What does it cost to
keep a website running?
Three different things get sold under the word maintenance, and only one of them is worth a monthly fee. Here is how to tell them apart, what each actually costs, and how to work out whether you need a plan at all.
Parts that need patching
Depends what you rent
Ongoing work here
Follows a build
Sites that need no plan
More than you are told
- One word, three bills
Keeping the lights on
is not the expensive part.
Keeping the lights on. A domain, somewhere to serve the files, a certificate. For a small business site this is the cheapest line on the whole page — tens of dollars a month at the top end, and on a site built to sit still, closer to nothing. Nobody should be charging a monthly retainer for this alone.
Keeping rented machinery patched. This is where monthly fees come from, and it is real work — but it is work created by the build. A platform, a theme and a dozen plugins all update on schedules nobody in the room controls, and any one of them can break the others. Somebody has to watch that. The cheapest way to cut this bill is to own fewer moving parts.
Making the site better. New pages, a new section, a change to how something works. This is not maintenance, and calling it maintenance is how a two-hour allowance ends up priced like insurance. It is work, and it should arrive with a description and a number.
- The lines nobody reads out
Ask for every
recurring line.
The quote you are shown is usually the build. The cost you live with is the build plus everything that renews. Platform subscriptions, theme licences, the plugin that does your forms, the one that does bookings, the one that makes the other two work. Each is small. Together they are frequently the largest number in the first three years.
So ask for the list, in writing, before you sign: every recurring charge, what it is for, what it costs, when it renews, and whose name the account is in. That last one matters more than the amount. A subscription in someone else's name is a cost you cannot cancel and a site you cannot fully move.
Watch for a design licence that ends with the subscription. It is legal, it is common, and it means the look of your site was rented rather than bought. If everything is meant to be yours, that should be written down somewhere you can read it.
- How it works here
Most sites I build
never need a plan.
The code is written for the business and ships as static files, so there is no plugin stack to watch and no platform deciding when your site changes. The accounts are in your name from the first day. When the work ships, it goes home with you — the code, the files, the accounts. There is nothing in the arrangement that requires a monthly fee to keep working, and plenty of these sites have never had one.
Ongoing work exists for a different reason: when there is a next layer worth doing every month. A monthly read of what the site and the ads actually did, the hours to act on what it names, and a session to decide what next month sits on. It starts at $2,500 a month, six-month minimum, and it follows a build rather than replacing one. If nothing is compounding, it is the wrong shape and I will say so.
If you already have a site and want to know which of the three bills you are actually paying, that is what the audit reads. It is $500 to $1,500, sized to the business, and the deep read credits in full against a build if you decide to go that way.
- Asked plainly
The maintenance
questions.
What does website maintenance cost?
It depends on what the word is covering, and it usually covers three different things at once. Keeping the lights on — domain, hosting, a certificate — runs tens of dollars a month at the top end for a small business site, and less than that on a site built to sit still. Keeping a platform patched is the part that costs real money, because a plugin stack has to be watched. Making the site better is not maintenance at all; it is work, and it should be priced as work. Ask any studio to put the three on separate lines before you sign one number.
What is actually in a maintenance plan?
Most plans are some mix of updates, backups, uptime monitoring, security patching and a small allowance of change requests. The allowance is the part worth reading twice: a plan that includes "up to two hours of changes" is a plan whose real product is the two hours. If the site is not a plugin stack, the updates and patching part has very little to do, which is why the honest version of this conversation starts with whether you need a plan at all.
Do I need a maintenance plan for my website?
Often no. A site whose machinery is rented — a platform, a theme, a row of plugins — needs someone watching it, because every one of those parts updates on someone else's schedule and can break the others. A site whose code was written for the business and ships as static files has almost nothing to patch. Plenty of the sites I have built have never needed a monthly anything, and I would rather say that than sell you a plan.
What does ongoing work buy, if not maintenance?
Attention and the next layer of work. Here that is a monthly read of what the site and the ads actually did, the execution hours to act on what the read names, and a session to decide what the next month sits on. It starts at $2,500 a month, six-month minimum, and it follows a build rather than replacing one. It is the right shape when there is a next thing worth doing every month, and the wrong shape when there is not.
How long does website maintenance take?
Routine updates on a small site are minutes, and nobody should need the site offline to do them. If a studio needs a maintenance window long enough to notice, that is a fact about how the site was assembled, not about the work. The thing that actually takes time is a platform update that breaks something, which is an argument for owning fewer moving parts rather than for a bigger plan.
What recurring costs should I expect to see listed?
Domain registration, yearly. Hosting, monthly. A mail service if the site sends anything. Then the ones that hide: platform subscriptions, theme and plugin licences, form and booking add-ons, and any design licence that ends when the subscription does. Ask for every recurring line, in writing, with the renewal date. A studio that will not produce that list is telling you something.
The scan below reads your live site in about twenty seconds and will tell you whether you are looking at rented machinery or your own. If you would rather have a person read it, send the URL.
What ongoing work looks like · What a site costs to build · What it costs to leave · matthewdscott7@gmail.com
- Live pulse audit, free.
Any URL. Five checks.
The same module behind the paid audit, run against your URL. Twenty-five free runs a day from this browser.
- On contact. Taking work now.
Bring the brief.
I'll bring the receipts.
Have a site? Send the URL and I come back with what I see. No site yet? Tell me what the business does and what it needs, and the reply starts with questions, not a pitch. Either way, you hear back within one business day.