How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost?
Website maintenance costs $99 a month for hosting, security, backups and small edits, or $299 a month per location for Ziwi Care, which adds a new post every week, unlimited small edits and an analytics dashboard. The first month of Ziwi Care is free. Both are month to month.
Month to month, cancel anytime
- $99/moHosting, updates, backups, small edits
- $299/moZiwi Care, per location
vsTypical agency care plan$3,600 to $12,000 a year (WebFX)
The first month is free on either one. Hosting is optional: you own the site and can host it anywhere.
See how we compareThis is the cluster people search hardest and get answered worst: about 480 searches a month for "website maintenance cost", 1,900 for "cost of website hosting", 1,900 for "website maintenance service", 1,000 for "how much does website hosting cost" and 210 for "how much does it cost to maintain a website" (our September 2026 pull). The pages that rank give ranges. This one gives the two prices, line by line, and shows the market numbers next to them.
What does website maintenance actually cost?
Published industry figures put small business website maintenance at roughly $300 to $1,000 a month, or $3,600 to $12,000 a year, once hosting, updates, security, support and content are added up. Lighter DIY setups land closer to $40 to $250 a month. The spread comes from what is counted, so here is the component breakdown the sources publish.
| Source | What it covers | Published range |
|---|---|---|
| WebFX, Website Maintenance Pricing (updated 19 December 2025) | Small business site, all in | $3,600 to $12,000 a year |
| WebFX, Website Maintenance Pricing (updated 19 December 2025) | Mid-sized business site, all in | $12,000 to $30,000 a year |
| WebFX, Website Maintenance Pricing (updated 19 December 2025) | Hosting alone | $2 to $500 a month |
| WebFX, Website Maintenance Pricing (updated 19 December 2025) | General upkeep, CMS work and tech support | $15 to $105, $0 to $3,500 and $0 to $3,000 a month |
| WebFX, Website Maintenance Pricing (updated 19 December 2025) | Domain and SSL | $10 to $130 and $8 to $60 a year |
| Elementor website cost guide (updated 29 June 2026) | Small business site, month to month | $40 to $250 a month |
| Elementor website cost guide (updated 29 June 2026) | Developer or agency retainer | $100 to $5,000 and up a month |
Two things fall out of that table. Hosting on its own is cheap, often under $30 a month. What costs money is the human being who updates the software, fixes what breaks, edits your hours before a holiday and writes something new so the site does not go stale.
Know your number before you pick a plan
A free calculator turns your pages and features into a build price and a monthly range, in under a minute.
Try the cost calculatorWhat is the difference between hosting and a care plan?
Hosting keeps the site online.
A care plan keeps it working, current and worth visiting. At Ziwi that is the difference between the $99 a month maintenance and hosting plan and Ziwi Care at $299 a month per location, which adds a new post every week, unlimited small edits and a client analytics dashboard.
Most sites die from neglect rather than from an outage. Plugins go a year without an update, the contact form quietly stops sending, the pricing page still shows last year's numbers, and the newest thing on the blog is a launch announcement from 2023. None of that shows up on an uptime graph, and all of it costs calls.
What is included at $99 and what is included at $299?
The $99 plan covers hosting, security, backups, software updates and small edits. Ziwi Care at $299 per location adds the content engine, unlimited small edits with most live in 24 hours, and a client analytics dashboard, with the first month free. Line by line:
| Line item | $99 a month, maintenance and hosting | $299 a month, Ziwi Care per location |
|---|---|---|
| Managed hosting, security and backups | Included | Included |
| Software, plugin and platform updates | Included | Included |
| Small edits: text, prices, hours, photos, team | Included | Unlimited, most live in 24 hours |
| A new post every week, blog plus social | Not included | Included, shared to your Google Business Profile and Facebook |
| Client analytics dashboard | Not included | Included |
| First month free | No | Yes, $0 due today, then $299 from month two |
| Priced per location | Single plan | Yes, multi-location scales per location |
| Contract | Month to month | Month to month |
Small edits are defined simply so nobody argues about hours: text changes, price and hours updates, photo swaps, seasonal tweaks, team changes. Bigger jobs, a brand-new page or a redesign, get a simple quote first and are always approved by you before the work starts. A new page is published at $149 on the website design cost guide.
How does $299 compare to a typical agency care plan?
Ziwi Care at $299 a month is $3,588 a year, and $3,289 in year one because the first month is free. That sits at the bottom of the $3,600 to $12,000 a year band WebFX publishes for small business maintenance, while including weekly content that the band's low end does not.
| Line item | Market, as published | Ziwi, published |
|---|---|---|
| Managed hosting | $2 to $500 a month (WebFX, 19 December 2025) | Included in $99 and in $299 |
| Upkeep, CMS work and tech support | $15 to $105, $0 to $3,500 and $0 to $3,000 a month (WebFX) | Included, unlimited small edits on Ziwi Care |
| Four posts a month, written | $240 to $1,200 a month at WebFX's published $60 to $300 per page for copywriting | Included in $299, a new post every week |
| Small business maintenance, all in | $3,600 to $12,000 a year (WebFX), or $40 to $250 a month DIY (Elementor, 29 June 2026) | $1,188 a year at $99, or $3,588 a year at $299 per location |
| First month | Setup fees are common | Free on Ziwi Care, $0 due today |
The content row is arithmetic on a published rate, not a quote from an agency, so treat it as an order of magnitude rather than a bill. Every figure here is quoted as of September 2026 from a page you can open and check yourself.
Want the site kept for you instead?
What happens if you skip website maintenance?
Four things go wrong, and all four cost money quietly rather than loudly.
None of them announce themselves, which is why they are usually found by a customer instead of by you.
- Security and updates lapse. Out-of-date plugins and platforms are the common way small business sites get defaced or taken offline, and recovery costs more than a year of maintenance.
- Forms break silently. A form that stops delivering looks identical to a quiet week. Regular checks and call tracking are how you catch it, which is why tracking and attribution is included in every Ziwi plan.
- The site goes stale. Old prices, old hours and a three-year-old blog tell a buyer you may not still be operating.
- Speed drifts. Bloated plugins and unoptimised images pile up over a year, and phone visitors leave before the page paints.
Which plan should you pick?
Pick $99 if the site only needs to stay online, secure and current. Pick $299 per location if you also want something new published every week and edits you never have to ration.
- $99 a month. A stable site, few changes, and you are handling content yourself or not running content at all.
- $299 a month per location. You want the site to grow: a post a week feeding your Google Business Profile, unlimited edits, and a dashboard that shows what the site is doing.
- Either one unlocks the free build. Start a plan and keep it 12 months and the $1,000 website build fee is waived, per the free website offer.
- Both stay month to month. 30-day cancellation, and you own the site, the domain and the data from day one.
If your site runs on WordPress, the same two prices apply and the specifics live on WordPress maintenance plans. To see everything the $299 plan covers, including the content engine and the dashboard, read Ziwi Care, or compare it against the rest of the published rates on the pricing page. Either plan, the site itself stays yours: check what you actually own with the ownership checker.