Website maintenance: what it is and what it costs

Website maintenance is the work needed to keep your site safe, fast and online: updates, backups, security, hosting and small changes. With me, hosting and maintenance of a website costs € 49 to € 149 per month, depending on the site. Extra work is € 95 per hour, in blocks of 15 minutes.

What exactly are website maintenance and management?

A website is not a poster you hang up and forget. The software underneath gets updates, the server has to keep running, certificates expire and visitors arrive with new browsers. Maintenance and management is all the work that keeps the site doing what you expect from it.

In practice it consists of five parts:

1. Hosting: the server your site runs on, with an up-to-date, running system.
2. Updates: keeping the system, the libraries and any plugins current. A plugin is an add-on that adds a function, such as a contact form.
3. Security: regular updates, a properly configured certificate (the padlock in the address bar) and closing known holes.
4. Backups: a copy of your site that you can restore if something goes wrong. A backup you have never tested is a gamble.
5. Monitoring: a person or tool that notices your site is offline before your customers tell you.

On top of that, most sites have a sixth kind of work that you decide on yourself: small changes. A new opening time, an extra page, a price change.

What are the maintenance costs of a website?

That depends on what kind of site you have and what is included. A simple company site has few parts that age. A site with a webshop, bookings or many plugins has plenty.

These are my rates:

| What | Price | |---|---| | Hosting and maintenance of a website | € 49 to € 149 per month | | Extra work | € 95 per hour, in blocks of 15 minutes | | 10-hour credit bundle | € 875 | | Magento work and webshops | On request, with a fixed price up front |

The monthly price depends on the size of the site and what you need from it. What exactly is included, I agree with you up front, so there are no surprises. With the template packages, 30 to 60 minutes of changes per month are included in the monthly amount. The pricing page has the overview.

What pushes the price up: a webshop or booking system, many plugins, more visitors and higher demands on speed and availability. What keeps the price low: a compact site without many separate parts. I tell you up front which corner your site falls in, so the monthly amount matches what the site really needs.

The credit bundle is for the months when you want more done. You buy 10 hours for € 875 and use them for changes, new pages or extensions. That is cheaper than the single hourly rate: € 87.50 per hour instead of € 95.

When does it make sense to outsource website maintenance?

Outsourcing is not necessary for everyone. A few honest considerations.

Doing it yourself works if you have a small site on a service that handles maintenance itself (most site builders do) and you only want to edit texts. Then you already pay for maintenance in your subscription.

Outsourcing pays off if:

• Your site runs on a system where you have to do the updates yourself, such as WordPress with plugins or a custom build.
• Your site earns money. Every day it is offline or has a security hole costs you customers.
• You have no wish or time to deal with it. That is a legitimate reason.
• You want one person who knows how your site is put together and whom you can call.

Outsourcing also means having an agreement on what happens when something goes wrong. Always ask about that, with me and with anyone else.

What happens if you skip website maintenance?

At first nothing happens, and that is the treacherous part. A site without maintenance often keeps working for months. Then something changes.

• A known security hole in a plugin is abused and your site suddenly shows ads for something else, or lands on a Google list of unsafe sites.
• Your hosting drops an old PHP version (the programming language under many sites), and the site shows an error.
• Your certificate expires and browsers warn your visitors away.
• Something breaks, you have no working backup and you rebuild from scratch.

A repair afterwards is often more expensive than the maintenance would have been.

I see this on bigger sites too. I work daily on a Magento 2 webshop with over 3,400 products and 328 active modules. There, maintenance means testing every patch and rolling it out without taking the shop down. For a small company site that is fortunately much simpler, but the principle is the same. For webshops I have a separate page on Magento maintenance.

What is and is not in a maintenance contract?

Watch for these questions in any offer:

• What is included and what is not? Are small changes part of it, or do you pay for them separately?
• What happens during an outage? Who responds, and when?
• Who owns the site? If you leave, do you get your files and your domain?
• Where does the site run? With me on my own servers, so I know what is running.
• Can you cancel? A good contract does not lock you in.

I build and host sites as a one-person studio. You always talk to the same person, and that is the one who knows your site. More about what I build is on the page about websites.

Frequently asked questions

What does website maintenance cost per month?

With me, hosting and maintenance of a website costs € 49 to € 149 per month, depending on the size and demands of your site. Extra work is € 95 per hour. Webshops and Magento work I quote on request with a fixed price up front.

Do I have to pay for maintenance if nothing on the site changes?

Yes, because maintenance is not about the content but the technology underneath. Even a site you never touch needs updates, a server and a certificate. Without maintenance it slowly becomes unsafe or goes down.

What is the difference between hosting and maintenance?

Hosting is the place where your site lives and runs. Maintenance is the work around it: updates, security, backups and monitoring. With me they are in one monthly amount, so you do not have to deal with two parties.

Can I have my existing site maintained by you?

Usually, yes. I first look at what it runs on and whether that can be maintained safely. If your site runs on WordPress and you want to leave, there is also a WordPress migration. Get in touch and I will tell you honestly what fits your site.