Website maintenance costs: what you should be paying for
What website maintenance actually involves, typical monthly costs in Australia, and how to tell a useful care plan from a padded one.
What maintenance should include
At a minimum: reliable hosting, an SSL certificate, regular backups you can actually restore, and security updates. Without those, you’re one plugin vulnerability away from a hacked site.
Useful plans also include uptime monitoring, a monthly speed check and a set amount of time for content changes. That last part matters more than it sounds. Most owners don’t need a developer on call; they need someone to update the price list, swap a staff photo and add a new service page.
Why some sites cost more to maintain
A typical small business WordPress site runs 20 or more plugins. Each one needs updating, and updates sometimes break each other. That’s ongoing labour you pay for.
Sites built on modern frameworks with fewer moving parts need far less of that. We moved our builds to that approach partly for this reason: clients spend their care budget on improvements rather than patching.
Red flags in a care plan
- “Monitoring” with no response time
- No mention of backups or how often they run
- Content changes charged at a high hourly rate
- Lock-in contracts that make it hard to leave with your site
A simple rule
Your maintenance cost should be well below what a single lost week of enquiries is worth. If your site is your main source of leads, a proper care plan is cheap insurance.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to pay for website maintenance?
If your site brings in business, yes. Unmaintained sites slow down, break and get hacked, and fixing them later usually costs more.
Can I maintain my own website?
You can handle content updates if your CMS is easy to use. Security, hosting and updates are better left to someone who does it daily.
What’s included in website care plans?
Usually hosting, backups, security updates, monitoring and a small amount of time for changes each month.
