How much does website maintenance cost, and what should it include?
Published on 1 min read
A published website is not a finished job. Browsers change, security flaws appear in the components it relies on, forms stop sending without anyone noticing, and content goes stale. Maintenance is what stops a site that worked perfectly on day one from quietly losing customers.
What it must include
Security and component updates, backups that have actually been test-restored at least once, monitoring that alerts you if the site goes down, and regular checks that forms and contact buttons are still working.
That last point is the most overlooked and the most expensive: a form that stops sending can go unnoticed for weeks, and every lost enquiry is a customer who went to a competitor.
What makes the difference
Beyond keeping the site up, good maintenance improves it: reviewing speed, fixing the errors Google Search Console reports, updating copy and prices, and adding content that answers what your customers search for.
The difference between maintenance that merely “maintains” and maintenance that improves shows up in results six months later.
What drives the price
Mostly how the site is built and how often it changes. A simple site with few dependencies and rare updates needs little technical upkeep. An online shop, or a site connected to a CRM, bookings and WhatsApp, has more moving parts to watch.
Be wary of both extremes: free maintenance that in practice includes nothing, and a high monthly fee with no report of what was done.
How to know if it is worth it
Ask for a short monthly report: what was updated, what incidents occurred and what was improved. If you do not get one, you do not know what you are paying for.
And ask what would happen if you cancelled. If the answer is that you could not take your website or your logins with you, you are not buying maintenance — you are paying for a dependency.