Website maintenance cost is the running costs (domain, SSL, hosting, licenses, published and mostly small) plus the labour (updates, backups, security, fixes, changes, quoted and usually the larger part). The table below sets out each line with the public prices as read on 8 November 2026.
This guide is part of our web design guides. The build cost of a WordPress site is in WordPress website development cost; when maintenance is no longer enough, the website redesign checklist covers the next step.
The two kinds of maintenance cost
Running costs are paid to vendors whether or not anyone touches the site: the domain, the certificate, the hosting, the licenses. Labour is what a person does to keep the site healthy and useful: updating software, taking and testing backups, watching for attacks, fixing what breaks, making the changes the business asks for. The first is published and predictable; the second is quoted and depends on the site. Owners who budget only the first discover the second when something breaks.
Domain and SSL certificate
A domain name renews yearly. Porkbun lists a .com at $11.81 a year (read 8 November 2026), and Cloudflare Registrar states that its registration, transfer and renewal prices are always at or below what registries and ICANN charge, with no markup. Other endings and premium names cost more. The SSL certificate that makes a site https no longer needs to cost anything: Let's Encrypt is a free, automated and open certificate authority run by the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group, and most hosts install its certificates automatically. A host that charges separately for a basic certificate is charging for something free.
Hosting: published prices
Hosting is the largest running cost and the most varied. At the low end, WordPress.com's plans (read 8 November 2026, US dollars excluding taxes) run from Free at $0 through Personal at $9 a month or $4 a month billed yearly, Premium at $18 or $8, Business at $40 or $25 (the plan that allows plugins, SFTP and real-time backups) to Commerce at $70 or $45. Managed WordPress hosts charge more and include updates, backups and performance work in the price: Kinsta's single-site plans start at $35 a month or $30 a month billed annually ($350 a year) for one install and 10 GB of storage and rise with visits and bandwidth to $375 a month or $313 billed annually; WP Engine's Essential plan is $28.00 a month billed annually ($336 up front) for 25,000 to 400,000 visits a month, with Business at $400.00 a month billed annually and Enterprise on request.
Which band a site belongs in depends on traffic, on how much the host does for you, and on what a slow or down site costs the business. For a site that produces leads, managed hosting's included updates, backups and speed usually pay for themselves in labour saved; our guide to WordPress speed optimization explains why hosting shows up in Core Web Vitals, where web.dev's targets are a Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint within 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift within 0.1 at the 75th percentile of visits.
Licenses: themes, builders, plugins and apps
Most business sites run on a premium theme, a page builder and a handful of paid plugins, each renewing yearly, or on a store platform with paid apps renewing monthly. Elementor, the most common WordPress page builder, lists Elementor Pro as starting from $60 a year (read 8 November 2026); form, SEO, backup, security and ecommerce plugins each have their own yearly fee, and Shopify apps charge monthly. Individually small, together they are often the second-largest running cost and the first thing to lapse when nobody owns the list. Write every license down with its renewal date and what breaks if it lapses.
The labour: what someone does each month
The labour is the part no vendor page prices, because it depends on the site. It covers seven things:
- Updates. The platform, the theme, the plugins or apps, on a test copy first where a site matters, because updates break things.
- Backups, taken and tested. A backup nobody has restored is a hope, not a backup. Test a restore every quarter.
- Security. Monitoring for malware and attacks, removing unused plugins and accounts, keeping access to the people who need it.
- Checks. Every form sent and received, every call link tapped, speed measured, broken links found, on a schedule.
- Fixes. The things that break between checks: a plugin conflict after an update, a form that stopped sending, a page that loads slowly.
- Changes. The content and small design changes the business asks for each month: a new team member, a price, a page.
- The report. A short monthly summary of what was done and what needs a decision, so the owner knows the site is being looked after.
What drives the labour cost
Six things decide the monthly fee for the labour:
- The platform and the plugin count. A WordPress site with forty plugins needs more update and conflict work than a Shopify store with five apps.
- How often the routine runs. Weekly updates and daily backups cost more than monthly ones; a lead-producing site needs the former.
- Hours of changes a month. Two small changes and twenty are different jobs; agree a monthly allowance.
- Response time. Same-day response to a broken form costs more than next-week.
- The state of the site. A site that has gone a year without updates needs a clean-up before a routine can start.
- Who does it. Hourly rates differ several times over by region; the scope moves the total more than the rate.
Signs you are paying too little
Updates waiting for months, no backup anyone has tested, forms nobody has sent a test through, a site built by a developer who has gone, and licenses that lapsed without anyone noticing. Each is a cost deferred rather than saved: the hack, the lost leads or the rebuild arrives later and larger. If two of these are true of your site, the maintenance budget is too small or the work is not being done.
How to budget a year of maintenance
Six steps:
- List the running costs from your invoices: domain, hosting, every license and app, with renewal dates. Total them for the year.
- Decide the routine your site needs: how often updates and backups run, what gets checked, how fast someone responds.
- Agree a monthly allowance of changes, in hours, with what happens when a month runs over.
- Get a scoped monthly fee for the labour against that routine and allowance, itemised, with the hosting and licenses kept separate and paid by you.
- Hold back for the one-offs: the clean-up at the start, the plugin that must be replaced, the fix after a platform change.
- Review yearly against the report: what broke, what changed, whether the plan still fits the site and the business.
Conclusion
Website maintenance cost is the published running costs plus the quoted labour. The running costs are small and knowable: a .com around $12 a year, SSL free, hosting from a few dollars to a few hundred a month depending on how much the host does, licenses that renew yearly. The labour is where the money and the risk live, and it follows the platform, the routine, the hours of changes and the response time. Budget a year of both, and test the backups.
PromotEdge International is an international strategy, technology, marketing and design company, and our delivery team is in India. Our website maintenance service looks after WordPress and Shopify sites on a monthly routine with a monthly report; hosting and licenses stay in your name and are paid by you.
Facts we rely on: see our company facts for what we state about ourselves and where each fact comes from.