Website maintenance cost: what a package should include

Website maintenance costs $300, $700 or $1,500 a month ex GST with our care plan, depending on how many hours of changes you want each month: 2, 5 or 10. Every tier includes hosting and SSL, backups, uptime monitoring, security updates, bug fixes and a monthly report, and the plan runs month to month after the first three months. The same tiers cover a web app or the API behind a mobile app. This article explains what that monthly fee pays for, which tier suits which business, and the questions to ask of any maintenance package before you sign up, whoever offers it.

A website is software, and software does not stay finished. Frameworks release security fixes, certificates expire, a form stops sending because an email provider changed a setting, and someone always wants one more field. A maintenance package is the agreement about who handles that, and how fast.

Our care plan covers the same six things in every tier:

The bug fixes sit alongside the consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law for defects in our work and do not limit them.

The tiers differ only in hours, so the question is how much you expect to change each month.

• Essential, $300 a month, 2 hours. For a business website that mostly stays as it is: a price update, a new photo, a seasonal notice. Most of these take minutes.
• Standard, $700 a month, 5 hours. For a site or a web app that changes every month: new pages, form changes, a new report. If you are not sure, start here.
• Extended, $1,500 a month, 10 hours. For a web app your team uses every day, where small features and improvements are a regular request.

To picture an hour, here are our own effort estimates for the requests that come up most. They are estimates, not quotes for any particular job: a copy or image change on an existing page takes about a quarter of an hour; a new form field with validation and a change to the email it sends takes about an hour; a new report or dashboard tile from data the system already holds takes two to four hours. Framework and platform updates are covered by the plan, not your hours.

Work beyond your hours is quoted in writing before we start and billed at $130 an hour, with a two-hour minimum, so the hours never run out without warning.

Whoever you choose, ask these six questions before you sign. A good package answers each one in writing.

1. Who hosts the site, and in whose name? The hosting, domain and code accounts should be yours, so you can move if you ever need to. Ours are set up in your name from the first day.
2. Are backups tested? A backup nobody has ever restored is a hope, not a backup. Ask how often backups run and when a restore was last checked.
3. Who notices when the site is down? Uptime monitoring means the provider hears about an outage before your customers tell you.
4. Are security updates applied, or only offered? Some packages only notify you of an update. Applying and testing it is the part that takes time.
5. How are changes counted? A fixed number of hours, a list of included tasks, or a per-change fee. All can work; vague wording such as "minor changes" is where disputes start.
6. What does the report show? You should be able to see what was done each month and how the hours were used.

Also check the minimum term and the notice period. Ours is three months, then month to month, so you can stop at the end of any month after the third.

Not every site needs one. If someone in your business is comfortable applying updates, checking that backups restore and making small edits in the content management system, you can run the site yourself. Every site we build comes with the logins, the documentation and a hand-over session, so nothing is held back.

A plan earns its cost when nobody has the time, when the site takes bookings or payments that cannot stop, or when it is a web app your team relies on every day.

Three things happen in order after a project goes live:

1. Launch. The site or app goes live on accounts in your name, with documentation and a hand-over session.
2. The 30-day warranty. Defects in what we built are fixed at no charge for 30 days. It sits alongside the consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law and does not limit them.
3. The care plan. From the day the warranty ends, hosting, monitoring, updates, fixes and change hours every month, with a report.

If you are still budgeting for the build itself, how much does a website cost in Australia? covers the up-front figure, and what an app costs covers web and mobile apps. Every price, including the care plan tiers, is on our pricing page.

The care plan is designed for the websites and apps we build, because we know exactly what is underneath them. If your site was built by someone else, ask us: we review the code and the hosting first, then tell you honestly whether we can take it on and what it would need before we do.