Website Maintenance Cost: What to Budget Each Year

A website keeps costing money after launch. Most of it is small and predictable, and it only gets expensive if it's ignored until something breaks. As a planning figure, budget 15–20% of the build cost per year. For the build side of the number, see what a custom website costs in 2026.

What you're paying for

Hosting and CDN. From ₹0 to ₹5,000 a month for most business sites, depending on traffic and setup.
Domain and SSL. Small and annual. Put the renewal on auto-pay under an account your company controls, because a lapsed domain takes everything down with it.
Security updates. Frameworks, plugins and dependencies all get patched. Skipping these is how a working site gets compromised.
Backups. Automated, stored somewhere separate from the site, and tested.
Monitoring. Someone should find out the site is down before your customers do.
Small changes. New team members, updated prices, a new landing page.

What changes the number

Type of site. A five-page brochure site on static hosting needs very little. An online store with payments and integrations needs regular attention.
Platform. WordPress sites with many plugins need more frequent updates. Each plugin is something else that can break or need patching.
Cost of downtime. If an hour offline loses you real orders, faster response is worth paying for.
How often you change things. Monthly campaign pages call for a retainer. Twice-yearly edits can be paid by the hour.

What you can do yourself

Renewals, content edits, checking your contact form works, and a monthly look at your site's speed are all reasonable to keep in-house. Leave server work, framework upgrades and security incidents to a developer. A mistake there costs more than the fee you saved.

Is a maintenance plan worth paying for?

It's usually worth it when the site earns money, handles customer data or uses a platform that needs regular updates. It's often not worth it for a static site you rarely change, where occasional paid help is cheaper.

Before signing, check:

Is the response time written down?
How many hours of changes are included, and what happens to unused ones?
Are updates tested before they go live?
Do you hold the hosting, domain and code accounts yourself?

The cost of skipping it

Years of postponed updates can leave a site that nobody can safely change. Then you're choosing between an expensive repair and a replacement, which is covered in redesign vs rebuild.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a website need maintenance if I never change it?

Yes, unless it's a fully static site. Software underneath it keeps ageing even when your content doesn't, and domains and certificates still expire.

What should I do first if I have no plan today?

Confirm you control the domain and hosting logins, then set up automated backups. Everything else can follow.

Does MOMT offer this?

Yes. See our maintenance and support service.