Website maintenance cost: what you pay each month, and what it should cover

What decides the monthly cost of website maintenance

Two plans at different prices are often two different jobs. A plan that pays for hosting and nothing else will come in cheaper than one that also covers backups, updates and a few changes each month, and neither price tells you which one you are holding. Find out what each plan covers before you compare the figures, and get the answer in writing.

The kind of site moves the cost as well. A site that runs on a content system with plugins needs those plugins updated, and someone should check the pages still work afterwards. A shop needs its checkout tested after a change. A five-page site whose words rarely change needs a good deal less looking after.

Search for website maintenance cost per month and you will find ranges that disagree with each other, mostly published by companies that sell maintenance. We have not repeated any of them here, because we cannot check them. The list below works whatever figure you have been quoted.

What website maintenance should include

Whoever looks after your site, ask these questions about the plan. A clear yes to each one, in writing, is what the monthly figure should buy.

• Hosting: where the site lives, and what happens to it if a payment is missed.
• The security certificate kept current, so browsers keep showing the site as secure instead of warning visitors off.
• Backups on a schedule, and a plain answer to how quickly one can be put back.
• Security updates applied to whatever the site runs on.
• A set number of changes a month, with a stated turnaround. “Edits as needed” is not a number.
• What counts as a small change, and the price of anything bigger before the work starts.
• What happens to changes you did not use that month.
• A notice period you can live with, and the site, the files and the domain staying yours if you leave.

If the answer to the last one is vague, sort it out before you sign. Who owns your website files and who owns your domain have the wording to ask for.

What slips when nobody looks after a site

Small things go stale first, and they are easy to miss on a site you see every day. In October 2026 we scanned 467 business websites we found advertising on Google. Of the 199 that showed a copyright year in the footer, 76% were current, meaning this year or last. The rest still showed an older year, which can read to a customer as a page nobody has touched in a while.

On 35 sites (7%) we found the retired Universal Analytics tag, Google’s old visitor counter, which Google has switched off. Where that is the only counter on a site, its visits have gone uncounted for some time, possibly without the owner knowing. Both are small fixes that a maintenance plan should catch.

Every one of those businesses was paying for ads when we found it, since that is how the list was built. The full results are in what we found in 467 business websites.

What Droom’s Care plan costs and covers

Care is the one monthly plan we sell for a website, taken after launch. It is $99 a month and covers:

• Hosting, with the security certificate kept current.
• Daily backups.
• Security patches.
• Two small edits a month, each back within 48 hours. You text or email the change, and the person who built the site makes it.

A small edit is up to 30 minutes of work: text, prices, hours or photos. Unused edits do not roll over to the next month. Anything bigger gets a fixed quote before work starts, and you can say no to it.

Care runs three months minimum, then month to month, and you can cancel with 30 days notice. You do not need it to own the site. A site you bought is yours from launch, with the files and the domain, and the handover is free if you move it to another host.

Outside the $99 sit the domain registration, which is in your name, and GST where it applies. Every figure is on the pricing page.

When paying for maintenance is the wrong spend

Maintenance keeps a working site working. It will not fix a page that does not fit a phone, or one built on code so old that each small change breaks something else. If you are paying every month to hold a site like that together, compare what that costs you with replacing it.

If you are not sure which kind you have, the free Field Test uses your site the way a customer would, records what fails on video and comes back with a fixed price to fix it. The website audit checklist covers what you can check yourself on your phone.

If a rebuild turns out to be the answer, website redesign services sets out what one should include. A Droom website is $999 one time for up to five pages, or $1,999 for up to fifteen.