Website Maintenance Cost: What a Small Business Really Pays

A website has two ongoing costs: keeping it online, and keeping it current. Most quotes blur the two, then bill the second one by the hour. Ours are separate and published. Hosting is $69/mo, $129/mo or $269/mo depending on the site's tier, after a free period. Maintenance, if you want it, is a flat plan from $99/month. This post explains what each one covers, what you can skip, and what an unmaintained site actually costs you.

The short answer

• Hosting: $69/mo, $129/mo or $269/mo, free for the first 3, 6 or 12 months on the Starter, Growth and Authority tiers. It covers the servers, the SSL certificate, deployments and small monthly updates.
• Maintenance plans from $99/month, month to month. Weekly performance monitoring, dependency updates, security patches, and about an hour of small content edits every month without a per-change invoice.
• No plan at all is a real option: pay $50/edit for the occasional small change and nothing the rest of the year.

The full breakdown, including what the higher plans add, is on the website maintenance page.

What hosting pays for

The site we build is static: it is generated once and served from a network of servers near your visitors, which is why it loads fast and rarely goes down. Hosting covers that network, the SSL certificate that gives you the padlock, every deployment when something changes, and the minor updates that keep the site's software current. Your domain name stays with whoever you bought it from; its renewal is the one small yearly cost that is not in our number.

What maintenance pays for

Maintenance is the work that stops a site from quietly decaying:

• Performance monitoring. We run a Lighthouse check every week. A site that scored 95 at launch can drift as browsers and frameworks change; we catch it before Google does.
• Dependency and security updates. The frameworks a modern site is built on publish updates monthly. Applying them on time is what closes security holes before anyone finds them.
• Content edits. New hours, a new staff member, a price change, a seasonal offer. On a plan, small edits are included; off a plan, they are $50/edit.
• Reporting. A monthly note on what changed, what moved in search, and what we suggest next.

Higher plans add active search work, monthly posts and a Google Business Profile cadence, which is where maintenance shades into local SEO.

Do you need a maintenance plan?

Honestly, not always. The site will keep running on hosting alone. You need a plan if the content changes often enough that per-edit billing gets annoying, if you want someone watching performance and security so you do not have to, or if you want the search work bundled in. If your site changes twice a year, skip the plan and pay per edit.

What an unmaintained site costs

The expensive outcome is not a monthly fee. It is a site that has slowed down without anyone noticing, so it ranks lower and converts fewer visitors; a form that stopped sending emails three months ago; or a plugin on an old platform that got exploited. Every one of those costs more than a year of maintenance, and the first two are invisible until you check. A free audit will tell you whether any of them is already happening on your site.

How to work out your number in five minutes

• Which tier is the site? Starter: $69/mo. Growth: $129/mo. Authority: $269/mo. Nothing during the free months.
• How often does the content change? Twice a year: pay $50/edit as needed. Monthly or more: a plan from $99/month.
• Do you want search work included? Then look at the higher plans on the maintenance page, or at the SEO retainers directly.

FAQ

Is there a contract? No. Plans are month to month and you can cancel any time; the site is yours whether or not you stay on one.

What if I have my own developer? Then buy the site outright and skip the plan. We hand over the code and the accounts, and the site runs on hosting alone.

What happens when something breaks? A site that is fully down gets same-day attention regardless of tier. Plans set the response time for everything else.

Want the number for your own site? Ask us and we will reply with the tier, the hosting price after your free months, and whether a plan is worth it for you.