Website Maintenance Costs: What You'll Pay and What You Actually Need

Most Maintenance Costs Are Avoidable

WordPress sites require constant maintenance: core updates, plugin updates, theme patches, database optimization, security scanning, backup management, and spam cleanup. This runs $50–200/month for a managed WordPress host or maintenance service. Over 5 years, that's $3,000–12,000 in maintenance alone.

Static HTML websites — hand-coded sites with no database, no CMS, and no plugins — require zero maintenance. There's nothing to update, nothing to patch, and nothing to secure. The files sit on a server and work indefinitely without intervention.

What Actually Costs Money

Hosting ($5–100/month): Required for any website. Static site hosting is the cheapest (often free for basic sites, $20–50/month for managed hosting with CDN). WordPress hosting with decent performance starts at $20–30/month.

Domain renewal ($10–20/year): Your domain name needs annual renewal. This is universal regardless of platform.

SSL certificate ($0/year): Should be free. Let's Encrypt certificates auto-renew at no cost. Don't pay for this.

Content changes ($0–250/month): If you need regular text, image, or layout updates, this is either DIY (free), handled through a CMS ($0 if you do it yourself), or handled by your developer ($50–250/month for a maintenance retainer).

Security monitoring ($0–50/month): WordPress sites need security plugins and monitoring. Static sites don't — there's no database to breach, no admin panel to hack, and no plugins with vulnerabilities.

The Maintenance-Free Alternative

This is one of the biggest advantages of hand-coded static websites. When there's no CMS, there's no maintenance. Your total ongoing cost is hosting and domain renewal — potentially as low as $10–50/month with zero maintenance labor.

If you do need occasional content updates, our Site Care package ($149/month) covers up to 8 edits per month. But many of our clients go months without needing changes because their sites were built right the first time.