The Cost of Website Maintenance: A Quick Reference Guide. Brochure Sites (Simple): $600 to $2400 per year Business Websites (CMS): $1200 to $3600 per year E-Commerce Stores: $1800 to $6000 per year Custom Web Applications: $3000 to $12,000+ per year Consider your budget to include Domain Registration ($10 to $35) Hosting fees (varies) Annual SSL Certificate Renewal Premium Plugin Renewal Costs Support Hours. Investing in professional website maintenance is a worthwhile investment because it saves you money on potential lost revenue from Security Breaches Downtime Search Engine Optimization Penalties.
Budgeting for the maintenance of a website involves understanding the typical costs associated with such services, prior to beginning comparisons. The annual budget range varies greatly depending upon the overall complexity of your website; and while it may be tempting to go with the least expensive service provider, they often do not provide long-term value.
This article will provide transparent annual budget ranges, break down all that your budget should fund, and explain how maintaining your website is an investment that will pay for itself in many ways.
Annual Cost Ranges by Website Type
A simple brochure-style website (5 to 15 pages) can expect an annual budget of $600 to $2,400. Updates to this type of website are relatively simple, there is less risk of hacking, and little performance monitoring. Your annual budget can be expected to fund basic plugin and theme updates, weekly backups, regular security scans, and support for any occasional issue.
An average business website using a Content Management System (CMS) (15 to 50 pages) can expect an annual budget of $1,200 to $3,600. As compared to a simple brochure-type website, managing updates is much more complicated, backing up a larger content library requires more frequent backups, and there is a greater likelihood of encountering conflicts between plugins. In addition to backing up your website, your annual budget can also fund content updates, tracking analytics, and quarterly reviews of website performance.
If your website is designed as an e-commerce platform (using WooCommerce or a similar platform), your annual budget could range from $1,800 to $6,000. An e-commerce platform requires monitoring of payment gateways, management of products within the catalog, oversight of the order system, and heightened security due to storing customer payment information. While having an optimized website is important for all websites, it is especially important for an e-commerce platform since speed has a direct impact on revenue.
A custom web-based application would likely have the largest range of $3,000 to $12,000+. Due to its complexity a custom web application would typically require developer level maintenance including updating dependencies, monitoring APIs, optimizing databases, and testing specific to the application.
What should be included in your budget each year
When creating a comprehensive yearly maintenance budget there will be more than simply the upkeep plan included.
Domain registration: the price for Domain registration can vary between $10 and $50 annually. It is easy to overlook this expense until it expires when it would normally cause problems. Create an automatic renewal option and check every year.
Web hosting: this cost varies depending on the host (managed WordPress hosting) at $300-$1200 per year. Although a cheap hosted solution exists ($36-$100 annually) for small websites, these have limitations in terms of performance and security. Web hosting is fundamental to the overall performance of a website.
SSL certificate: while some companies offer free SSL certificates (with let’s encrypt – offered by most good web hosts) others may cost anywhere from $50 to $200 per year. Browsers now automatically flag http sites as “insecure.”
Software updates and security: Software updates (for WordPress core, themes & Plugins), security monitoring, and malware detection are all part of any well-written maintenance plan.
Backup solution: daily or weekly automated backup solution with a remote storage location. Many web hosting services offer a standard backup program; however, many use third party programs that provide better reliability for restoring a damaged site.
License renewals of premium Plugins: many key Plugins including SEO tools, security solutions, caching solutions, form builders etc. Require an Annual license renewal that ranges from $50-$300. Budget for three to four premium plugin renewals.
Support hours: time used to troubleshoot issues, make minor modifications, and answer questions. Professional plans provide pre-defined support hours or respond times.
Annual vs. Monthly plans – which plan offers the greatest savings?
Annual payments usually save 15-20% over Monthly payments. If you’re planning to continue to maintain your site into the distant future (which you probably should) then using Annual payment plans makes financial sense.
However, Annual payment plans limit your ability to cancel at anytime since they lock you into 12 months of service. Monthly plans give you the ability to cancel at anytime if you decide you want to try another service.
We recommend starting out with Monthly billing for the first couple of months to assess the quality of the company providing your hosting. Then switch to Annual billing once you feel comfortable with their level of service. Our pricing breakdown for Monthly plans can be found in our monthly maintenance cost guide.
Omissions that cause hidden Costs to avoid missing
Email service through Domain name. If your company uses @yourdomain.com for its email service (using your hosting service) then email service is also a maintenance cost. Google Workspace ($6 to $18/user/month) or Microsoft 365 ($6 to $22/user/month) add up quickly annually.
Premium plugin license renewals. Any Plugins you bought during development likely need to be renewed annually so that they receive continued Software updates and support. If you fail to renew them, then no security patches will be issued – increasing your risk of being hacked.
Outside scope emergency fixes. Most maintenance plans provide routine maintenance; however, emergency fixes such as hacking your site back online or resolving a conflict with a large update are usually billed separately. Understand what is included in your plan and what Costs additional.
Creation and content update Costs. Maintenance keeps your site operational. However, creating new content, updating existing content, and/or creating new pages are usually separate items. Add content creation and updates to your budget along with any other technical maintenance Costs.
Return on investment of maintenance – preventing disasters vs. Recovering from them
The math is simple here. Typically, a well-designed maintenance plan Costs around $100-$300/month ($1,200-$3600/year). A single fix to recover a hacked site can cost between $500-$5,000. A rebuild of a neglected site can cost anywhere from $5,000-$20,000. There is really no way to calculate lost business due to the loss of access to a customer base during an extended period of down-time.
In addition to preventing disasters, maintaining your site helps protect the SEO investments made when developing your website. When you invest $10,000 building an SEO optimized website and let that optimization decay because you did not properly maintain it you wasted the money you invested in the development process. Maintaining your site helps preserve and extend the roi of your initial build.
Know what you need? See our transparent pricing. View Deutrix Care annual plans →
For the complete guide, read our Website Maintenance Ultimate Guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
You can perform your own maintenance at no cost; however, your time has monetary value. If performing maintenance activities requires 4-8 hours of your time each month and you are earning $50/hour or greater, this will result in lost earnings of approximately $200-$400/month.
While a basic site may require less maintenance than other types of sites, it still requires security updates, backups, and SSL management. The main distinction is that a basic site typically can be managed through a lower tier hosting plan.
Typically, web site maintenance is considered an allowable business expense by local taxing authorities. Check with your accountant regarding specific details as they vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
