Website maintenance for a small-business WordPress site typically costs £49–£199 a month + VAT, depending on how often it’s updated and backed up, how fast problems are fixed, and whether development time is included. A simple static site needs far less, and sometimes no plan at all.
I’m a freelance web designer and I’ve been looking after websites since 2011. Here’s what maintenance actually involves, what my plans cost, and how to work out what you need.
What does website maintenance include?
For a WordPress site, maintenance usually means:
- Software updates: WordPress core, your theme and plugins. Most hacked WordPress sites are running something out of date.
- Backups: automatic copies of your site stored somewhere other than your server, so you can roll back if something goes wrong.
- Security monitoring: malware scanning and blocking suspicious activity.
- Uptime monitoring: an alert the moment the site goes down, so it’s fixed before your customers notice.
- Performance checks: keeping it fast as content and plugins pile up.
- Support and small changes: someone to call when something looks wrong, plus time for tweaks.
What it usually doesn’t include: redesigns, new features or new sections. Those are quoted as projects.
My website maintenance prices
These are my WordPress maintenance packages, billed quarterly:
| Essential | Plus | Complete | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | £49/month + VAT | £99/month + VAT | £199/month + VAT |
| Hosting | Included | Included | Included |
| Premium plugin licences | No | Included | Included |
| Uptime monitoring | 24/7 | 24/7 | 24/7 |
| Plugin and core updates | Monthly | Monthly | Weekly |
| Malware scanning | Included | Included | Included |
| Backups | Daily, 1 location | Daily, 2 locations | Hourly, 3 locations |
| Development time | No | 1 hour/month | 4 hours/month |
| Response time | Within 72 hours | Within 48 hours | Within 24 hours |
Hosting is included in every plan, so for most clients the maintenance fee replaces a separate hosting bill rather than adding to it.
What decides the monthly cost?
How often things are updated and backed up
A site that changes daily (an online shop taking orders, a busy blog) needs more frequent backups than a brochure site that changes twice a year. Losing a day of orders is a very different problem from losing a typo fix.
How quickly you need a response
If the site going down costs you money by the hour, a guaranteed 24-hour response is worth paying for. If it’s a brochure site, 72 hours is usually fine.
Development time
Plans with included hours suit businesses that make regular small changes: new team members, updated prices, a fresh landing page. Without included time, those changes are quoted one by one.
The platform
WordPress and other database-driven sites need the most care, because they have the most moving parts. Static sites (like the Astro sites I build) have no database or plugins to keep patched, so they need far less ongoing maintenance.
The state of the site
Taking over a site that hasn’t been updated in years usually starts with a health check and a clean-up before the monthly plan begins.
Do I actually need a maintenance plan?
Probably yes if:
- Your site runs on WordPress or another CMS with plugins
- It takes payments, bookings or enquiries you can’t afford to lose
- Nobody in your business has the time (or wants) to handle updates and backups
- You make regular small changes and would rather not chase quotes for each one
Probably not if:
- It’s a small static site that rarely changes
- You (or someone on your team) are confident handling updates, backups and security properly, every month
The one thing I’d never skip is backups. Even if you do everything else yourself, make sure there’s an automatic, off-site copy of your site.
What does it cost if you skip it?
Updates feel optional right up until a plugin vulnerability gets your site hacked, or an update breaks the checkout and nobody notices for a week. Cleaning up a hacked site, restoring from old backups (if there are any), and recovering search rankings after Google flags it costs far more than a year of maintenance. It also takes far longer.
That’s why I wrote six reasons you should take out a maintenance contract on your website, back when this was a harder sell.
Maintenance on a managed package
If you’re having a new site built, my managed packages roll the build, hosting and maintenance into one monthly payment for the first 12 months. After that, the site’s yours, and you can carry on with a maintenance plan or take it elsewhere.
The short answer
- Typical cost: £49 – £199 a month + VAT for a small-business WordPress site
- What you’re paying for: updates, backups, security, uptime monitoring, support and (on higher plans) development time
- Static sites: need much less maintenance
- Never skip: off-site backups
Want me to look after your site, whoever built it? See my maintenance packages or get in touch.
