What website maintenance costs.

Two costs recur after launch, whoever built the site: the domain, at about $10–$20 a year, and hosting, which is often free to a few dollars a month for a static site. Beyond that, upkeep is a choice rather than a bill. Our care plans are published at $45, $119 and $159 a month, ad-hoc edits are $40 an hour quoted before they start, and a quiet site with nothing to patch may need neither.

Reviewed October 9, 2026. Prices are quoted per project; nothing on this page is a published price list.

The short answer

Domain ~$10–$20/year. Hosting free–a few $/month. Upkeep: optional, from $45/month.

Maintenance is three separate things wearing one word: the subscriptions that keep the site reachable, the work that keeps it correct, and the monitoring that tells you when either has slipped. Only the first is unavoidable, and it is small. The rest is a decision you make on purpose rather than a charge you discover.

The two costs that never go away

The domain renewal keeps your web address yours — usually $10–$20 a year, paid to your registrar, in your name. Hosting is what serves the files: often free, or a few dollars a month, for a static site with no database behind it. Both are paid to providers you choose, in accounts you own, and neither is payable to us. If a quote bundles these into a monthly figure, ask what happens to the site when the payments stop.

What the work actually involves

Monitoring — is the site up, does the certificate renew, does the domain expire without anyone noticing.
Content edits — prices, hours, a new service, a seasonal page. Small, frequent, and the reason most people want a plan rather than a quote each time.
Security — a static site has no plugins to patch and no admin login to guard, so what is left is the things around it: passwords, access, and where your data goes.
Backups and checks — a copy of the source, and a look at the site after any change, so a mistake is a revert rather than an afternoon.

Why a hand-coded site costs less to keep

Upkeep scales with moving parts. A hand-written site has no builder licence renewing monthly, no plugin ecosystem patching itself, no database to fall over: the files are the site. That does not make it maintenance-free — domains lapse, forms stop delivering, third-party embeds change their terms — but it removes the recurring patching treadmill that drives most maintenance invoices. See what hand-coded means.

Three ways to pay for it

Route	Cost	Best when
Pay as you go	$40 an hour, quoted and approved first	Edits are rare and you are happy to ask each time
Care plan	$45, $119 or $159 a month, no contract	You want monitoring and a written monthly allowance instead of quotes
Do it yourself	Your time	You are comfortable in code and the site changes often

The full plan comparison, including what each tier includes, is on care plans and prices. No plan is a condition of owning your website, and every one of them can be paused or cancelled at a month boundary.

What can still go wrong

Honest list: the domain renewal is missed and the address lapses; the hosting card expires; a form silently stops delivering because a provider changed something; an embedded booking or payment widget breaks its integration; content goes stale and the site starts telling visitors the wrong thing. None of those need a platform to happen, and all four are caught by monitoring rather than by luck — which is the actual argument for a plan.

How to budget it

Fixed: the domain, $10–$20 a year. Likely: hosting, free to a few dollars a month. Everything else depends on how often the site changes. If it changes monthly, a $45 plan costs less than four ad-hoc edits; if it changes twice a year, pay per piece. For the wider picture — build prices, market bands and the pay-monthly comparison — see what a website costs and the prices we publish.

Questions

Is a maintenance contract required?

No. Every build stands on its own and you own it outright — there is no fee that keeps the site online and no lock-in. A care plan buys monitoring and a written allowance of updates, which is worth it when you would rather have that than quote each piece separately.

How often does a static site need updating?

Less often than people expect. There is no plugin ecosystem to patch, so the real cadence is content: whenever your prices, hours, services or photographs change, plus a check after any edit. Monitoring covers the rest by watching whether the site is up and the certificate and domain are still valid.

What happens if I do nothing at all?

The site stays up — it is files on a server, not a subscription to us. The risks are the quiet ones: a domain nobody renews, a form nobody notices has stopped, content that has gone stale. That is why the advice is monitoring first, work second.

Do you charge for small changes?

Ad-hoc work is $40 an hour, quoted and approved before anything starts, so a small change is a small agreed number rather than a surprise. On a care plan, changes inside the monthly allowance are already covered — the caps are written down, so the ceiling is real.

Tell us what you need. Send a few rough lines and we will come back with a scope, a fixed price and a delivery date in writing.

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