market ranges

Website maintenance cost
by type of site.

The biggest single driver of the cost for website maintenance is what kind of site you have. A five-page brochure site and a busy WooCommerce store are different jobs, with different risks when an update goes wrong. The same is true of WordPress website maintenance cost: a simple WordPress site and a WooCommerce store sit in different bands.

Personal site or blogA few pages, no forms that matter, no payments Often handled with hosting-included auto-updates. Fine until a plugin conflict takes the site down. $5–$25per month
Small-business siteBrochure site, contact forms, a booking or quote tool Tested updates, off-site backups, uptime monitoring and a monthly report. This is where most businesses sit. $50–$250per month
Mid-size marketing siteDozens of pages, integrations, landing pages, CRM Adds security hardening, performance checks and a block of support hours for changes. $250–$750per month
Ecommerce storeWooCommerce or similar, payments, stock, customer accounts Updates must be tested against checkout and payment plugins. Downtime costs sales by the hour. $500–$2,000+per month
Enterprise or custom buildCustom code, multiple environments, compliance needs Closer to a development retainer: code releases, dependency upgrades and an incident SLA. $1,000–$5,000+per month

Market ranges compiled from published 2026 website maintenance cost guides (Gravitate, Elementor, WebFX), checked September 2026. They cover the maintenance work, not hosting or licences, which are listed separately below.

Cost breakdown

What you're actually
paying for.

Ask for a price for website maintenance and the number usually bundles two different things: fixed running costs you'd pay anyway, and the labour of someone looking after the site. Only the second is a maintenance plan.

Hosting · $5–$300/moShared hosting sits at $5–$25, VPS or cloud at $30–$150, managed hosting at $150–$300 or more. Separate from maintenance.
Domain · $10–$50/yrRenewed yearly with your registrar. Letting it lapse is one of the most common, and most avoidable, outages.
SSL certificate · $0–$200/yrFree certificates cover most sites. Paid ones are usually only needed for specific compliance or warranty reasons.
Premium plugins & themes · $100–$500/yrLicence renewals for page builders, forms, SEO and backup plugins. Expired licences stop receiving security updates.
Backup & security tools · $20–$100/moOff-site backup storage and malware scanning if you buy them yourself. Included in most professional plans.
The labour · the plan itselfTesting updates, checking backups restore, watching uptime, fixing what breaks and reporting on it. This is what the ranges above price.

Our rate card

Our website maintenance pricing:
one published number per plan.

Both plans sit inside the small-business band above, and cover the labour, not your hosting or licences. Agencies pay the same published rates at volume. There is no separate hidden sheet, and no "contact us for a quote."

Essential

Care

$89/site/mo

For a stable site that just needs someone responsible for it.

  • Core, plugin & theme updates
  • Daily offsite backups
  • Uptime & SSL monitoring
  • Monthly report
Not included
  • Content changes and new pages
  • Hack recovery (charged at standard rate)
  • Hosting
Compare all plans
Most chosen

Care + Secure

$179/site/mo

Everything in Care, plus active hardening and a fixed monthly support allowance.

  • Everything in Care
  • Hardening & malware scanning
  • Support hours included
  • Performance regression checks
  • Emergency response
Not included
  • New builds and redesigns
  • Paid ads and content writing
  • Hosting
Start with an assessment
Volume

Agency

From $119/site/mo

Same service, white-labelled, priced for portfolios of five sites and up.

  • Everything in Care + Secure
  • Your branding on all reports
  • Direct escalation channel
  • Written non-solicit
Not included
  • Client-facing calls under your brand
  • Hosting resale
Agency terms

Care plans are the only thing we sell at a fixed monthly rate, because they are the only thing with a fixed monthly scope. Everything else below is priced by the shape of the work.

What moves the price

What changes the price
of website maintenance.

Across the market, price follows site type, ecommerce, update frequency and how much hands-on support is included. Ours comes off the same base rate above, adjusted by exactly these three things.

Number of sitesThe per-site rate steps down at 3, 10 and 25 sites — the Agency tier is this curve, not a different product.
EcommerceWooCommerce and other store sites carry a fixed surcharge for payment-plugin and inventory-safe update testing.
Support hoursCare includes none; Care + Secure includes a set number monthly; extra hours are billed from a ten-hour block.

Everything else, and how it's priced

Compare plans in detail →
Fixes & recoveryRepair · malware removal · hacked site · site down Fixed fee, quoted and agreed before we start. No hourly meter running while you wait for an answer. from $300per incident
ProjectsDevelopment · design · migration · ecommerce build Scoped and fixed after a paid discovery. The discovery fee comes off the build if you go ahead. from $2,500per project
Growth retainersSEO · conversion · analytics · automation · lead systems Monthly, with a named deliverable each month rather than a vague pool of hours. from $1,500per month
Ad-hoc hoursContent changes · small fixes · advice Bought in blocks of ten, valid twelve months, drawn down when you need them. Some included on Care + Secure. $125per hour

Pricing models

Hourly, monthly plan
or retainer?

Website maintenance is sold three ways. The cheapest-looking option on paper is rarely the cheapest over a year.

 Hourly / ad hocMonthly planGrowth retainer
Typical market price$75–$200 per hour$50–$750 per site per month$250–$2,500+ per month
Our price$125 per hour, in 10-hour blocks$89 or $179 per site per monthFrom $1,500 per month
Who watches the siteNobody, until you notice a problemMonitored continuouslyMonitored, plus planned improvement work
Cost predictabilityLow. One incident can cost more than a year of a planHigh. Fixed price for a fixed scopeHigh, with a named deliverable each month
Best forVery small sites, or one-off changesMost business and ecommerce sitesSites that need SEO, conversion or automation work every month

Comparing quotes

What a cheap maintenance
plan usually leaves out.

Two plans at the same price can cover very different work. These are the questions worth asking before you compare numbers.

Are updates tested first?"Updates included" often means auto-updates switched on. Ask whether they're checked on a staging copy before going live.
Where are backups stored?A backup on the same server disappears with the server. It should be off-site, with a stated retention period.
Has a restore been tested?A backup nobody has restored is a hope, not a backup. Ask when they last tested one.
Is hack cleanup included?Many entry plans exclude it. Know the price before you need it, not during an incident.
Do you get a report?If nothing is reported, you can't tell whether anything was done. A monthly written report should be standard.
Who answers when it breaks?A named engineer, or a ticket queue? Ask for the response time in hours, not "as soon as possible."

The other side of the ledger

What it costs to skip
website maintenance.

Unmaintained sites don't fail on a schedule, so the cost doesn't show up until it arrives all at once.

Hack or malware cleanupOutdated plugins are the most common way in Cleanup, hardening and getting a Google or host warning lifted. Market prices vary widely by damage. $200–$2,000+per incident
Emergency developer timeA broken update, a white screen, a failed checkout Paid at hourly rates, usually urgently, by someone who first has to learn how your site is built. $75–$200per hour
Rebuild with no clean backupWhen nothing restorable exists The site has to be rebuilt from what survived. This is the cost a backup routine exists to prevent. from $2,500per project

Cleanup and hourly figures are published market ranges (checked September 2026). The rebuild figure is our own project starting price.

Pricing questions, answered

Website maintenance cost:
common questions.

How much does website maintenance cost per month?

Most small-business websites cost $50 to $250 a month to maintain professionally. Ecommerce sites usually run $500 to $2,000 or more, and enterprise or custom-built sites $1,000 to $5,000 or more. Our own plans are $89 per site per month (Care) and $179 per site per month (Care + Secure), with agency portfolios of five or more sites from $119 per site.

What is the average cost of website maintenance per year?

For a typical small-business site, expect roughly $600 to $3,000 a year for the maintenance work itself, plus hosting, domain, SSL and any premium plugin licences. Our Care plan works out at $1,068 a year per site; Care + Secure at $2,148.

How much does WordPress website maintenance cost?

WordPress maintenance usually costs a little more than a template-builder site because core, theme and plugin updates have to be tested together. Basic WordPress plans commonly sit at $50 to $150 a month and comprehensive plans at $150 to $500 or more. Both of our plans are built around WordPress and WooCommerce.

Does website maintenance include hosting?

Usually not, and ours doesn't. Hosting is a separate bill of roughly $5 to $25 a month for shared hosting, $30 to $150 for VPS or cloud, and $150 to $300 or more for managed hosting. You keep your own hosting account; we work inside it.

Is it cheaper to pay hourly or monthly?

Hourly is cheaper only if nothing goes wrong. At $75 to $200 an hour, a single hack cleanup or a broken update can cost more than a year of a monthly plan. A monthly plan fixes the price of the routine work and makes someone responsible for catching problems early.

What does it cost if I skip website maintenance?

Nothing, until something breaks. Published malware and hack cleanup prices run from around $200 to over $2,000 per incident, before you count downtime, lost sales or a Google warning on your site. An unrecoverable site with no clean backup means paying for a rebuild.

Is there a setup fee or a contract?

There's no long-term contract. Plans run month to month with thirty days' notice to cancel. Any one-time setup or migration work is quoted and confirmed in writing before it starts, never added afterward.

What's the difference between a website maintenance charge and the monthly rate?

The monthly rate covers everything listed in your plan. A separate charge only appears for work outside that scope, such as a hack recovery on the Care plan, and it is quoted and agreed before we start. Nothing is billed without warning.

Can I get a quote for a one-off fix instead of a monthly plan?

Yes. Fixes and recovery are quoted as a fixed fee before any work starts, from $300 per incident. Small changes can also be bought as ad-hoc hours at $125 an hour.

How much should I charge for website maintenance as an agency or freelancer?

Most agencies charge clients $50 to $500 or more per site per month depending on scope, and use hourly rates of $75 to $200 for work outside the plan. If you'd rather resell than run it yourself, our white-label Agency tier starts at $119 per site per month under your brand, so the margin is yours.

Start here

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  • 1We look at the live site: platform, size, and whether it's ecommerce.
  • 2You get a written recommendation with the tier and the reasoning behind it.
  • 3You decide what happens next. No follow-up sequence if you don't reply.

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