Website Maintenance Costs: What Should You Actually Pay?
What you should be getting for a monthly maintenance fee — and the plans that are hosting in disguise.
Website maintenance is the least exciting line item in any quote and one of the easiest places to overpay. The word covers everything from "we keep the server on" to "we handle the site completely", at similar prices. Here's how to tell them apart.
What proper maintenance includes
- Hosting, SSL certificate and a domain that stays renewed.
- Automatic backups you could actually restore from.
- Platform and security updates.
- Uptime monitoring, so you're not the one who notices it's down.
- Content changes — new services, prices, photos, staff.
- Speed and mobile checks as the site grows.
- Fixing broken forms and links.
What you're paying for that isn't maintenance
A monthly PDF report nobody reads. "SEO monitoring" with no work attached. Plans that bill your content changes separately at an hourly rate. If changes aren't included, you're paying for hosting with extra steps.
Why the cheap option often costs more
Unmaintained sites break quietly: contact forms stop delivering, certificates expire, plugins conflict, and hacked pages appear before anyone notices. Recovery costs far more than prevention, and any enquiries lost while the form was broken are gone for good.
Fair questions to ask
- Are content changes included, or billed on top?
- How often are backups taken, and where are they stored?
- What's the response time when something breaks?
- Who owns the domain and the content?
- Am I locked into a term, or can I give notice?
How I structure it
I bundle it: one setup fee to build, then a single weekly fee covering hosting, security, backups, monitoring and any changes you need — with no lock-in contract, cancel on a month's notice. It removes the awkwardness of wondering whether a small edit is worth an invoice, which is exactly why most sites go stale.
Full detail on the website maintenance page, or see website redesign if yours has already gone too far without attention.
Is your maintenance plan worth it?
- Hosting, SSL and backups included
- Security and platform updates applied
- Content changes included, not billed hourly
- Uptime monitoring in place
- A named person who responds when something breaks
- No long lock-in contract
- You own your domain and content
Want to Improve Your Google Visibility?
SEO varies enormously depending on your website, your market and who you're competing against, so there's no fixed package. Tell me what you do and where you work, and I'll tell you honestly what's realistic.
Talk to Mike About SEOCommon questions
- Do I really need website maintenance?
- Any live website needs hosting, security updates and backups. If your business details, prices or services ever change, you also need someone to make those changes — which is the part cheap plans leave out.
- Is website maintenance tax deductible in Australia?
- Ongoing website running costs are generally deductible as a business expense, while larger build costs may be treated differently. Check with your accountant for your situation.
Written by Mike — Web Guy Mike
I build and look after websites for Australian tradies and small service businesses. Every site is built by me — no outsourcing, no account managers. More about Mike.