What website maintenance actually costs (and what you are paying for)
A site is not a flyer. Plugins age, certificates expire, and hosts change PHP versions under you. If nobody is watching, you find out when a customer says the form bounced or Google shows a warning.
The question is not whether maintenance exists. It is whether you do it yourself, call someone when it breaks, or pay a monthly plan so the boring work happens on a schedule.
What "maintenance" means
For a typical small business site:
- Hosting that does not disappear
- SSL
- Backups you can actually restore
- Uptime checks
- Security patches
- Small copy and photo updates
- A look at speed once in a while
It does not mean a redesign. It does not mean unlimited new pages. Those are separate jobs and should be quoted that way.
What it costs if you do it yourself
The cash cost can be low: a $10 host, a free SSL, a backup plugin. The time cost is the part people forget. Updates take an evening. When an update breaks the header, it takes three evenings.
Some owners are fine with that. If you are not, you will delay the update until something is already wrong.
What it costs when you wait
We see the same pattern. The site runs for a year with no updates. Then a plugin hole gets scanned, or the host drops the old PHP, or the contact form stops sending and nobody notices for a month.
Cleanup and a restore are more expensive than the monthly plan would have been. Sometimes the backup is on the same server that got hit, which means it is useless. Then you are in rebuild territory.
An outdated site has other costs besides panic: slower pages, worse phone experience, listings that no longer match.
What we charge
Current monthly plans and exact inclusions live on the pricing page. Web Care is the entry plan: keep the site online, secure, and backed up. Most businesses pick Web Support for routine updates and a monthly report. Web Partner adds performance work, SEO monitoring, priority support, and larger edits.
We are not hiding a $400 "premium monitoring" upsell behind a call.
When a plan is the wrong buy
If the site is already a mess (hacked, ancient builder, forms dead), start with a refresh or a rebuild. Putting a monthly plan on a dying stack just means we invoice you to keep a leaky boat afloat.
If you have an internal person who already does updates and enjoys it, you may not need us for care. You might still want a one-time cleanup.
What to ask any vendor
- Where do the backups live?
- When did you last restore one on purpose?
- Who gets the 2 a.m. "site is down" ping?
- What is included in an "update" vs a billed edit?
If they cannot answer those, you are buying a retainer with no job description.
Want us to look at yours? Request a quote. Send the URL. We will tell you if you need care, a repair, or a new site.