Quick Overview: Monthly Website Maintenance Costs can be as low as $30 to $100 if you are doing it yourself; $100 to $300 for a freelancer; and anywhere from $50 to $500 with a Professional Agency Plan. The cost of these services reflects a difference in the level of Service (i.e. Basic Plans include Updates and Backups whereas Premium Plans will also provide Speed Optimization, Security Hardening, Priority Support and Comprehensive Reporting). A monthly investment of approximately $150-$300 is reasonable for protecting a Business-Critical Site.
The monthly price for an agreement can vary considerably depending on the type of agreement, and the initial price quoted may be misleading. For example, a $50 monthly plan and a $300 monthly plan could represent two totally different agreements with differing levels of services provided. If you understand the extent of services that will be included in the monthly payment, you can avoid being surprised later by finding out that your “low-cost” plan doesn’t protect your website as well as you thought it would.
Monthly Service Plan Prices
Do It Yourself (DIY) ($30 to $100 monthly): This is generally used to pay for your hosting costs, along with the cost of a few tools — i.e., a backup plug-in, security plug-in, etc. In addition, this includes the cost of whatever monitoring services you choose to use. As you are responsible for doing everything else yourself (i.e., performing updates, creating/performing backups, troubleshooting problems, etc.), the cost to you financially is relatively inexpensive; however, the amount of time spent is considerable, typically ranging from 4 to 8 hours per month.
Freelance Developer ($100 to $300 per month): Freelance developers charge customers a monthly retainer fee for handling such things as updates, backups, and some level of monitoring. There is significant variation in quality among freelancers. Some provide very high-quality personal service while others are either unresponsive when needed or take shortcuts during their testing process.
WordPress Agency Services ($50 to $500 per month): Many agencies offer multiple tiers of service based on the level of effort required to manage your website. The lower-end plans usually start at around $50-$100 per month and normally only address the basics of keeping your site updated and backed up. The mid-range plans (usually priced around $100-$250 per month) may also include additional tasks such as providing recommendations regarding how to improve security, monitor your site’s performance and provide access to a limited number of technical support hours. The premium plans (usually priced above $250 per month) may provide priority technical support, optimize your sites’ speed, monitor your SEO efforts and provide regular detailed reports regarding your site’s status.
What You Get at Each Price Point
| Feature | DIY ($30–$100) | Freelancer ($100–$300) | Agency Basic ($50–$100) | Agency Premium ($250–$500) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress updates | You do it | Included | Included | Included |
| Backups | Plugin-managed | Included | Included | Included |
| Security scanning | Plugin-managed | Usually included | Included | Included + hardening |
| Uptime monitoring | You set up | Sometimes | Included | Included |
| Speed optimization | Not included | Sometimes | Not included | Included |
| Support response | None | Variable | Business hours | Priority (1–4 hours) |
| Monthly reporting | None | Sometimes | Basic | Comprehensive |
| Content updates | You do it | Sometimes | Not included | Included (limited) |
| Staging environment | You set up | Sometimes | Sometimes | Included |
The following are costs which will increase your Monthly website maintenance needs:
Your site has complexity. For example; if you are using a 5 page brochure website as opposed to a 50 page website that has a Number of custom functionalities and integrations and uses dynamic content.
The Number of pages and features on your site increases the Number of potential points of failure, therefore increasing your need for ongoing website maintenance.
You have an e-commerce site. You will be required to monitor the following on your e-commerce site: payment gateways, product catalogs, checkout flows and order processing. All of these items would normally fall under the normal routine maintenance requirements but since they relate to online shopping, the level of importance increases. Additionally, WooCommerce sites require more attention regarding database maintenance due to their nature of being able to add and remove products dynamically.
The traffic volume on your site is high. You will need more robust hosting options, perform more regular backups, and monitor your site’s performance much more closely when you have high levels of traffic (i.e. Over 100,000 visits per month) than when your traffic is low (e.g. 1,000).
You have multiple plugins installed on your site. Each plugin is an additional potential point of failure for your site’s security. In addition to being an area of potential failure each plugin can slow down your site, create compatibility issues with other installed plugins, etc. As such, having multiple plugins (i.e., 30+) installed on your site will require you to manage updates to those plugins differently than managing updates for fewer plugins (i.e., 10+).
You require support. If you find yourself needing to make ongoing content updates, troubleshoot technical issues, ask technical questions on an ongoing basis then you will get greater value from purchasing a plan that includes more hours of support than paying hourly for occasional assistance.
Do the benefits of Monthly maintenance outweigh the costs?
To determine whether purchasing a professional website maintenance plan is a worthwhile investment compare the cost of the plan ($100-$300 per month) against the potential financial consequences resulting from various types of failures that could occur if you were not paying for this type of service.
Examples include:
- loss of search engine optimization (SEO) due to security warning = months to recover.
- recovering from a hack = $500-$5,000.
- one day downtime for an ecommerce site = lost sales in excess of thousands of dollars.
Purchasing a Monthly maintenance plan is not just a cost – it is an insurance policy with guaranteed rewards. Unlike traditional insurance policies where money is paid out only after a disaster occurs, website maintenance provides active improvements to both the performance and security of your website every month.
See our transparent pricing. Choose a Deutrix Care plan →
For the complete guide, read our Website Maintenance Ultimate Guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
A standard monthly fee of $50 to $100 will cover the general upkeep of a simple business website. The cost for an Ecommerce or critical business website would be around $150 to $300 per month, which reflects the amount of time required to properly maintain those types of websites. If you pay less than $50 per month for maintenance, you will have to either lower the quality of services provided or limit what services are available.
Most all web service companies allow you to switch from one service level to another. Find a service plan that meets your current needs and then add features and services as your website expands or as you determine there is a need for new capabilities.
Managed WordPress is a type of hosting service designed to take away some of the burden associated with running a server. It typically takes care of things like server availability (uptime), server protection (security) and PHP updates. However it does NOT provide any management support for any of your WordPress plugins, theme upgrades, content, forms, etc. Server hosting and site maintenance are two separate items.
