Your website launched, the invoice is paid, and now the renewal emails are arriving. Then someone offers you a monthly care plan and you can't tell whether the price is fair. This guide breaks website maintenance into its parts, prices each one from the vendor's own page, and shows how to budget for it or price it as a freelancer.
How much does website maintenance cost?
Website maintenance cost is two numbers added together: the services your site runs on (hosting, domain, SSL, backups, monitoring and premium plugin licenses) and the time someone spends updating, checking and editing it. Using current list prices, the services run from about $227 a year for a simple WordPress brochure site to about $1,256 a year for a WooCommerce store. Labor is on top, and in the worked examples below it's the bigger number.
Here's the short version, from the worked examples further down. They add current list prices for the services to an assumed $80 an hour for the time someone spends on the site:
| Site | Services per year | Hours a month | Total per year | About per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simple brochure site | $227 | 1 | $1,187 | $99 |
| WordPress business site | $687 | 2 | $2,607 | $217 |
| WooCommerce store | $1,256 | 4 | $5,096 | $425 |
If you do the work yourself, you pay only the services column. If you'd rather hand it off, WordPress maintenance plans explains what care plans include at each price level.
What does website maintenance actually include?
For a WordPress site, maintenance covers:
- Hosting and domain renewal. Paid monthly or yearly, every year.
- SSL certificate. Often free: Let's Encrypt is a nonprofit certificate authority that issues TLS certificates at no cost, and many hosts install them for you.
- Core, plugin and theme updates. Since WordPress 5.6, new installs update core automatically, but plugins and themes only auto-update in special cases unless someone turns it on.
- Backups. WordPress's own documentation tells you to back up your site before you upgrade. Backups only help if someone checks they can be restored.
- Security monitoring. Malware scanning, a firewall and cleanup if something gets through.
- Uptime monitoring. Alerts when your site goes down.
- Content edits. New staff photos, updated prices, a fresh opening-hours banner.
- Premium plugin licenses. Renewed yearly for updates and support.
Some of these arrive as bills. The rest arrive as hours. Hidden website costs nobody tells you about covers the wider list, including email and redesigns.
What does website maintenance cost per year by site type?
Here's a yearly services budget for three common sites, using current list prices from each vendor's page. The plugins are examples; swap in your own.
| Line item | Simple brochure site | WordPress business site | WooCommerce store |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | $215.88 (SiteGround StartUp at the $17.99/mo regular price) | $350 (Kinsta Single 20GB, billed annually) | $500 (Kinsta Single 40GB, billed annually) |
| .com domain renewal | $11.08 (Porkbun) | $11.08 | $11.08 |
| SSL | $0 (included) | $0 (included) | $0 (included) |
| Backups | $0 (daily, included in plan) | $0 (included in plan) | $239.40 (Jetpack Security for real-time backups and malware scanning, at the $19.95/mo regular price) |
| Uptime monitoring | $0 (UptimeRobot free plan, 5-minute checks) | $108 (UptimeRobot Solo, $9/mo billed annually, 60-second checks) | $108 |
| SEO plugin | $0 (free version) | $118.80 (Yoast SEO Premium, before VAT) | $118.80 |
| Forms or store extensions | $0 (free version) | $99 (WPForms Basic renewal) | $279 (WooCommerce Subscriptions) |
| Services per year | $226.96 | $686.88 | $1,256.28 |
The brochure site uses regular prices on purpose. SiteGround's StartUp plan is $3.99 a month prepaid for the first 12 months, which puts year one at about $59 with the domain. WPForms works the same way: the first year is half price, and the page states that all renewals are at full price. Jetpack Security is $9.95 a month for the first year, billed yearly.
The store adds real-time backups because a scheduled backup can miss the orders placed since it last ran. Kinsta's plans already include backups (14 days of history on these plans) and free malware removal, so on the business site that extra layer would be doubling up. For more on how hosting prices step up by tier, see how much web hosting costs in 2026.
What's the hourly rate for website maintenance?
For a benchmark, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay for web developers and digital designers at $47.85 an hour (May 2025). That's employee pay. A freelancer covers their own taxes, software and unbilled hours, so their rate sits higher. How much to charge to build a website walks through that math and lands on $80 an hour in its example.
The rest of this post uses $80 an hour as an assumption, not a market rate.
DIY, freelancer or agency: which costs less?
The services bill stays the same whoever does the work. What changes is how you pay for the hours.
| Option | How you pay | Works well when | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY | Your own time | The site is simple and you're comfortable restoring a backup | Updates get skipped when you're busy |
| Freelancer, hourly | Per hour, as needed | Changes are occasional and unpredictable | Nobody is watching the site between jobs |
| Freelancer or agency plan | Flat monthly fee with set hours | You want updates, checks and small edits handled every month | Scope that isn't written down |
Managed hosting sits between these. A host that handles backups, malware removal and server updates takes part of the job off the list, but it won't test whether a plugin update broke your contact form. Managed vs unmanaged WordPress hosting explains where that line falls.
What does a full year cost with labor included?
For this example, assume the monthly hours each site needs are 1 for the brochure site, 2 for the business site and 4 for the store, all at the assumed $80 an hour. They cover updates, backup checks, monitoring alerts and small edits. A site with many plugins or frequent content changes needs more.
| Brochure site | Business site | WooCommerce store | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Services (from the table above) | $226.96 | $686.88 | $1,256.28 |
| Labor: hours × 12 × $80 | $960 (1 hr/mo) | $1,920 (2 hr/mo) | $3,840 (4 hr/mo) |
| Total per year | $1,186.96 | $2,606.88 | $5,096.28 |
Labor is the larger share in all three. Doing it yourself drops the cash cost to the services line, but the hours still come out of your week.
For the hosting side of your budget, the Hosting Cost Calculator recommends a tier and gives monthly and annual ranges from your site type, traffic, storage, add-ons and management level. For a WordPress site with starter traffic, minimal storage, SSL and automated backups, self-managed, it returns $10–$30 a month. It estimates hosting and managed services, not plugin licenses or anyone's hourly labor.
How much should you charge for website maintenance?
If you build sites, price a maintenance plan from hours, not from what a competitor charges. Start with the hours each tier includes, multiply by your rate, and add a small margin for the tools you pay for across all clients. An UptimeRobot Solo account, for example, covers 10 monitors for $9 a month billed annually, so one account can watch several client sites. For this example, assume $80 an hour and $15–$30 a month per client for tools and buffer:
| Tier | Hours included | What's included | Example price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | 1 per month | Monthly updates with a backup first, uptime monitoring, short monthly report | $95/mo ($80 + $15) |
| Business | 2 per month | Updates tested on staging, backup restore test each quarter, small content edits | $175/mo ($160 + $15) |
| Commerce | 4 per month | Weekly updates, checkout test after every update, real-time backup checks | $350/mo ($320 + $30) |
Then write down what isn't included. The usual exclusions are:
- New pages, features or integrations. Quote them as separate projects.
- Redesigns. A plan keeps the current site running; it doesn't rebuild it. See website redesign cost for that conversation.
- Hosting and licenses. Have clients pay these directly, in accounts they own, so a lapsed plan never takes their site down.
- Anything over the included hours. Billed at your hourly rate, agreed before you start.
Show the client the services bill separately, too. It makes clear what they'd pay anyway and what your fee buys on top.
How much should you pay someone to maintain your website?
Pay for the hours your site actually needs, not a flat industry figure. A simple brochure site needs about an hour a month for updates, backup checks and small edits; a store needs more, because every update has to be followed by a checkout test. At the $80-an-hour assumption used here, that's roughly $95–$350 a month for a plan, as the pricing table above shows. Before you sign, check what the plan excludes and that the hosting and licenses stay in accounts you own.
Is it expensive to maintain a website?
The services themselves usually aren't: about $227 a year for a simple WordPress site at list prices. The time is what adds up. Updates, backups, monitoring and edits take hours every month, whether you spend your own or pay someone else's. Skipping them is the expensive option, because an outdated plugin or a missed backup can cost far more to fix than a year of upkeep.
