Monthly Website Maintenance Packages: How to Choose
A monthly website maintenance package is a retainer for updates, backups, security and a set amount of change work. UK small-business plans usually cost £25 to £150 a month for care and monitoring, or £150 to £300 if regular content edits are included. Take one if you cannot keep the site updated yourself, or if downtime and security incidents would cost more than the fee.
What you are actually buying
Most website monthly maintenance packages mix automated care with a small bucket of human time. The automated side is CMS and plugin updates, backups, malware scans and uptime checks. That work is cheap because the process is the same on every site. Human time is content edits, fixing breakage after updates, and responding when a form or checkout fails. That is the bit that sets the price.
On a quiet brochure site, real hands-on work is often 15 to 30 minutes a month. If the supplier deducts 30 minutes every month for updates and a report from a one-hour plan, you have 30 minutes left for actual changes. Get that deduction in writing before you compare quotes.
Unlimited support on a very cheap plan almost always means unlimited tickets, not unlimited hours. Check whether they log in and do the task, or send instructions for you to follow.
Typical UK prices and what the hours mean
| Package type | Typical monthly fee | Usual allowance | Fits if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic care | £25 to £60 | Updates, backups, scans, little or no edit time | You make the content changes yourself |
| Standard retainer | £60 to £150 | 1 to 2 hours of changes plus care | You tweak copy, images or prices most months |
| Managed | £150 to £300 | 3 to 5 hours, priority replies, often a staging copy | You want the site off your task list |
| Agency retainer | £300 to £800+ | Dedicated time across web and sometimes marketing | Several sites or a campaign calendar |
Freelance ad-hoc rates in the UK sit around £40 to £85 an hour outside London and £60 to £120 in London. Emergency work with no retainer often carries a call-out of £90 to £150, then hourly on top. Plugin and theme licences are separate: plan £50 to £300 a year for page builders, SEO tools and booking add-ons. Hosting is extra unless the contract names it. Shared hosting is typically £5 to £15 a month. Managed WordPress hosting is £15 to £45.
Retainer versus paying per job
Add up the work from the last six months. Count hours, not jobs. Under six hours in six months, a basic care plan plus the odd ad-hoc booking is usually cheaper. Over about 12 hours, a two-hour monthly retainer typically beats six separate bookings, because retainers are discounted and you skip the wait for a free slot.
A retainer also buys queue priority. If checkout is down on a Saturday, firms with retainers get the first call. That priority is worth more than unused hours on a quiet month if you take payments online.
Do not buy hours you will not use. Unused hours that expire are a gift to the supplier. Rollover of up to one month is fair. Banked hours that never expire sound generous until you realise you are pre-paying for work you may never request, and the price already reflects that.
What the package will not cover
This is where invoices surprise people. Unless the contract lists it, assume these are extra:
- New page layouts, redesigns and extra templates
- Copywriting from a blank page
- SEO retainers, Google Ads and analytics strategy
- Photography, branding and print
- Hosting and domain renewal, unless named
- Cleaning a hacked site that had no off-server backup when they started
- Third-party licence renewals
- WooCommerce rule changes, payment gateway switches and booking-system rebuilds
If you are on Wix, Squarespace or Shopify, core platform updates already sit in your platform fee. A WordPress-style care plan is the wrong product. You are paying for content help, app costs and someone who knows that builder, not for patching WordPress.
How to choose without wasting the fee
- List what broke or needed changing last year: plugin conflicts, form spam, product photos, opening hours, SSL warnings. Price the package against that list, not against a generic brochure.
- Decide who will log into the CMS. If you are happy editing pages, buy care and monitoring, not a content retainer.
- Get the hour policy in writing: what is auto-deducted, whether unused time rolls over, and the minimum block per ticket. Fifteen-minute blocks are common.
- Confirm response times in two lanes: a down site versus a text change. Same day for downtime and two to three working days for copy is normal.
- Confirm who owns the domain, hosting and site files, and that you hold an admin login. If they keep the only admin account, leaving later is painful.
- Get the stack in writing: CMS, PHP version, major plugins, and where backups live. Backups only on the same server are not a real backup.
- Read the exit clause. Thirty days' notice is fair. A 12-month term with no mid-term exit is a poor fit while you test a supplier.
Walk away if you see these
- Unlimited work at a very low price with no hour cap
- No off-server backups named in the contract
- They will not give you admin access
- The domain sits in their name with no transfer process
- One price for every site, including shops, membership and multilingual builds
- Pressure to sign a year on the first call
One-off builds, care plans and pay-monthly websites
Three products get mixed up, and they are not the same spend.
Maintenance on a site you already own. You paid for the build. You now pay a monthly fee to keep it patched and, if you buy the hours, to change content.
A one-off website build. You pay a project fee, you own the site, then you maintain it yourself, buy a care package, or book work as it comes up. UK small-business builds commonly sit in the £800 to £3,500 range before hosting and care. Add hosting at £10 or so a month and a £50 care plan, and year one is often £1,500 to £4,200 depending on the build.
A pay-monthly website. You pay a setup fee, then a monthly amount that includes hosting, updates and ongoing management. Across the UK market, setup often falls between £99 and £500, then £50 to £150 a month. Year one can land at £700 to £2,300. That route suits you if there is no lump sum for a build and you want the technical side genuinely hands-off. Over three or four years, buying the site outright plus cheap hosting is usually the lower total. The monthly route is a cash-flow choice, not a cheaper one in the long run. Read who owns the site if you stop paying.
I offer both a one-off build and a pay-monthly plan of that hands-off type. For current figures, see arlowebstudio.com. A one-off plus a small care plan fits if you want to own the lot from day one and already have someone who can change a phone number. Pay monthly fits if cash is tighter than time and you do not want to become the unofficial webmaster.
When you can skip a package
Skip a retainer if the site is a handful of pages that rarely change, you can update plugins once a month, and you already keep a backup you have tested. Get one if you run WooCommerce, bookings or membership, you have been hacked before, prices or jobs change every month, or nobody will remember to update PHP.
A neglected WordPress site with outdated plugins is one of the most common ways small-business sites get defaced. Clean-up after the fact often costs £200 to £600, which is a year of a basic care plan. Pay for watching the site, or pay for the mess. There is not much middle ground.
Frequently asked questions
How much do monthly website maintenance packages cost in the UK?
Basic care plans are typically £25 to £60 a month. Standard retainers with 1 to 2 hours of changes run £60 to £150. Fully managed plans with several hours and priority support sit at £150 to £300. Agency retainers start around £300 and can pass £800. Ad-hoc work without a package is usually £40 to £120 an hour depending on location.
What is usually included in a monthly package?
Updates, backups, malware scans and uptime checks are the core. Edit time is only included if the contract states an hour allowance. Hosting, plugin licences, copywriting, new page designs and SEO campaigns are extra unless they are named. Always ask what time is auto-deducted each month before you request a change.
Do unused hours roll over?
Often they expire at the month end. One month of rollover is a fair middle ground. Hours that never expire sound better than they are, because you are paying in advance for work you may never ask for. If rollover matters to you, get it in the contract, not in a sales email.
Is hosting included in a maintenance package?
Only if the contract says so. Shared UK hosting is commonly £5 to £15 a month and managed WordPress hosting £15 to £45, billed separately. If hosting is bundled, check PHP version, SSL, staging, and whether you can export a full backup and leave without a fight over the domain.
Can I cancel and take my website with me?
You can if you own the domain, the hosting account and the files, and you hold an admin login. Ask for that in writing before you start. Thirty days' notice is a reasonable exit. If the supplier registered the domain in their name or withholds admin access, transferring later is slow and sometimes expensive.
Do I need a package if the site hardly ever changes?
Not a fat retainer. A basic care plan for updates and backups can still be worth £25 to £60 a month if you cannot reliably patch plugins yourself. If you can, and you have a tested backup, skip the package and budget for the odd ad-hoc hour when something breaks.