Hosting and SSL
$5 to $50 a month for a small business site. Cheap shared hosting is usually the reason a site is slow, and speed is a ranking factor you paid for elsewhere.
Cost guide
What website maintenance actually costs.
The build is the number everyone quotes. Maintenance is the number that decides whether the site still works in 2 years.
Short answer
Website maintenance costs $20 to $60 a month if you handle it yourself, $100 to $300 a month for a managed plan on a small business site, and $500 to $2,500 a month for a large or transactional site. The number covers hosting, the domain, SSL, software and plugin updates, security monitoring, backups, uptime checks, and content edits. The single most expensive maintenance choice is doing none of it, because a broken or hacked site costs more to rescue than 3 years of upkeep.
Section 1
What you are paying for, line by line
Domain registration
$12 to $25 a year. Small, but the single most dangerous thing to let lapse. A dropped domain can be bought by anyone the moment it expires.
Software and plugin updates
WordPress and its plugins ship security updates constantly. Skipping them is how most small business sites get compromised. Budget 1 to 3 hours a month, or pay someone to.
Backups and recovery
Automated daily backups stored somewhere other than the server. Untested backups are not backups. This is the line item nobody misses until the one day they need it.
Security monitoring and uptime
Malware scanning, a firewall, and an alert when the site goes down. Without monitoring, you find out the site is offline when a customer tells you.
Content edits
New hours, a price change, a staff photo, a seasonal banner. This is what most people actually mean by maintenance, and it is usually the smallest technical piece of the bill.
Section 2
The hidden cost of skipping it
A neglected site does not fail loudly. It drifts. Plugins fall behind, page speed slides, a form silently stops delivering email, and hours go stale after a holiday change. Nothing breaks visibly, so nothing gets fixed.
Then the bill arrives all at once. Malware cleanup runs $300 to $1,500. A hacked site removed from Google's index takes weeks to recover. A contact form that quietly stopped sending for 3 months costs whatever those leads were worth, which for most local trades is more than a decade of maintenance.
Maintenance is not a subscription for peace of mind. It is the price of the site continuing to be the thing you paid for.
Section 3
What you can genuinely do yourself
Plenty, if the site was built to be handed over. Updating hours, swapping photos, adding a service, and publishing a post are all reasonable owner tasks on any modern platform, and any builder who makes those hard is protecting their retainer, not your site.
Leave the server, the certificate, the update cycle, and the backups to someone who does it daily. That split, you handle content and someone else handles infrastructure, is the cheapest arrangement that still works.
Compare
Maintenance by site type
Monthly cost ranges by what the site does, not by how it looks.
| Compare | Self-managed | Managed | What breaks first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brochure site, 5 to 10 pagesMost popular | $20 to $40/mo | $100 to $200/mo | Stale hours and a form that stopped sending |
| Content site, 20 to 100 pages | $40 to $80/mo | $200 to $400/mo | Broken links and slow pages as images pile up |
| Booking or lead-gen site | $60 to $120/mo | $300 to $600/mo | The booking integration, silently, after an API change |
| Ecommerce | $100 to $300/mo | $500 to $2,500/mo | Payment and inventory plugins after a platform update |
Brochure site, 5 to 10 pagesMost popular
- Self-managed
- $20 to $40/mo
- Managed
- $100 to $200/mo
- What breaks first
- Stale hours and a form that stopped sending
Content site, 20 to 100 pages
- Self-managed
- $40 to $80/mo
- Managed
- $200 to $400/mo
- What breaks first
- Broken links and slow pages as images pile up
Booking or lead-gen site
- Self-managed
- $60 to $120/mo
- Managed
- $300 to $600/mo
- What breaks first
- The booking integration, silently, after an API change
Ecommerce
- Self-managed
- $100 to $300/mo
- Managed
- $500 to $2,500/mo
- What breaks first
- Payment and inventory plugins after a platform update
Next
Keep going.
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Questions
Answered plainly.
The questions people ask before they spend money on a website.
How much should website maintenance cost per month?
For a small business brochure or lead-generation site, $100 to $300 a month for a managed plan, or $20 to $60 a month if you handle updates and content yourself and pay only for hosting and the domain. Ecommerce and booking sites run higher because there is more that can break and more at stake when it does.
Do I need a maintenance plan?
You need maintenance. Whether you buy a plan depends on whether you will actually do it. If nobody at your business will log in monthly to run updates and verify backups, buy the plan, because the fallback is not a cheaper site, it is an eventual rescue bill.
What happens if I never update my website?
On a static site built without plugins, very little for a long time, other than the content going stale. On WordPress, outdated plugins are the leading cause of small business site compromises, and cleanup runs $300 to $1,500 plus the time to get reindexed after Google flags the site.
Is hosting included in maintenance?
Usually, but confirm it in writing. Some plans include hosting, some bill it separately, and a few bundle it in a way that makes leaving expensive. Ask who holds the hosting account and the domain registration, and make sure both are in your name.
Can I cancel a maintenance plan and keep my site?
You should be able to, and if you cannot, that is a warning. Our plans keep your domain and content yours from day 1, and code ownership transfers at launch on a purchase or at month 36 on a lease-to-own. Smart Sites keep a required $297 a month tech subscription after payoff because the AI and live data services behind them are ongoing costs.
How much does it cost to just update my hours and photos?
Nothing, if the site was built to be edited. That is the point of handing over a real content workflow. Where owners get charged for 5-minute edits, the underlying problem is a build that was never meant to be maintained by anyone but the builder.
What is included in your maintenance?
Hosting, SSL, updates, daily backups, uptime and security monitoring, and content edits, on both purchased and lease-to-own sites. Email hello@hollisterwebsites.com and we will send the specific plan for the tier you are on before you commit to anything.
More guides
Other things worth knowing.
How Much Does a Small Business Website Cost?
The real range from DIY to agency, what moves the number, and what you can safely cut.
Wix vs Squarespace vs a Custom-Built Site
Where each platform genuinely wins, the ceiling templates hit, and the break-even math.
Local SEO Cost: What You Pay and What You Get
Real monthly ranges, the free work that beats cheap packages, and how to spot a bad one.
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