Quick Summary: There’s a lot involved in performing your own DIY WordPress upkeep — there are 4-8 hours each month that you need to spend on updating wordpress, backing up your site, checking for security issues, and debugging problems. The costs associated with doing your own maintenance include things like plugin compatibility problems (conflicts), “white screen” error messages, and missing out on important security fixes. On average, the cost of using a third party maintenance service ($50-$300/month) will be less expensive than doing it yourself, if you take into account lost income while dealing with an emergency situation ($350-$750/month). If your website generates money (revenue producing), has 15 or more plugins installed, or is used as a way to sell products online, you should seriously consider having someone else do the maintenance for you, rather than attempting to do it all by yourself.
Clicking on “Update All” in the WordPress Dashboard appears simple. It takes five seconds. Therefore it is also easy to assume that WordPress maintenance is something that every website owner will be able to do themselves with out any additional support.
In reality, this is true for many sites. But for other sites it will represent a silent route to a major update failure, a security issue or the gradual decline of performance that results in lost revenue. What matters here is not if you are capable of maintaining your own site — it’s if you should (or have the time) considering what really is at stake.
I am not trying to sell you on any type of plan. I want to provide an honest risk analysis so you may determine if one method fits your circumstances better than another.
The DIY Approach — What It Actually Involves
While maintaining a WordPress website on your own can seem like just click “update”, there’s much more involved in a real do-it-yourself (DIY) maintenance routine.
Software updates such as updating WordPress itself, your theme or each of your plugins (typically 10-30 updates monthly), come with some level of risk for breaking things. Therefore, an ideal software update process will include researching changelogs, reviewing compatibility and testing after each update.
Backups need to be set up properly, regularly tested and validated. Using an automatic backup plugin is insufficient — you have to test that backups complete successfully, that they’re stored securely offsite, and that you could indeed recover from one of those backups. As long as you’ve never tested whether a backup works it’s a gamble.
Security Monitoring encompasses using malware scanning tools, examining login attempts, managing firewalls, and remaining current on new vulnerability issues with your plugins and themes. New threats emerge every week for WordPress.
Performance Monitoring refers to evaluating page load speeds, Core Web Vitals, and server response times. When performance diminishes, you will want to identify what caused the problem (i.e. a plugin update, an excessive amount of data stored within your database, increased traffic to your site, etc.) as well as whether it is a hosting issue.
Troubleshooting is where many web developers spend their time. For example, if a plugin collision results in a blank/white screen; if a theme update breaks your design/layout; or if your email/contact form suddenly stop working/stopping email contact — These types of problems can take hours to resolve and often require actual technical expertise.
In reality, performing proper DIY website maintenance requires approximately 4-8 hours/month for one business website. The hours required to perform proper DIY website maintenance increase exponentially when issues occur.
The Risks of DIY Maintenance
Every day, a variety of things can go wrong for WordPress websites.
Conflicts among plugins. Thousands of developers create the various plugins available for use with WordPress. Since these developers have not coordinated their efforts, when one developer updates his/her/their plugin, there is always a risk that this update will conflict with an updated version of another developer’s plugin. When you do not have a staging environment, you are essentially testing on your live website.
The white screen of death. Fatal PHP errors resulting from poor updates may cause an entire website to go blank. When you are using no staging, no version control, or no rollback capabilities it can take hours to recover from these types of errors. Hours of Downtime on a Business Site = Lost Revenue & Damaged Credibility.
Changes which break functionality — no staging. Most of the time major version upgrades (WordPress Core, WooCommerce, most page builders) have “breaking” changes. Most professional work flows will allow their staging environments to look like their production server and test these major version upgrades before they go live. As such many small business or DIY maintainers cannot afford the time and money to setup and keep their staging environments in sync with the live site.
Security Patches Missed. WordPress Plugin Security Patches are usually Time Sensitive. Once an exploit for a vulnerability is published, hackers typically start looking to see how to hack all those sites running the same old version of whatever plugin was exploited. Since you don’t regularly update your plugins, your website could remain vulnerable for months. It is estimated that over 30,000 Websites are Hacked Daily. Almost all of them were hacked because their Software had not been updated in some way.
Slow Performance — Incremental Degrade. Many of us do not realize we can make our website run faster by optimizing databases, managing images, and performing regular plugin audits. A lot of times it takes months for things to degrade enough to show up in a web browser as being slower than normal. However when it finally does happen; a large amount of time and energy will need to be spent getting the site’s speed back up.
What a Professional Plan Handles for You
A Professional wordpress Maintenance Plan is More Than Someone Clicking Update Buttons For Your Site. The Workflow Is As Follows:
Updates are Applied to Staging First. Updates — whether they be Core updates or plugin & theme updates — are all applied to a staging version of your site; after which we test for both Visual and Functional Regressions prior to deploying them to Production. This Eliminates the Single Biggest Cause of DIY Maintenance Failures.
Automated monitoring and alerting. Professional service providers have 24/7 uptime monitoring, security scans and performance tracking. They detect and address problems in advance of when you may even be aware that they exist.
Rollback capability. When the inevitable occurs and a rollout causes some issue, most professional services can instantly roll back your site to its previous version.
Database and performance maintenance. Your website will run at top speed by maintaining monthly database optimizations, managing image pipelines, configuring cache, and continuously monitoring for optimal Core Web Vitals.
Expert troubleshooting. A group of experienced professionals that have worked on many different WordPress websites will quickly identify and resolve the problem before a single person does. Experience is key when working with WordPress because there is often pattern based on the root cause of many issues.
Cost Comparison — Your Time vs. Plan Cost
The biggest cost with doing it yourself is not the tools you are using.
It is your time.
The Cost of DIY: There are some monthly costs associated with doing it yourself.
They range from 50 to 150 dollars for premium plugin options and backup service options.
You will need to add an additional 4-8 hours of your time.
At a minimum, if you earn $75 per hour (which is a low estimate for most business owners) each of these hours will be worth $300-$600 to you in lost opportunity. Total actual cost: $350to $750 per month.
Professional plan costs: Professional plan pricing is around $50-$300/month depending upon which level you choose with your provider. With Deutrix Care, our professional services will cost a fraction of what it takes many business owners to do this themselves. The difference between self-service and being served professionally includes access to an expert team who can provide staging environments, as well as monitor for issues that self-serve often does not allow.
Emergency costs are the hidden variable. A single site-breaking incident handled by an emergency freelancer costs $200 to $1,000 depending on severity. A security breach cleanup ranges from $500 to $5,000. Professional plans prevent most emergencies and include support when they happen. DIY does not.
The math is rarely close. Unless your time has no value and nothing ever goes wrong, professional maintenance is almost always the more economical choice for business sites.
Who Should DIY vs. Who Needs a Plan
Not every site needs professional maintenance. Here is a practical framework.
DIY is reasonable when you run a personal blog or hobby site with no revenue dependency. You have genuine technical comfort with WordPress, PHP, and basic server administration. Your site is simple — under 10 plugins, no e-commerce, no complex integrations. You have the time and discipline to maintain a regular schedule. And you accept the risk that when something breaks, recovery is on you.
A professional plan makes sense when your website generates revenue, leads, or serves customers. You run WooCommerce or handle sensitive user data. You have more than 15 active plugins or complex integrations. Your time is more valuable spent on your business than on website maintenance. You cannot afford extended downtime. Or you have been burned by a DIY maintenance failure and want to prevent it from happening again.
E-commerce sites should not be DIY-maintained. The combination of payment processing, customer data, inventory management, and the financial cost of downtime makes professional maintenance a business requirement, not a luxury.
See which plan fits your site and budget. View Deutrix Care maintenance plans →
This article is part of our WordPress Speed Optimization Guide — the complete resource for maintaining a fast, secure WordPress site.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Many of our customers began using the DIY service option and moved to using one of our service options once they experienced an issue or simply did not have enough time. This process can be as simple as having us conduct a full audit of your website and then we will take care of everything else. The only downside of delaying this decision is waiting until you experience an issue before deciding to go into a service option.
This is one of the most typical reasons why a person moves into a professional website maintenance plan. Even though you possess the necessary technical knowledge for maintaining your site; in addition to that time is required. The plan will give your site the attention it needs so you can concentrate on utilizing your own unique set of technical skills toward growing and sustaining your true business.
YES. In fact, it’s more important for small businesses than large ones. While large companies are able to take downtime or security breaches in stride. The same cannot be said for a small company. A small business could lose everything if their website is down for a full week. Or if customers see that a small business has been hacked, they may never come back. This means that a professional maintenance plan (or ‘insurance’) will not only protect you against those problems but help make your website run faster and better.
