Launch day is not the finish line. It's the start of a slower, quieter race, one where a neglected site loses ranking, accumulates security debt, and stops reflecting what your business actually does today.
Website maintenance is the thing that stops that from happening. Here's what it realistically costs in the UK in 2026, what each tier covers, and when hourly-freelancer beats monthly-retainer (hint: only for the first few months).
What "maintenance" actually covers
Before the pricing: what are we buying?
- Technical updates. WordPress core, themes, plugins, npm dependencies. If your site runs on WordPress with 25 plugins, expect weekly updates; on Astro with 4 dependencies, expect monthly.
- Security, vulnerability scans, malware monitoring, patching CVEs when they land, SSL certificate renewal.
- Backups, daily off-site backups with a tested restore procedure. Not "we back it up", actually tested.
- Uptime monitoring, someone/something watches your site 24/7 and pings the team if it goes down.
- Performance maintenance, image optimisation, cache tuning, removing code that's stopped being useful.
- Small content edits, swap a headline, update a phone number, add a team member, change opening hours.
What maintenance doesn't usually cover:
- New pages or new functionality (that's feature work, quoted separately)
- Major content overhauls (that's a retainer for content work, not maintenance)
- SEO growth work (separate retainer)
- Complete redesigns (new project)
The four pricing models
1. Monthly Care Plan, £149–£449/month
Our Care Plans for sites we've built (applicable to WordPress and Astro builds):
| Plan | Price | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | £149/mo | Plugin/dependency updates, daily backups, uptime monitoring, security scans, SSL renewal |
| Standard | £249/mo | Everything in Basic, 1 hour content edits/month, monthly performance report |
| Priority | £449/mo | Everything in Standard, 3 hours content edits, new page per quarter, same-day response SLA |
Who Basic is right for: set-and-forget sites that just need the technical side handled. Small business owners who'll do their own content edits via the CMS.
Who Standard is right for: most small businesses. One hour a month is enough for routine edits, updating team photos, tweaking service copy, publishing a blog post your team drafts.
Who Priority is right for: businesses where the site is mission-critical and downtime is revenue loss. Same-day SLA means you're not waiting until Tuesday for a Friday-afternoon issue.
2. SEO Growth Retainer, £599–£1,800/month
Not maintenance in the strict sense, this is ongoing growth work layered on top of maintenance. Our tiers:
- SEO Starter £599/mo, 2 blog posts, keyword tracking, on-page SEO fixes, monthly report
- SEO Growth £999/mo, 4 blog posts, link-building outreach, technical SEO, bi-weekly report + call
- Full Growth £1,800/mo, 6 posts, digital PR, conversion review, weekly report, dedicated account lead
Most clients pair a Care Plan with an SEO Retainer, £149 for the technical side + £599+ for the content/growth side. That's the typical "properly-looked-after site" spend for a UK SME: £748–£2,250/month depending on ambition.
3. Freelancer hourly, £40–£85/hour
The cheap-on-paper option. A freelancer on £50/hr doing 2 hours a month of maintenance = £100/mo.
When it works:
- Simple sites with minimal moving parts
- You have a reliable freelancer who actually picks up the phone
- You're disciplined about writing them a proper brief
When it stops working (around month 4):
- Small issues you'd have caught with monitoring become big issues
- Freelancer is on holiday when your site goes down
- Backups nobody's tested fail when actually needed
- £100/mo budget assumed 2 hours; actual usage is 4–6 hours once you factor in updates + content edits + minor fixes
- Effective rate: £200–£400/month — on par with a Care Plan, without the uptime monitoring or SLA
4. DIY, "I'll do it myself"
Zero monthly cost. Realistic time commitment: 1–2 hours per week for a standard WordPress site.
When DIY works:
- You're technical (or willing to learn)
- Your site is modest (Astro, clean WordPress, static site)
- You've written down a maintenance checklist and actually follow it
When DIY blows up:
- You forget about the site for 3 months
- A plugin update breaks the checkout
- A vulnerability goes unpatched, site gets defaced
- You spend 8 hours on a Saturday restoring from backup
The hidden cost of DIY isn't the time you spend doing it. It's the time you spend cleaning up from not doing it.
Hidden costs to budget for (on top of maintenance)
Maintenance covers running the site. You still pay separately for:
- Hosting, £5–£60/month depending on platform. Static sites (Astro) hosted on Cloudflare: free. Managed WordPress: £25–£40/mo. VPS: £10–£30/mo.
- Domain renewal, £10–£30/year.
- Premium plugins (WordPress), if you use paid plugins like Gravity Forms, WP Rocket, Advanced Custom Fields Pro, £50–£300/year each.
- SSL certificate, free via Let's Encrypt (included in hosting); £50–£200/year if you need an OV or EV cert.
- CDN, Cloudflare free tier covers most small businesses. Pro tier £20/mo adds advanced features.
Budget realistically: £200–£500/year in non-maintenance costs on top of the monthly retainer, for most UK SMEs.
How to pick
Three questions:
- How often do you edit the site? Never → Basic £149. Occasionally → Standard £249. Weekly → Priority £449 or consider bringing it in-house.
- Is the site mission-critical? Yes → Priority SLA is worth £200 extra a month. No → Basic/Standard is fine.
- Are you also trying to grow organic traffic? Yes → pair with SEO Retainer £599+. No → maintenance alone is the right spend.
A realistic total-cost example
Small UK service business with a Marketing-tier site:
- Hosting (managed): £25/mo
- Care Plan (Standard): £249/mo
- Premium plugins: £15/mo
- SEO Retainer (Starter): £599/mo
- Total: £888/mo = £10,656/year
For a business pulling in £30k+/month in revenue that relies partly on the website, this is usually reasonable spend. For a £5k/month business, it's probably over-budget, pick just the Care Plan and do SEO yourself using our local SEO guide.
Why monthly > hourly after month four
Monthly retainers look more expensive up front. They're usually cheaper by year-end because:
- Incident response doesn't restart every month (context stays with the team)
- Small improvements compound (performance work in month 3 still paying dividends in month 12)
- The relationship is predictable (no "chasing the freelancer" tax)
- Uptime monitoring catches issues before they become incidents
The £149/mo Basic plan at 2 hours of actual work equals £74.50/hour of effective time. A freelancer at £50/hour who answers Wednesday when you messaged Monday is costing you the Tuesday you spent worrying.
Want maintenance for a site we didn't build?
We can take over maintenance on existing WordPress sites after a one-off audit (£250 / $320 / LKR 22,000), we need to review the codebase before committing to a Care Plan. For sites on Astro, Next.js, Shopify or custom stacks, we review on the free call.
Book the call or message on WhatsApp.