Website maintenance is the part of a website’s cost that never ends: the hosting it lives on, the software updates that keep it safe, the backups that bring it back after a bad day, and the small changes a business needs every month. What it costs depends far less on the name of the plan than on what is actually inside it, and on what happens when something goes wrong.
This guide lists what a maintenance plan should cover, what moves the monthly price, and what is not worth paying for. It does not quote other companies’ prices, which change too often to be useful. Our own current figures are on the pricing page.
What website maintenance actually covers
- Hosting. The server the site runs on, the security certificate that puts the padlock in the browser, and someone checking that the site is up.
- Software updates. A WordPress site is the core software plus a theme and plugins, and all three are updated regularly. Some updates are about security: WordPress 7.1.4, released on October 28, 2026, was a security release, and WordPress recommended updating sites immediately.
- Backups that have been restored. A backup only counts once someone has restored it and watched the site come back. Daily backups that have never been tested are a promise, not a plan.
- Security and uptime monitoring. Someone notices the malware warning or the outage before your customers do.
- The server software underneath. WordPress runs on PHP, and every PHP version has an end date. PHP 8.2, which many WordPress sites still run on, receives security fixes only until December 31, 2026, according to PHP’s own support schedule. Moving a site to a newer version is maintenance work, and it should be tested before it reaches the live site.
- Small changes. New prices, opening hours, a team photo, a seasonal banner. On most plans, this is where maintenance turns into either a quick email or a separate invoice.
What moves the monthly price
- How much the site does. A five-page site with a contact form is quick to update and check. A shop, a booking system or customer accounts have to be tested with real orders or bookings after every update, and that is real work every month.
- How many plugins it carries. Every plugin is one more thing to update and one more thing that can conflict with the rest. A site built on thirty plugins costs more to look after than one built on eight.
- Whether updates are tested first. Updating straight on the live site is cheaper until the day an update breaks the checkout. A plan that tries each update on a copy of the site first costs more because it does more.
- How many changes you will ask for. Changes included, a fixed number of hours, or every change billed separately: three very different plans that can carry the same name.
- How fast someone answers. A reply within the hour costs more than a reply within the week, and the plan should say which one you are buying.
What is not worth paying for
- Backups nobody has restored. Ask when the last test restore was done, and what was restored.
- A monthly SEO line that is only a report. Monitoring is useful, but a report with no changes behind it is not search engine work.
- A security certificate sold as an extra. Free certificates from Let’s Encrypt are widely used, and many hosts install them automatically. If yours charges separately every year, ask what you get for it.
- A plan that keeps your accounts. The domain, the hosting account and the site itself should be in your name or handed over when you ask. If leaving means starting again, the monthly price was never the whole cost.
Doing it yourself
Maintenance is not difficult, but it is regular. Check for updates every week, take a backup before you update, look at the site afterwards and try the forms, and once in a while restore a backup to prove it works. If you have an hour a week and like this kind of work, you can do it yourself. If you don’t, the honest comparison is the plan’s price against what that hour of your time is worth, plus the cost of the one bad week a missed update can cause.
How we price maintenance
Our Growth plan is the monthly one. It covers managed hosting with uptime monitoring, security monitoring and malware scanning, software and plugin updates, scheduled backups with tested restore points, ongoing content and website changes, and monthly search monitoring, for one monthly price on the pricing page. How updates are handled, including trying them on a copy of the site before they go live, is set out in our website management service. Your domain stays in your name, and if you leave, the website and its content stay yours, as our FAQ sets out.
If you only need the site built and want to look after it yourself, the one-time plans cover the build, and the Professional plan includes a year of managed hosting. Our guide to what a professional website costs explains how the build and the running cost fit together. If you already have a site, tell us what it runs on and we will tell you what looking after it involves.