Search for website maintenance cost and you’ll find numbers from $5 a month to $5,000 a month. Both ends are real. They describe different websites.
This post covers what a small business pays per month, what that money buys, and the charge most quotes leave out: edits.
What Published Price Guides Say
Two widely read guides give ranges for a small business site.
| Source | Small business site, per month |
|---|---|
| WebFX pricing guide (updated December 2025) | $35 to $100 |
| GoDaddy cost guide (updated July 2026) | $50 to $500 (small to medium business site) |
The spread is wide because “maintenance” means different jobs at different companies. One quote covers backups and updates. Another adds security scans, monitoring and hosting. Our post on what WordPress maintenance includes lists the six jobs so you can check a quote against them.
What the Monthly Fee Covers
A maintenance fee pays for routine work that keeps a site running:
- Backups, so you can restore the site after a mistake
- Updates to WordPress and your plugins
- Security scans for malware
- Monitoring, so someone knows when the site stops responding
Ask each provider whether hosting is part of the fee. Some maintenance plans sit on top of a hosting bill you pay to another company.
The Charge Outside the Monthly Fee: Edits
Changing your hours, swapping a photo and posting a blog article are content edits. Most maintenance plans leave them out and bill them by the hour.
GoDaddy’s guide lists developer hourly rates of $50 to $150 or more. WebFX bills additional work at $150 an hour. At those rates, two hours of edits in a month costs $100 to $300 on top of the maintenance fee.
Edits are also the part you can’t predict. A slow month costs nothing. A month with a new service, a price change and a staff photo costs more than the maintenance plan itself.
What It Costs on Stagecoach
On Stagecoach, hosting and maintenance are one plan with one price.
| Plan | Per month | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Scout | $35 | Hosting, daily backups kept 30 days, WordPress core updates, free SSL, one-click staging, free migration |
| Guard | $50 | Everything in Scout, plus managed theme and plugin updates, daily malware scans, Advanced Security and 100% Uptime Monitoring |
| Outrider | $69 | Everything in Guard, plus AI Powered Speed Boost, speed performance monitoring and hands-on speed tuning |
| Trailhand add-on | $89 | Unlimited website edits: text changes, image swaps, posting the blog articles you send and form adjustments |
Guard with Trailhand comes to $139 a month. That covers hosting, maintenance and quick edits with no hourly bill. Full page rewrites, redesigns and custom features are separate projects with their own quote.
We don’t sell maintenance on its own for a site hosted somewhere else. If your site is on another host, we move it for free and the plan covers it from there. WordPress maintenance included with your hosting has the plan-by-plan list.
Five Questions to Ask Before You Compare Quotes
- Is hosting included, or is it a second bill?
- How often do you back up, and how long do you keep each backup?
- Who runs WordPress and plugin updates?
- Are content edits included, or billed by the hour?
- What counts as a separate project?
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does website maintenance cost per month for a small business?
WebFX puts it at $35 to $100 a month. GoDaddy puts a small to medium business site at $50 to $500. Hourly charges for edits come on top unless the plan includes them.
Is hosting part of website maintenance?
It depends on the provider. On Stagecoach, hosting and maintenance are the same plan.
Can I maintain my own website and pay nothing?
Yes. WordPress has update buttons in the dashboard, and backup plugins exist. You pay in time, and you have to remember to do it.
See plan prices on Pricing, read what Trailhand covers in unlimited website edits explained, or Ring the Stagecoach and tell us what you pay now.
