Victor Arias
Website maintenance costs €40-200 per month for a corporate site and €150-500 for an online store, with a block of hours included; hourly work runs €40-90 per hour. The cheap fee almost never covers what matters: a tested backup restore, major upgrades, active security and ownership of the accounts.
Maintenance is the invoice nobody puts in the initial budget, and the one that gets paid badly most often. When someone asks how much a website costs, they almost always mean development: design, pages, store. Maintenance arrives later, is charged every month and, unlike development, nobody audits it.
In this article you'll find the four pricing models that exist, real 2026 ranges, what almost no plan includes even though it should, and five questions that separate serious maintenance from a fee that only buys you someone answering the phone.
What you're paying for when you pay for maintenance
A maintenance plan covers four different jobs that are usually sold together: updating (core, plugins, themes, PHP versions), protecting (backups, firewall, access control), watching (the site is up, the certificate hasn't expired, the form still sends) and touching (change a headline, upload a product, adjust a banner).
The fourth one eats the time and nobody measures it. A site with ten changes a month needs something different from one that hasn't been touched in two years, and yet both get the same basic fee.
The practical consequence: maintenance is sold by hours included, not by outcome. That's why you need to know how many hours are in, what counts as a "minor tweak" and what happens when they run out. That's the difference between $60 and $300 a month for the same website.
The four pricing models on the market
Almost every quote fits one of these four formats. Knowing which one you're being offered is half the negotiation.
Fixed fee with hours included
The most common and the healthiest for a small business: a monthly fee with a block of hours (usually one to five), with anything beyond that billed separately. The fee covers what can't wait — updates, backups, monitoring — and the hours cover changes. The 2026 market range is €40-200 per month for a corporate site and €150-500 for an online store with catalogue and orders.
Hourly, when something breaks
No fee: you pay per intervention. It sounds cheap until something breaks on a Friday. The usual range is $40-90 per hour in Europe and $25-60 in Latin America, with an out-of-hours surcharge. It makes sense for a frozen site that never changes, and it's a bad deal for everything else: nobody updates for free, so the site stays still until it fails.
Platform subscription
On platforms like Shopify or Wix, maintenance comes with the subscription: the platform updates, you pay the fee and the hosting. What it does not include is content, speed, SEO or integrations. Plenty of Shopify stores pay $30 for the platform and believe they have maintenance when all they have is hosting.
Retainer with improvements
A larger fee with a goal: not just maintaining, but improving. It includes everything above plus a block of hours for conversion, content or technical SEO. It runs €300-800 per month and makes sense when the website is the acquisition or sales channel, because there maintenance competes with the investment that generates revenue and always loses.
Real price ranges in 2026
This table summarises the above, excluding taxes. Use it to compare quotes, not to beat anyone down on price: two identical fees can be selling very different things.
| Model | Usual price | Who it's for | Where they get you |
| Fee with hours | €40-200/month | Corporate site that changes little | The included hours: if there are two and you use six, everything is "extra" |
| Store fee | €150-500/month | Ecommerce with an active catalogue | Products and integrations, which are almost never included |
| Hour blocks | €40-90/hour | Frozen site or one-off intervention | The clock: you're billed for time, not for the result |
| Retainer with improvements | €300-800/month | A site that captures customers or sells | The report: if there are no metrics, there's no improvement |
| Platform only | $20-40/month | Shopify or Wix stores | Everything that isn't hosting: content, speed, SEO |
The number that matters isn't the fee, it's the fee plus the cost of an outage. A site down for a weekend in the middle of a campaign costs more than five years of standard maintenance for that same site.
What you pay for in a maintenance plan is, above all, not having to look at this.
What almost no plan includes (and you should demand)
When you compare two proposals, compare what neither of them writes down. These are the line items that show up right after signing:
- Backup restoration: having a backup isn't having a restore. Ask when the last one was tested and how long it takes.
- Major upgrades: moving to a new PHP version or off an old theme isn't "updating", it's a project. It's usually billed separately.
- Active security: firewall, access control, vulnerability review. Many "basic" plans have one plugin installed and unconfigured.
- Speed: a site degrades on its own with every new plugin, image and script. If nobody measures Core Web Vitals, performance isn't being maintained.
- Account ownership: hosting, domain, licences and analytics in your name. If they're in the provider's name, you don't have maintenance: you have a hostage.
And one that's always forgotten: documentation. A serious plan puts in writing what was done each month. If there's no report, there's no way to know whether you paid for maintenance or for peace of mind.
When cheap maintenance gets expensive
The $20-a-month fee exists and it's real. What doesn't exist is someone updating, watching, backing up and responding for $20. What you usually get is an automatic backup plugin and nobody looking at it.
The real cost of a site that's down
A business that gets ten enquiries a day through its website loses, on a down day, between five and ten opportunities. If the average sale is $800, a weekend without a site is several thousand. Against that, the gap between a $60 plan and a $200 one is noise: $1,680 a year versus the first outage that eats a campaign.
The five questions for your proposal
- How many hours are included and what counts as an hour? In writing, with examples.
- When was the last restore tested and how long does it take? The right answer includes a date and a time.
- What happens if an update breaks the site? If the fix is billed separately, the risk of updating is yours.
- Who owns the hosting, domain and licences? If it's not you, you have a problem the day you want to leave.
- What report do I get each month? Without metrics or a change log, there's no maintenance: there's an invoice.
The question that separates one plan from another isn't the price: it's what happens the month something breaks.
Conclusion: you pay so you don't have to think about it
Good maintenance goes unnoticed. It shows up the day everything still works after an update, when the backup restores in twenty minutes and when a broken form is caught before a customer finds it. That's what you're buying: not hours, but nobody having to look.
At TakeYourDesign we maintain corporate sites and stores built with WordPress development, Shopify and PrestaShop, with a maintenance plan, tested backups and a monthly report. If you want to know what yours would cost, tell us which platform you use and how many changes you make per month. And if you're still deciding how much to invest in the site, start with how much a website costs in 2026.
Frequently asked questions
How much does website maintenance cost per month?
€40-200/month for a corporate site and €150-500 for an online store, with a block of hours included. See WordPress development.
Is a monthly fee better than paying by the hour?
The fee if the site is alive and changes; hourly if it's frozen. The problem with hourly is that nobody updates for free: the site stays still until it fails.
What should a maintenance plan include?
Updates, backups with a tested restore, uptime monitoring, active security, a minimum number of changes and a written monthly report.
Does maintenance include content changes?
Only those within the included hours. Ask how many there are and what counts as a minor change before signing.
What happens if the site goes down?
It depends on the contract: a serious plan commits to a response time and a restore time. If the fix is billed separately, the risk is yours.
How much does maintenance cost on a Shopify store?
The platform ($20-40/month) only covers hosting; content, speed and integrations are maintained separately. Tell us about your case.
