Website Maintenance Costs in the UK: What You Should Actually Pay

A website is not a leaflet that you print once and forget. It is software running on a server, and it needs looking after. Maintenance is the ongoing work that keeps it online, secure, fast and accurate after launch.

For most small business websites that means a handful of regular jobs: keeping the site hosted and the domain and SSL certificate renewed, applying software and security updates, taking and testing backups, watching for downtime and broken forms, and making small content changes such as new opening hours, a price update or a new team photo.

None of this is glamorous, which is exactly why it gets neglected. The cost of skipping it tends to show up later, as a hacked site, a contact form that quietly stopped sending enquiries, or a page that still shows last year’s prices.

Plans differ between providers, so compare the contents rather than the headline price. These are the items worth looking for:

• Hosting: the server your website lives on. Some plans include it, others charge it separately.
• Security and software updates: particularly important if your site runs on WordPress or another system with plugins, which need regular updates.
• Backups: automatic copies of your site that can be restored if something goes wrong. Ask how often they run and how long they are kept.
• Uptime monitoring: an alert if the site goes down, so someone notices before your customers do.
• Content changes: an agreed amount of edits each month, such as text, images, prices or a new page.
• Support: a real person you can email or ring, with a stated response time.
• Reporting: a short summary of what was done, and ideally how the site is performing.

If a plan does not say what it covers, assume it covers less than you think.

There is no single official price, and quotes vary a great deal depending on the size of the site, the platform it is built on and how much support you want. As a rough guide for a small business brochure website, the picture looks like this:

Level of care	What you typically get	Indicative cost
Do it yourself	You log in, update and back up the site when you remember	Your time, plus hosting and domain costs
Hosting only	The site stays online; updates and changes are your responsibility	From around £10 a month with MyWebDeveloper
Basic care plan	Hosting, updates, backups, monitoring and a few small changes	Roughly £30 to £100 a month with most providers
Fuller care plan	More changes, priority support, performance and search work	Roughly £100 to £250 a month with most providers
Larger or custom sites	Shops, booking systems and bespoke features need more attention	Often quoted individually

Treat those provider ranges as a starting point, not a promise. They are general indications, and your own quotes may sit above or below them. What matters is whether the price is clear and what you get for it.

So you can see how this works in practice, here are our own prices. Our website care plans are £49, £85 or £120 a month, and the same three levels cover search engine work too. Our web hosting is £10 a month, £120 a year for premium hosting, or £299 a year for multi-site hosting.

If you buy a new website from us, the monthly option (£39.99, £54.99 or £74.99 a month depending on the package) already includes hosting, so you are not paying for it twice. The one-off options are £399, £599 or £799, with hosting and care added separately if you want them.

These are our prices and what suits you depends on your site. We are happy to say honestly if you need less than the biggest plan, or if a plan elsewhere is a better fit.

Several things push a quote up or down, and knowing them helps you judge whether a price is reasonable.

1. The platform. A WordPress site with a dozen plugins needs more regular attention than a simple hand-built site with no plugins to update.
2. Size and complexity. Five pages is a different job from a 200-product online shop.
3. Content changes. The more edits you expect each month, the more time the provider needs to set aside.
4. Response times. Same-day support costs more than “within a few working days”.
5. Extras. Search engine work, reporting, accessibility checks and security scanning are often priced on top.
6. Who built it. Maintaining a site someone else built, with unknown code and no documentation, can cost more than looking after one you understand.

Not always. If you are comfortable logging in, updating and testing your own website, and you have a reliable backup routine, you can look after it yourself at the cost of your time. Many owners start that way.

A plan makes the most sense when the site matters to the business, for example when it brings in enquiries or bookings, and nobody in the team has the time or the technical confidence to keep it updated. The question is less “what does it cost?” and more “what would a week of downtime or a hacked site cost me?” For a trade, salon or local service business that relies on the phone ringing, that answer is usually more than a year of maintenance.

It also helps to be realistic about time. Even a simple update takes a few minutes, but only if you remember to do it, and only if you know what to do when an update breaks something.

Before you sign up with anyone, including us, ask these questions and get the answers in writing:

1. Is hosting included, or is it a separate charge?
2. What exactly is covered, and what counts as an extra?
3. How many content changes are included each month, and what happens if I go over?
4. How often are backups taken, and have restores been tested?
5. How quickly will you respond, and how do I contact you?
6. Is there a minimum contract, and how much notice do I need to give to leave?
7. Who owns the website, the domain and the content? Can I take it all with me?
8. Will I receive a summary of the work done?

A good provider will answer these plainly. Vague answers, or pressure to sign up quickly, are a warning sign.

A few patterns cause most of the regret we hear about from small businesses:

• Paying for hosting and care separately without realising it. Check whether your plan already includes hosting.
• Not owning your domain. Your domain name should be registered in your name, with your login. If it is not, you can lose control of it.
• Cheap hosting with no support. It is fine until something breaks and nobody picks up the phone.
• Never checking the forms. A contact form that fails silently costs you enquiries. Test it every few months.
• Ignoring the content. Out-of-date prices, services and opening hours send visitors elsewhere.

If your site is already live and you are not sure whether it is properly looked after, our guide to small business website costs explains what you should expect to pay overall, and you can always ask us to take a look at where you stand.