Website Maintenance Packages: Real Monthly Prices and Tiers

People think about website maintenance in two situations: the site is already down, or it suddenly turns out there are no backups. Both are expensive and stressful, and they usually happen the night before an important launch. Website maintenance packages exist so that neither situation happens in the first place.

But how much do they cost? Simple question, and most studios answer "it depends" and leave it there. At Apricode we publish our numbers, so below you'll find concrete figures, what a maintenance package includes, what drives the price, and when you don't need a monthly retainer at all.

How much website maintenance costs per month

Technical website maintenance with us costs roughly ₴1,000–3,000 a month (₴12,000–36,000 a year). That's about $25–75 or £18–55 a month (approx. $290–880 or £220–650 a year, at about 41 hryvnias to the dollar and 55 to the pound). These are the figures we list openly on our pricing page, and they reflect Ukrainian studio rates. The price covers updates, backups, monitoring, and a few hours of small changes. The exact package depends on the type of site, the volume of edits, and the response time you need.

That range applies to a typical business website or landing page. An online store with integrations, payments, and a large catalog costs more to maintain: more things can break, and every hour of downtime costs more.

What website maintenance includes

Before you compare prices, you need to know what you're paying for. "Maintenance" means different things at different studios, from "we'll answer if you write to us" to full technical upkeep. Here's what a proper retainer includes:

• Core and plugin updates. WordPress, the theme, plugins. Done right, updates go to a staging copy first and to production after, instead of "click update and hope."
• Daily backups. Automatic, to external storage. Not to the same server the site runs on: if that server fails, a backup in the same rack won't save you.
• Uptime and speed monitoring. Alerts when the site goes down, regular Core Web Vitals checks. You find out about a problem before your customers do.
• Security. Malware scans, checks for unauthorized file changes, admin password rotation.
• Small changes. Swap a text, add photos, adjust prices, update a promotion, set up a form. Within the included hours.
• A monthly report. What was done, how many hours were used, how many are left.

One detail worth checking in the contract: do unused hours roll over? In a fair model, they do. Hours you don't use this month carry over to the next, and you can save them up for a bigger piece of work.

Package tiers: what you pay more for

Most studios offer three maintenance tiers. The difference is mostly in the included hours for changes and the response speed, not in the basics (updates, backups, and monitoring should be in every tier).

What pushes the price up: more included hours, a faster response time (SLA), a more complex site, and separate work on top. Work beyond the package is usually billed at an hourly rate on a separate invoice, but only after you approve it, not as a surprise after the fact.

One more factor is whether the studio built the site. If another team built it, the normal practice is to start with a technical review: look at the code, database, plugins, hosting, and backups, and figure out the current state. At Apricode we don't take a site on without that review. We don't want to sign up for someone else's hidden problems, and you don't want to pay for discovering them late.

What drives the price: the short list

Boiled down to a list, the monthly cost of maintenance depends on:

• the type of site: a landing page, a business website, or an online store with integrations;
• the number of included hours for changes;
• response time: standard on business days or priority;
• the site's condition at the start: an outdated site has to be put in order first;
• the stack: WordPress with a dozen plugins takes different upkeep than a static site.

When one-off work beats monthly maintenance

I'll be honest: not everyone needs a retainer. If you have a simple five-page brochure site you don't touch for months, paying every month for "monitoring" may cost more than it's worth. The smarter setup then is one-off work as needed: update and check the site once a quarter, and in between it just runs.

Monthly maintenance pays off when:

• the site changes regularly (promotions, prices, products, content);
• downtime costs money (a store, a booking service, a steady flow of leads);
• the site has things that can break (integrations, payments, lots of plugins);
• you don't have your own developer you can reach quickly.

One-off work is the better deal when the site is static, changes are rare, and you can live with the risk that if something breaks, you'll have to find a contractor in a hurry (and pay for the urgency). That's a reasonable choice for a small business. Just make it on purpose, not because nobody offered you maintenance.

Checklist: is your maintenance provider any good?

Whoever you work with, run through this list. These are simple questions, and the answers show whether your maintenance is real or exists only on paper:

• Are backups made daily and to separate storage? Not "once a month on the same server."
• Are updates tested before deployment? Or applied straight to production, risking the site going down.
• Do you get a monthly report? How many hours were used and on what.
• Do unused hours roll over? Or do they expire at the end of the month.
• Is extra work approved before it starts? Or invoiced after the fact.
• Is the response time written into the contract? Or is it "we'll get to it when we can."
• Will you get your access and backups if you end the contract? Your site should stay yours, without "we'll lock it" or "the source files aren't yours."

If the answer to most of these is "yes," your maintenance is in good shape. If not, there's no reason to panic, but there is a reason to ask your provider a few direct questions.

Frequently asked questions

Summary

Website maintenance costs roughly ₴1,000–3,000 (approx. $25–75 or £18–55) a month for the basic tier, more for stores and complex sites. The price is set by the included hours, the response time, and the site's condition at the start. A retainer pays off if you update your site regularly and downtime means lost money. For a static brochure site, one-off work is often the smarter choice.

Tell us what kind of site you have and where it's hosted. We'll do a technical review and tell you which package fits and whether anything needs fixing first. No prepayment before the review. Get website maintenance →