How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost per Month?

The short answer: according to GoodFirms' survey of web development companies, maintaining a small business website costs about $250 to $1,000 a year, which works out at roughly $21 to $83 a month. An online store costs $1,000 to $5,000 a year to maintain, and a custom web application $2,000 to $20,000 or more. With us, hosting and care on our servers cost €50, €150 or €250 a year, maintenance of an existing WordPress site starts from €60 a month, and every new site we build includes 30 days of care after launch.

Every website needs looking after once it is live: hosting, security updates, backups, small fixes. The question is what that should cost and what you should get for it. Here is what maintenance actually includes, what the published ranges are, what moves the price, and how to tell a good plan from a cheap one. Market figures are in US dollars where the source publishes them that way.

What maintenance actually includes

• Hosting: the server the site runs on, and someone responsible when it is slow or down.
• Updates: the platform, themes, plugins and other dependencies, tested before they reach the live site.
• Backups: copies stored away from the server, and restores that have actually been tried.
• Security: malware scanning, login protection and quick action when something looks wrong.
• Monitoring: uptime checks that alert someone before your customers notice.
• Domain and certificates: the domain and the SSL certificate renewed on time, so the site never shows a security warning.
• Speed and health: caching, image and database clean-up, and Core Web Vitals checked now and then.
• Small changes: new text, a broken form, a page that needs adjusting.
• Content: new pages, articles or prices, if you would rather not do them yourself.

A plan that leaves out any of these is not cheaper; it moves the cost to the day something goes wrong.

What maintenance costs: published ranges

The word 'maintenance' covers very different amounts of work, so the published figures are wide. These are the ones we trust enough to quote:

• Small business website: $250–$1,000 a year, according to the GoodFirms survey as reported by Digital Information World.
• Online store: $1,000–$5,000 a year, in the same survey.
• Custom web application: $2,000–$20,000 or more a year, in the same survey.
• As a share of the build: Launchcodex suggests budgeting 15–20% of the build cost per year for upkeep. That is one agency's rule of thumb, not a market average.
• In Bosnia and Herzegovina, where we work from, local agencies publish monthly maintenance at 20 to 200 KM, roughly €10 to €100, which shows how differently the word is used.

The spread is not a sign that someone is overcharging. At the low end, maintenance means a server and an automatic backup. At the high end, it means a team that tests every update on a copy, restores backups to prove they work, watches the site around the clock and fixes problems the same day. Before you compare prices, compare what each plan promises to do.

Hosting is a separate line

Hosting is often bundled into a maintenance plan, but it helps to know what it costs on its own. Published prices for common options:

• Your own cloud server: Hetzner starts at €5.99 a month excluding VAT. The server is cheap; someone still has to update it, back it up and watch it.
• A platform for modern sites: Vercel's Pro plan is $20 per developer seat a month, including $20 of usage. Its free Hobby plan is for personal, non-commercial use only.
• Hosted WordPress: WordPress.com's Business plan is $25 a month billed yearly, or $40 billed monthly.
• Online stores: WooCommerce estimates hosting at $25–$350 a month for most stores, depending on size and traffic.

Raw hosting and managed hosting are different products. A cheap server with nobody looking after it is not a maintenance plan, even if the site runs on it.

What drives the price

The biggest factor is the platform. A WordPress site with many plugins needs more care than a site built without them, because every plugin comes from a different author, is updated on its own schedule and can break something when it is. Premium plugins add licenses on top: WooCommerce extensions, for example, cost $29–$299 each per year. A site built with Next.js, or a static site, has no plugin ecosystem to patch and no admin panel exposed on the public site. It still needs hosting, monitoring and dependency updates, but there is far less that can go wrong between two updates. We compare the two in more detail in WordPress vs Next.js.

The other factors:

• E-commerce: an online store has orders, payments, stock and customer data, and the checkout has to work after every single update. That is why the survey range for stores is several times higher than for company sites.
• Traffic: more visitors need more server resources, caching and protection, especially if your traffic has seasonal peaks.
• Integrations: CRMs, booking systems, accounting software and payment providers change their APIs, and someone has to notice and adapt.
• How often you need changes: a site that changes weekly needs regular hands; a site that mostly needs to stay healthy needs far fewer.
• Response time: support within one business day costs less than a promise to fix things within the hour.
• The state of the site: a site where updates were skipped for years usually needs a clean-up before regular maintenance makes sense.

Monthly or yearly?

Both work. Monthly suits sites that change often and need regular help; yearly suits sites that mostly need to stay healthy. What matters is that the price is fixed and you know what it covers.

Can you do it yourself?

Yes, if the site is simple and someone on your team has the time. On a hosted platform such as WordPress.com, the host takes care of the server and core updates, and a careful person can handle the rest. What usually slips is the dull part: testing a restore, checking the site after each update, reading plugin security notices. If nobody owns those jobs, they quietly stop happening. The practical test is simple: if the site broke tonight, who would notice, and who would fix it?

What is usually not included

Even a good plan has edges. Ask where they are before you need them:

• New features and redesigns are development work, priced separately.
• Ongoing SEO, such as new content and local search work, is its own service. Our SEO cost guide explains what it costs.
• Third-party licenses for premium themes, plugins and apps are usually billed to you.
• Recovery after a hack: some plans include it, others charge for it. Find out which before it happens.

Warning signs of a cheap plan

• Nobody can tell you when a backup was last restored.
• Backups are stored on the same server as the site, so one failure takes both.
• Updates are applied automatically, with no check afterwards.
• There is no monitoring, so you hear about downtime from customers.
• There is no written list of what the plan includes, or no stated response time.
• You never receive a report, so you cannot see what was done.
• The hosting, domain or admin accounts are not registered to you.

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Maintenance is invisible when it is done well, and expensive when it is not done at all.

Questions to ask before you sign

• Where are backups stored, how often are they taken, and when was a restore last tested?
• How are updates tested before they reach the live site?
• Who receives the monitoring alerts, and how quickly does someone respond?
• What counts as a small change, and what does work outside the plan cost?
• Is the price fixed, and is VAT included in the figure you were given?
• What happens to the accounts and backups if we end the plan?

What we offer

We have three ways to look after a site, depending on where it runs and how it was built.

• Hosting and care on our servers: three plans at €50, €150 or €250 a year. Every plan includes daily off-site backups whose restores are tested, managed security and updates, 24/7 uptime monitoring, SSL and support within one business day. The larger plans add a staging environment, more storage and faster replies, and the largest is built for online stores and applications. We handle the move from your current host.
• Maintenance of an existing WordPress site, whoever built it: from €60 a month. Core, theme and plugin updates are applied on a copy first, backups are restored in tests, and malware scanning and uptime monitoring alert us rather than you. Fixes and small changes go to the same team, and you get a short monthly report. It starts with a written review of the site, and the site can stay on your current hosting or move to our servers in the EU. The final price depends on the size of the site, the number of plugins and whether it runs a shop, and you receive it in writing after the review.
• New sites we build: 30 days of care after launch are included in the price, so the first month is covered while everything settles.

How to choose: if the site is built with Next.js or is static and runs on our servers, a hosting and care plan is usually enough, because there is little to update. If you have a WordPress site with many plugins, especially a WooCommerce store, or the site stays with another host, WordPress maintenance is the right fit, because plugins need regular, tested updates. Not sure what you have? Send us the address and we will tell you in writing what we would recommend and why.

The prices are final and nothing is added on top. The hosting, domain and admin accounts stay registered to you, and you keep everything if the plan ends. All our prices are on the pricing page.

What we recommend

Pick a plan where hosting, updates, tested backups and monitoring are included, the price is fixed, and the accounts stay yours. Ask for the annual total, not only the monthly figure, and compare it against what the plan actually promises to do.

If you are not sure what state your site is in, run our free website audit first: it takes about a minute and shows what needs attention. Our accessibility checker does the same for accessibility. And if the honest answer is that the site costs more to keep alive than it is worth, a redesign may be the better buy; our redesign cost guide shows what that involves.