What Website Maintenance Costs Per Month
Website maintenance cost typically runs $20 to $300 per month for a small business site, and $300 to $1,500 per month for an agency retainer that bundles content changes and reporting. If you do it yourself on a site builder, the platform fee is $15 to $50 per month plus your time.
The wide range is not because some providers are honest and others are not. It is because "maintenance" means very different things from one plan to the next. One $99/mo plan includes hosting, updates, backups, and two edits a month. Another $99/mo plan covers hosting and updates only, and every edit you request arrives as a separate invoice.
This guide breaks down what maintenance should include, what each type of provider charges, and how to spot the pricing structure that quietly doubles your annual cost.
What Website Maintenance Should Include
Before you compare prices, get clear on the pieces. A complete maintenance plan covers all of the following. Anything missing from a plan is a cost you will pay elsewhere.
| Component | What it does | Typical standalone cost |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Keeps the site online and fast | $10-$100/mo |
| Domain renewal | Keeps you owning your address | $10-$20/yr |
| SSL certificate | The padlock; expected by browsers and search engines | $0-$100/yr (usually free now) |
| Software and security updates | Patches the platform, theme, and plugins | $25-$100/mo on WordPress; minimal on static sites |
| Backups | Daily copies you can restore from | $5-$30/mo or included with hosting |
| Uptime monitoring | Alerts someone when the site goes down | $0-$20/mo |
| Performance monitoring | Watches page speed and Core Web Vitals | $0-$50/mo or included |
| Content changes | Edits to hours, prices, staff, services, photos | $75-$150/hr billed hourly, or included in a plan |
| Analytics and reporting | Tells you whether the site is doing its job | Often only in higher tiers |
Two things stand out in that table.
First, the technical items (hosting, SSL, backups, monitoring) are cheap and largely automated. Their cost is not what separates a $20 plan from a $500 plan.
Second, content changes are the expensive line, because they need a person. How a provider handles changes is the single biggest factor in what you actually pay over a year, which is why the rest of this guide keeps coming back to it.
How the platform changes the workload
The amount of maintenance a site needs depends heavily on how it was built.
- WordPress sites run on a core platform plus a theme plus a stack of plugins, all updated by different people on different schedules. Something needs patching most weeks, and an update that breaks a page layout is a normal occurrence. This is why a whole industry of WordPress maintenance retainers exists.
- Site builders (Wix, Squarespace, and similar) handle updates for you. Maintenance is mostly the content side, and you do it yourself.
- Static or custom-built sites have almost nothing to patch, because there is no plugin stack. Maintenance is hosting, monitoring, and content changes. We covered the trade-offs in our guide to WordPress alternatives.
If you are choosing a platform now, this is worth factoring in. A site that needs less patching leaves more of your monthly budget for changes that actually help the business.
Website Maintenance Cost by Provider Type
Here is what each option costs and what you get for it. Prices are typical ranges at the time of writing.
| Provider type | Monthly cost | Content changes | Who does the work | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DIY site builder plan | $15-$50 | Unlimited, but you make them | You | Owners with time and a simple site |
| WordPress maintenance retainer | $50-$300 | Usually none, or a small block of hours | Freelancer or small shop | WordPress sites that need patching |
| Agency retainer | $300-$1,500 | Included, often with a cap | Agency team | Larger sites with frequent updates |
| Built For Rank plans | $20-$499 | 1-10 requests/mo included | Us | Small businesses that want changes done fast without hourly invoices |
DIY site builder plan ($15-$50/mo)
Squarespace, Wix, and similar platforms bundle hosting, SSL, updates, and backups into the subscription. At the time of writing, business-tier plans land around $16-$50 per month depending on features.
What you get: No technical maintenance to think about. Edits are yours to make whenever you like.
What it costs you: Every change is your time. That is fine for a menu update once a quarter. It is less fine when you are trying to add a service page, fix a mobile layout problem, and get a Google Business Profile issue resolved in the same week. There is also no one to call when something looks wrong.
WordPress maintenance retainer ($50-$300/mo)
This is the most common paid maintenance product for small businesses, and it exists because WordPress needs it. A freelancer or small shop takes over updates, backups, security scanning, and uptime monitoring.
What you get: Peace of mind that plugins are being patched and backups are running. Good providers test updates on a staging copy first.
What to check: Most retainers in this range are technical only. Read the fine print for content changes. Many include zero edits, or "up to 30 minutes" a month, with anything beyond billed at $75-$150 per hour. That is the setup that turns a $99 plan into a $250 average month.
Agency retainer ($300-$1,500/mo)
Agencies bundle maintenance with a set number of changes, reporting, and sometimes SEO adjustments. Higher tiers add an account manager and faster response times.
What you get: Someone else owns the whole thing. Changes are included up to a cap. You get a monthly report and a person who knows your site.
What to check: How the cap works, and how fast changes actually ship. A plan that includes "unlimited minor changes" with a five-business-day turnaround is not that useful when a price change needs to be live today. Ask for their actual turnaround numbers, not the target in the contract.
Built For Rank plans ($20-$499/mo)
For comparison, here is how our own monthly plans map to the same categories. All four include hosting, SSL, security updates, uptime monitoring, and a set number of change requests, sent by text or voice memo, with no per-change billing on top.
| Plan | Monthly | Change requests | Also includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Host | $20 | 1/mo | Hosting, SSL, security updates, uptime monitoring |
| Maintain | $99 | 2/mo | Everything in Host, plus Core Web Vitals monitoring |
| Grow | $249 | 5/mo | 2 SEO blog posts/mo, monthly reports |
| Scale | $499 | 10/mo | 4 SEO blog posts/mo, weekly reports |
Over the last 120 days, across 117 client change requests, the median time from request to live was 18 minutes. 85% shipped within the hour and 97% the same day. We publish those numbers because turnaround is the part of maintenance that most plans leave vague, and it is the part you feel most.
Plans are month to month with 30 days' notice to cancel, and you own the site, the content, and the domain either way. Databases, customer portals, and billing systems are quoted separately because they are genuinely different work.
The Per-Change Invoice Trap
This pricing structure is common enough, and easy enough to miss, that it deserves its own section.
You sign up for a $79/mo maintenance plan. It covers hosting, updates, backups, and monitoring. It looks like a good deal against a $99 or $249 plan from someone else. Changes are "billed at our hourly rate" of $125, with a 30-minute minimum.
Then real life happens:
- February: new staff member, new headshot and bio. 30 minutes, invoiced at $62.50.
- April: prices changed on three services. 45 minutes, $93.75.
- June: a plugin update broke the contact form. Two hours to diagnose and fix, $250.
- September: added a seasonal promotion banner and took it down again. Two separate 20-minute jobs, each billed at the 30-minute minimum, $125.
- November: updated holiday hours. 15 minutes, billed as 30, $62.50.
That is about $594 in change invoices on top of $948 in plan fees, for a real cost of roughly $128 per month. Not terrible, but the "cheap" plan cost more than the $99 plan that included two changes a month, and it came with the friction of thinking about cost every time you wanted something updated.
The friction is the hidden expense. When every edit generates an invoice, owners stop asking. Hours stay wrong. The old price sits on the services page. The site drifts out of date, which is exactly the outcome maintenance was supposed to prevent.
How to spot it: Look for the phrase "billed at our hourly rate" anywhere in the plan description, a minimum billing increment, or a plan that lists hosting and updates in detail but says nothing about content changes. Then ask directly: "If I text you a price change on a Tuesday, what does it cost and when is it live?"
Questions to Ask Before You Sign
Whatever provider type you are leaning toward, these six questions will surface the real cost.
- How many content changes are included each month, and what counts as one? A change to one page? One request regardless of size? Get the definition.
- What is the actual turnaround on a change? Ask for their median, not their maximum. If they do not track it, that tells you something.
- What happens when an update breaks something? Is the fix included, or is it billable? On WordPress this will happen eventually.
- Who owns the site, the content, and the domain? You should. If the answer is anything else, the low monthly price is a lease, not maintenance.
- What is the cancellation term? Month to month with 30 days' notice is reasonable. Twelve-month minimums on a maintenance plan are a red flag.
- What is not included? Custom features, integrations, redesigns, and SEO work are usually separate. That is fair, but you want to know before the first invoice.
If you are also evaluating ongoing SEO, our SEO pricing guide covers what that costs and how it overlaps with maintenance plans, since the two are often bundled and it is easy to double-pay.
How Much Should You Budget?
Match the plan to how often the site actually changes, not to how important the site feels.
- A simple site that rarely changes (a few edits a year): $20-$50/mo. A DIY builder plan or a low-tier hosting-plus-monitoring plan is enough. Just make sure someone will answer if it goes down.
- A typical local service business (an edit or two a month, occasional new page): $99-$249/mo. You want changes included so you never hesitate to send one, plus monitoring so you find out about problems before your customers do.
- A business where the site is the main lead source (frequent updates, new content, active SEO): $249-$500/mo. At this level the plan should include content and reporting, not just upkeep, because the site is a marketing asset that needs to keep moving.
- Larger sites with many stakeholders: $500-$1,500/mo agency retainers start to make sense when you need an account manager, design work, and a lot of change volume.
For a fuller picture of first-year costs including the build itself, see our website design cost guide and our breakdown of how much a small business should spend on a website.
One more honest note: if your site is on a builder, changes rarely, and you are comfortable making edits yourself, DIY is a perfectly good answer. Paying $99/mo to have someone else change your hours twice a year is not a smart use of money. Maintenance plans earn their cost when changes are frequent, when downtime would hurt, or when your time is better spent running the business.
Where Built For Rank Fits
We build custom SEO-first sites for small businesses for a $1,500 one-time fee, delivered in one to two weeks, and then keep them maintained on the plans above with change requests included rather than invoiced. You can see the whole process on our how it works page. If you are not sure which tier fits, or whether you need a plan at all, request a free consultation and we will tell you straight, even if the answer is that a builder plan is all you need.