How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost in 2026?

November 5, 2026 · 5 min read

How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost in 2026

Website maintenance has two costs. The running costs, such as hosting and the CMS license, depend on vendor list prices for a modern stack. The work, such as updates, fixes and new pages, depends on how often you change the site, and you pay for it by scope.

This guide is for teams with a custom site on a stack like Next.js, Astro or Statamic. All vendor prices are list prices in USD from each vendor's pricing page, as of October 2026. For the build itself, see our guide to how much a website costs.

Website maintenance cost at a glance

Cost	Price	Notes
Hosting on Vercel Pro	$20 per month	Platform fee with 1 deploying seat and $20 usage credit. See Vercel pricing.
Hosting on Netlify Pro	$20 per month	Unlimited members and 3,000 credits a month. See Netlify pricing.
Statamic Pro updates	$99 per year	After the $349 one-time license for each site. See Statamic pricing.
Sanity Growth	$15 per seat per month	A free plan covers small teams. See Sanity pricing.
Storyblok Growth	$99 per month	$90.75 per month billed yearly. See Storyblok pricing.
Contentful Lite	$300 per month	Enterprise plans are priced by sales. See Contentful pricing.
Code audit	$5k to $10k, one time	Fixed price, 2 to 4 weeks. Useful when you take over a site you did not build. See our code audit services.
Updates, fixes and new work	Priced by scope	We price a retainer by days worked, for the whole team. We give you the price on a call.

The hosting and CMS lines are small next to the work. A site that nobody changes costs little to keep online. A site that your marketing team changes every week needs people, and that is where the budget goes.

What website maintenance includes

Maintenance is the work that keeps the site safe, fast and current after launch. On our retainers, it covers:

Security and dependency updates. Every month, we patch known vulnerabilities in your Laravel or Node packages and refactor code before it turns into technical debt.
CMS and framework upgrades, such as a new major version of Statamic or Next.js.
Priority fixes. For a mission-critical bug, such as a checkout failure or a site that is down, our senior engineers get an alert at once.
Performance checks. Every month, we review Core Web Vitals and fix drops in mobile performance or pages with a high bounce rate.
New pages and campaign work, such as landing pages, tracking pixels and conversion fixes, inside the monthly scope.
A monthly report that shows what we delivered against the agreed scope.

Why a modern stack costs less to maintain

A WordPress site with many plugins needs updates all the time, and each plugin can bring a security risk. A static Astro site has no plugins or database on a live server to patch. A flat-file CMS like Statamic keeps content in files under version control, so there is no database to manage. Less to patch means fewer maintenance days each month.

Two examples from our projects:

MyBodyTutor moved from WordPress to Statamic. It now pays 80% less for hosting, has had 0 outages in 3 years, and keeps a small monthly retainer only as an insurance policy.
Chillidog Software merged three sites into one Statamic site and cut its hosting costs by 20%.

Our Astro website development cost guide explains why static sites need less ongoing work.

Why a modern stack costs less to maintain

How we price website maintenance

We price a maintenance retainer by days worked, and those days buy the whole team: design, frontend, backend, project management and QA. You pay a fixed monthly fee for an agreed scope, so your budget does not change from month to month. We set the scope with you each month and price the outcome, not the hours.

We do not pick only the easy tasks. A bug fix, a new landing page or a CMS upgrade all go into the same scope, and one retainer can cover more than one site or app. A retainer usually starts the month after we agree on it.

We do not publish a price list, because two sites rarely need the same work. We give you the price on a call, after we look at the site and what you plan to change. See our software development retainer services for the details.

Retainer, freelancer or in-house hire

Option	Good for	Watch out for
Hourly freelancer	Small fixes a few times a year	One person, so no design, QA or backup when they are away.
In-house hire	Teams that change the product every day	Salary, benefits, hardware and taxes. An in-house DevOps role alone can cost $150k+ a year.
Agency retainer	Regular changes that need design and code	A monthly commitment. Pick a scope that matches how often you change the site.

How to budget for website maintenance

Before you ask for a quote, write down:

How often your team publishes, and how often you need new pages or features.
The tools the site connects to, such as your CRM, analytics, search or payments.
Your hosting and CMS plans, and when they renew.
The age of the code, and the last time someone updated it.
How fast you need a fix when the site goes down.

If the site is old or another team built it, start with a code audit. It costs $5k to $10k at a fixed price and tells you what the site needs before you commit to a monthly plan.

FAQs

How much does it cost to maintain a website per month?

For a custom site on a modern stack, the running costs are about $0 to $300 a month at vendor list prices. Vercel Pro and Netlify Pro hosting cost $20 a month, and CMS plans go from free to $300 a month on Contentful Lite. Updates, fixes and new pages cost extra, and the price depends on how often you change the site.

What is the typical hourly rate for website maintenance?

We price website maintenance by days worked, for the whole team, as a fixed monthly fee for an agreed scope. You get the price on a call after we look at your site. We do not bill by the hour.

How much does it cost for someone to manage your website?

It depends on who does it and how much you change. A freelancer can handle small fixes a few times a year. An agency retainer gives you design, development and QA for a fixed monthly fee, for less than the full cost of one in-house hire with benefits and hardware.

Do you need to pay to maintain a website?

Yes. Every site pays for hosting and a domain, and most pay for a CMS. The code also needs security and dependency updates, because frameworks and packages change every year. A static site on a modern stack needs less of this work than a WordPress site with many plugins.

What is included in a website maintenance plan?

Our plans cover security and dependency updates, CMS and framework upgrades, priority fixes when the site is down, monthly performance checks, and new pages inside the agreed scope. You get a monthly report of what we delivered.

How can I lower my website maintenance costs?

Move to a stack with less to patch, such as Astro or Statamic, and remove plugins you do not use. MyBodyTutor cut its hosting costs by 80% after it moved from WordPress to Statamic. If you are not sure where the cost comes from, a code audit shows you.

Get a maintenance plan for your website

Tell us about your site and what you plan to change, and we send you a scope and a monthly price. See our software development retainer services, or book a call with our team.