Your site is live. Congratulations. But launch isn't the finish line, it's the starting line. Without maintenance, a site starts to “die” within 3–6 months: integrations break (partner APIs got updated), vulnerabilities appear (nobody updated the CMS), speed drops (nobody cleaned up the database) and search rankings slide (competitors keep their content fresh, and you don't).
This article is an honest breakdown of what website maintenance and ongoing development cost: what each plan includes, what drives the price and when it's time to bring in professional support.
(hosting + backups + monitoring)
(+ edits + optimization)
(new features + SEO + analytics)
Three levels of support
Level 1: Basic technical support (from $500/month)
The minimum to keep the site running and in one piece.
What's included:
— Hosting and domain (renewals, uptime monitoring)
— SSL certificate (renewal, setup)
— Backups (daily, kept for 30 days)
— Availability monitoring (alerts on downtime)
— CMS and plugin updates (WordPress and other CMSs)
— Small edits (up to 2–4 hours a month): swapping text, a banner, contact details
— SLA: response to a critical bug within 4–8 hours
Who it's for: small business sites, landing pages, small corporate websites. Size: up to 50 pages and up to 10K visits a month.
Cost: $500–1,000/month.
Level 2: Extended support (from $2,900/month)
What's included (everything in basic, plus):
— Edits and improvements (8–20 hours a month)
— Speed optimization (Core Web Vitals, compression, caching)
— SEO monitoring (rankings, indexing, technical SEO)
— Security (vulnerability scanning, WAF, DDoS protection)
— Integrations (keeping the connections to your CRM, ERP and payment gateways working)
— Analytics (a monthly report on traffic, conversions and errors)
— SLA: response to a critical bug within 1–4 hours
Who it's for: online stores, corporate sites integrated with a CRM or ERP, SaaS landing pages. Size: 50–500 pages and 10–100K visits a month.
Cost: from $2,900/month.
Level 3: Support + development (from $6,900/month)
What's included (everything in extended, plus):
— New pages and sections (20–40 hours a month)
— A/B testing (conversion optimization)
— Content strategy (SEO articles, case studies, landing pages)
— New service integrations (chatbots, widgets, analytics)
— A UX audit and improvements (once a quarter)
— Design for updates (banners, promo pages, emails)
— A dedicated project manager
— SLA: response to a critical bug within 30 minutes to 1 hour
Who it's for: large online stores, marketplaces, SaaS platforms, corporate portals. Size: 500+ pages and 100K+ visits a month.
Cost: from $6,900/month.
What drives the cost
The site's technology
WordPress: the cheapest to support (lots of specialists, standard tasks). The catch: plugin updates often break the site, so it needs regular checks.
Adobe Commerce (Magento) and other enterprise platforms: more expensive (specialists cost more, plus the license). But when the site is tightly integrated with your ERP, it's often the practical choice.
Next.js / React: support costs 20–30% more (you need a front-end developer). On the other hand, there are fewer security and performance problems, so there's less work.
Custom CMS / no CMS: it depends on the documentation. If the code is clean and documented, support is standard. If a freelancer wrote it and vanished, the first month will cost 2–3x (time to make sense of the code).
Integrations
Every integration is a potential point of failure. A site with 5 integrations (CRM, accounting system, payments, shipping, SMS) needs 30–50% more support than a site with none. Partner APIs get updated, and your side has to be updated too.
Traffic and load
A site with 1K visitors a day and one with 50K need different infrastructure. A high-load site needs a CDN, caching, database optimization, server scaling and performance monitoring. That adds $700–1,700 a month to the base cost.
SLA requirements
A 24-hour response time and a 1-hour one cost different amounts. A 1-hour SLA needs an on-call shift (or at least a specialist reachable 24/7). That adds $500–1,700 a month.
What happens without support
The concrete consequences of having no support, month by month:
Months 1–3: nothing noticeable. The site works. You think: “Why pay for support if everything's fine?”
Months 3–6: the SSL certificate isn't renewed, and browsers show “Not secure”. Some users leave. Plugins aren't updated, and vulnerabilities appear. Search rankings start to slip (competitors publish content, and you don't).
Months 6–12: the CMS is 2 versions behind and has a critical vulnerability. The site gets hacked, and spam pages show up in the search index. The ERP integration breaks (its API changed), and orders stop going through. Load time grows to 5–8 seconds, and Google pushes the site down.
Month 12+: bringing a site back from that state costs $3,300–13,000. That's often more than a full year of basic support.
Website maintenance is like servicing a car. You can skip the oil changes and inspections. For the first 10,000 miles, nothing happens. Then the engine starts knocking, and the repair costs half the price of the car.
Support vs development: what's the difference
Support keeps the site working the way it did yesterday. It doesn't break, slow down or get hacked. That's defense.
Development makes the site better: new pages, higher conversion, new features, SEO growth. That's offense.
Support is the minimum. If the site makes money (an online store, SaaS, lead generation), you need development too. Your competitors keep improving, and standing still means falling behind.
What development includes
SEO work: new pages targeting search queries, optimizing existing ones, technical SEO (speed, schema.org, internal linking). Cost: $1,300–4,300 a month.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO): A/B testing headlines, forms and CTAs. Heatmap analysis. UX improvements. Cost: $1,000–3,300 a month.
New features: a customer account area, calculators, filters, chatbots. Cost: depends on the task ($1,000–10,000 per feature).
Content: articles, case studies, landing pages. Cost: $500–1,700 per article, $1,000–2,700 per landing page.
Support for different types of sites
Small business site / landing page
Minimal support: $300–700 a month. What it covers: content updates, domain and SSL renewals, backups. A freelancer you call when needed is often enough.
Corporate website
Basic to extended: $700–2,200 a month. Focus: security (these sites get attacked often), up-to-date content (job openings, news), integrations (CRM, forms). You need a reliable contractor with an SLA.
Online store
Extended: $1,700–4,300 a month. What's critical: speed (every extra second of load time = −7% conversion), integrations (ERP, payments, shipping), security (payment data), SEO (product pages, categories). Every hour of downtime means lost revenue.
SaaS platform / web application
Development: $3,300–10,000 a month. This isn't a “website” in the classic sense; it's a product. You need a team (developer + DevOps + QA). SLA: 30 minutes to 1 hour for critical bugs. 24/7 monitoring. CI/CD for fast deployments.
How to choose a support contractor
Our approach: support from $500/month
At March Code we support and develop sites built on Next.js, WordPress and 1C-Bitrix (a CMS widely used in Eastern Europe). There are three plans:
(hosting + backups + small edits)
(+ edits + SEO + security)
(+ new features + CRO + content)
Every plan includes a monthly report, transparent time tracking and full access to the code and server. More on website development and what it costs in our article.
FAQ
Can you take over support from another contractor?
Yes. We take over sites from other studios. The process: 1) an audit of the current state (2–5 days, free to $1,000), 2) getting all the access (hosting, domain, code, databases), 3) setting up monitoring and backups. If the previous contractor won't hand over access, we help you resolve it through legal channels.
Does a site built on Wix or Squarespace need support?
A minimal amount, yes. The builder takes care of hosting and SSL. But content updates, form setup, analytics and SEO still take work. Cost: $150–500 a month (less than for custom sites).
What counts as “small edits”?
Replacing text, images and contact details. Adding or removing elements on a page. Updating prices. Fixing typos. Adding new pages from an existing template. Usually 2–4 hours a month on the basic plan and 8–20 hours on the extended one. Edits beyond the limit are billed by the hour ($70–170 an hour).
How do I calculate the ROI of website support?
Support ROI = (Losses prevented + Additional revenue) / Cost of support. Losses prevented: 1 hour of downtime for an online store making $6,000 a day = $250 lost. One hack = $1,700–6,500 to recover. Additional revenue: 10% more SEO traffic = +10% leads. A conversion lift of +1% = +X% revenue.
How much does a one-time website audit cost?
Technical audit (speed, security, SEO, code): $1,000–2,700. SEO audit (rankings, content, technical SEO): $700–2,000. UX audit (usability, conversion, heatmaps): $1,000–2,700. We recommend a full audit once a year, even if the site “works fine”.
Can I pay for support by the hour instead of monthly?
Yes, many contractors (us included) work on a T&M (time and materials) basis: you pay for the hours actually spent. Rate: $70–170 an hour, depending on seniority. It suits you when tasks are few and irregular. The downside: no guaranteed SLA. Go with a monthly plan if you need an SLA and priority service.
