WordPress maintenance is the least exciting purchase in your web budget and the one that determines whether the exciting purchases survive. Sites don’t stay launched: plugins need updates, updates conflict, threats evolve, backups silently fail. The 13,000 WordPress sites hacked every day are overwhelmingly unmaintained ones, 92% of breaches trace to outdated plugins.
So what should the insurance cost? Here’s the market, tier by tier.
The pricing tiers and what they mean
$30 to $75 a month: automated-only
Software runs your updates and backups; no human looks at your site. Honest version of this tier: it’s better than nothing and appropriate for hobby sites. The trap version: it’s sold as ‘maintenance’ but when an update breaks your checkout at 2 am, nobody notices and nobody answers. Check whether a human reviews anything before you buy this tier for a business site.
$100 to $300 a month: managed maintenance
The right tier for most business sites. Should include: updates applied by a person after testing (ideally staging-first), daily offsite backups with restore testing, security monitoring with a response commitment, uptime monitoring, and a monthly report that proves work happened. Many plans here include a small monthly bucket of developer time (30-60 minutes) for content changes and small fixes.
$300 to $800 a month: maintenance plus development
Everything above plus meaningful developer hours (2-5 per month), priority response times, and performance monitoring. Right for WooCommerce stores and lead-generation sites where the website is a revenue system: the store that goes down on Black Friday weekend doesn’t care what tier you saved money on.
$800+ a month: retainer territory
Dedicated response SLAs, staging environments as standard workflow, proactive optimization, and enough developer time for continuous improvement. For sites where an hour of downtime is a four-figure event.
The questions that expose weak plans
- Does a human test updates before or after they hit my live site? (‘Staging-first’ is the answer you want.)
- Where do backups live, and when did you last actually restore one?
- What’s the response time when the site is down, in writing?
- If the site gets hacked while under your plan, is cleanup included?
- What happens to unused developer minutes, roll over or vanish?
The hack-cleanup question matters most: A plan that charges extra to clean a hack that happened on its watch isn’t maintenance, it’s a billing relationship. Our plans include incident response because the whole point of maintenance is that the incident shouldn’t happen. Our plan details and pricing are public here.
Maintenance vs. the alternative
The alternative to $150 a month isn’t $0. It’s the $2,000 emergency cleanup after a hack, the lost sales during three days of downtime, the ranking drop while Google flags your site, and the developer’s rush rate to untangle it. One incident costs more than three years of the plan that prevents it. We rebuilt a therapy practice’s site after exactly this scenario, the full story is here.
Frequently asked questions
Can I maintain my WordPress site myself?
Technically yes: updates, backups, and monitoring are learnable. The honest question is whether you’ll do it every month, forever, including testing updates before they hit production. The 13,000 sites hacked daily mostly belong to owners who meant to.
What should a $150/month maintenance plan include?
Human-applied updates (staging-first), daily offsite backups with tested restores, security monitoring with a response commitment, uptime monitoring, and a monthly report. If any of those are missing, you’re buying a subscription, not maintenance.
Is maintenance included after you build a site?
Every build includes a 30-day warranty. After that, maintenance is a separate flat-rate plan, most of our build clients take it, but it’s never bundled invisibly into the project price.
How much does WordPress maintenance cost per month?
Plans typically range from around $50 for basic upkeep to several hundred dollars for busy sites and stores needing frequent changes and priority support. Price tracks the coverage, developer time, and response speed you need.
What should a WordPress maintenance plan include?
At minimum: tested core and plugin updates, off-site backups, security monitoring, and uptime checks. Better plans add developer time for changes and priority support. Beware cheap plans that just run automatic updates with no safety net.
Is WordPress maintenance worth the cost?
For a business site, yes. Neglected sites get hacked, break on updates, or slow down, and fixing those costs far more than prevention. Maintenance is insurance plus ongoing care for a business-critical asset.
Can I do WordPress maintenance myself?
You can handle basic updates and backups if you’re comfortable and consistent. The risk is untested updates breaking the site and no plan when something goes wrong. Many owners prefer to hand it off and remove the risk.
What happens if I don’t maintain my WordPress site?
Outdated core and plugins are the top cause of hacked WordPress sites, and updates left too long can break in bulk. Unmaintained sites also slow down and lose backups. The cost of neglect usually dwarfs a maintenance plan.
Do you offer maintenance for sites you didn’t build?
Yes. We take over existing WordPress sites regularly, starting with an audit to fix anything risky, then keeping them updated, secure, and backed up going forward.
Are cheap WordPress maintenance plans a good deal?
Usually not. Very cheap plans often just run automatic updates with no staging, no real backups, and no support when something breaks. When an untested update takes the site down, the savings vanish fast. Look at what’s actually covered, not just the price.
