Website maintenance cost per year: what is included

For a price for your own situation, request a quote.

What does website maintenance cost a year?

Maintaining a simple website of plain files takes 2 to 4 hours a year, enough for the updates and a check; a change is paid for separately. Count on about €100 an hour: for a business website of €995 that is €200 to €400 a year. A website on a content management system with plug-ins costs more, 8 to 16 hours a year, because there are more updates.

The difference comes from how the website is built. A website of plain files has no database and no content management system: everything a visitor sees is built in advance, so little goes out of date. A plug-in website is built from a content management system such as WordPress with separate parts from other makers, and every part gets its own updates.

A larger website makes the difference clearer. Take the €6,900 website of a law firm from the cost breakdown, with six pages and a design of its own. All amounts are excluding VAT and are estimates, not prices.

Per month that is about €25 to €80 for a website of plain files and €80 to €210 for a plug-in website. WordPress or a custom website sets the two side by side over three years.

What does maintenance cover?

Maintenance keeps the website working and safe. For a website of plain files like the law firm’s, in hours a year:

For a plug-in website it is more, because every part has to be updated separately and every update can break something:

Maintenance does not cover new pages and new features (a page takes 2 to 3 hours to build, a new feature is a small project), writing text, search engine optimisation and advertising, and problems at your hosting company or at a service from another party, such as the service that sends your newsletter.

Want to know how many hours of maintenance your own website needs a year? Ask for a quote and say what your website runs on today.

What happens if you do no maintenance?

A website of plain files stays online, which is an advantage: little can break. What does happen is that a domain name or hosting subscription expires and the website disappears, that the service behind your form changes without anyone noticing, and that the parts the website is built on fall years behind, so that a small update later becomes a large one.

For a plug-in website the risk is greater. A plug-in that is not updated can have a known vulnerability, and that is open to anyone who knows it. A website that has been compromised costs more to restore than a year of maintenance.

A checklist for the year

Whether you do the maintenance yourself or a builder does, this belongs in it. Together it takes a few hours.

Every quarter, spend a quarter of an hour on four checks:

Once a year, spend an hour on six questions:

Do you need a maintenance contract?

Maintenance can be arranged in three ways:

1. No contract, pay when something comes up. That is cheapest as long as it goes well. The risk is that nobody does the updates, so you find out only when something is broken.
2. A fixed number of hours a year, for example six. You know what it costs, and what you have not used goes on small changes.
3. A fixed amount a month. That is easy to budget and suits a plug-in website, where something has to happen every month.

For a website of plain files the second way fits best, for a plug-in website the third. A contract should state how many hours or what amount it is and what you get if you do not use the hours, what is included and what is not, how fast you get a response when the website does not work, who holds the accounts and how you cancel. The domain name and the account the website runs in should be your company’s, so that you can move to another builder at any time.

Is your website on plug-ins today, and are you wondering whether a website of plain files would cost less to keep? Ask for a free example of your homepage, with no obligation, and see it as a website of plain files.

Can you do website maintenance yourself?

For a website of plain files you can, if you or someone at your company can work with the files. Count on two to four hours a year for the updates and the checks. For a plug-in website you can do the updates yourself through the content management system. Then you do need a backup you have tested and someone who knows what to do if an update breaks something.

How do you keep maintenance cheap?

Use few plug-ins, and only what you really use: every plug-in is a part that needs an update. Do not have features built that you will not use, because a feature you never use costs maintenance every year. Bundle your changes, because ten small changes in one go are cheaper than ten separate ones. And set your domain and hosting to renew automatically, on a payment method that does not expire.

Frequently asked questions

Website maintenance with us

If you can do the updates yourself, or a website builder where the supplier looks after everything is enough, you do not need us. The websites we build, our own included, are websites of plain files, from €995 for five pages. The domain name and the account the website runs in are in your company’s name, and you receive the complete source code as soon as the project is finished and paid. Maintenance can therefore be done by us, by you or by another builder, and you can switch. Ask for a quote for a new website or for the maintenance of a website we built.

See an example website quote first.