How much website maintenance costs
Website maintenance costs $30 to $200 a month with a freelancer and $150 to $500 with an agency in the US, on top of $5 to $60 a month for hosting. Annually that is $1,800 to $6,000 for a small business site. Without updates, a WordPress site becomes a security liability within months.
Updated 18 August 2026 · 5 min read
Build cost gets debated endlessly; maintenance barely gets mentioned. Yet the state of a website two years in depends more on this number than on the first one — and over three years it multiplies the build cost by two to three times.
The line items
| Item | Cost | What happens without it |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | $5 – $60 a month | The site is offline |
| Freelance maintenance | $30 – $200 a month | Updates skipped, backups untested |
| Agency retainer | $150 – $500 a month | No one answers when something breaks |
| Enterprise maintenance | $500 – $2,000 a month | For sites where downtime costs revenue |
| SSL certificate | included with decent hosting | Browsers warn visitors off your site |
Scroll the table →
Ranges from Jim.com and GruffyGoat, 2026. Digital Applied puts annual maintenance for a small business site at $1,800 to $6,000, and $6,000 to $24,000 for corporate and ecommerce.
What a maintenance retainer should include
- Core, theme and plugin updates — with a check afterwards that nothing broke.
- Automated backups and, the part almost nobody verifies, a tested restore.
- Uptime monitoring and SSL renewal.
- A response time in writing. “We'll take a look” is not a response time.
- Small content changes included, or the price of each one if they are not.
Where you can safely spend less
- Shared hosting at the $5 to $15 level is fine for a brochure site; the $60 tier is for stores and real traffic.
- Free SSL through Let's Encrypt is enough for almost every site.
- Paid SEO tooling can wait until there is content to measure.
What you cannot safely skip is backups and updates. That is why in our case maintenance is not an add-on: 24 € a month — about $26 — covers domain, hosting and maintenance, and changes are 24 € each.
Frequently asked questions
How much does website maintenance cost per month?
$30 to $200 with a freelancer and $150 to $500 with an agency, plus $5 to $60 for hosting. Annually, $1,800 to $6,000 for a typical small business site.
Do I really need a maintenance plan?
Not contractually, but if the site runs WordPress somebody has to update it. Left alone it becomes a security liability within months, and cleaning up an infection costs more than the plan would have.
What should be in a maintenance retainer?
Verified updates, automated backups with a tested restore, uptime monitoring, SSL renewal and a written response time. Check whether content edits are included or billed separately.
How much is hosting for a small business website?
$5 to $60 a month, or $240 to $720 a year. The upper end is for ecommerce and higher traffic; a brochure site runs comfortably at the low end.
A professional website for 24 € a month
Domain, hosting and maintenance included, live in 24 hours. You fill in a questionnaire, we do the rest.
See how it worksSources
- Digital Applied — Website Development Cost 2026: complete pricing data — accessed 18 August 2026
- Jim.com — Small business website cost in 2026: real prices — accessed 18 August 2026