Website Maintenance Plans: What to Include and Charge
What a website maintenance plan includes, how to price one from your own hours and when to offer it.
Robbert Veer, Founder
7 min read
A website maintenance plan is a monthly service that keeps a site updated, backed up, monitored and working after launch. For an agency, website maintenance plans are the recurring income that follows a build. This guide covers what to include, how to price a plan from your own hours and when to offer it.
What is a website maintenance plan?
A website maintenance plan is an agreement to do a fixed list of upkeep tasks on a website every month for a fixed fee. Agencies also sell them as website care plans. The work is the same under either name.
Three things get confused with it.
- Hosting is the server the site runs on. Some agencies bundle it with a plan, and it is still a separate service.
- Support hours pay for changes the client asks for. A plan can include a few.
- An SEO or ads retainer aims at growth. A maintenance plan keeps what exists working.
Most pages on this subject are written for site owners who are comparing providers. This one is written for the agency or freelancer who builds the site and sells the plan.
What should a website maintenance plan include?
A plan should include updates, backups, monitoring, testing and a monthly report. The table is a starting point for a WordPress site, and the frequencies are our suggestion.
| Task | How often | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Update the CMS, plugins and theme | Weekly | Only current software is maintained |
| Back up the site and test a restore | Daily backup, restore test each quarter | A backup nobody has restored is a guess |
| Monitor uptime | Around the clock, by software | You hear about an outage before the client does |
| Scan for malware and changed files | Weekly | Trouble is caught while it is small |
| Test forms, booking and checkout | Monthly | A dead form loses customers who were ready to buy |
| Check speed on a phone | Monthly | New images and plugins slow a site over time |
| Check domain and certificate expiry | Monthly | An expired certificate puts a warning in front of visitors |
| Make small content edits | On request, up to a limit | Hours, staff and prices change |
| Send a report | Monthly | The client sees what the fee bought |
Updates are the reason a plan needs a person. WordPress's release archive says of its current series that only the most recent release is "safe to use and actively maintained" (WordPress.org). By default, WordPress updates plugins and themes by itself only in special cases, to patch critical vulnerabilities (WordPress documentation). The rest waits for someone to run the update and check that nothing broke. The same guide says to back up the site before you start.
For the speed check, use Google's marks. A good page has a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, an Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less (web.dev).
On a hosted site builder, the platform handles the software updates. The plan then leans on testing, edits and the report.
How do you price website maintenance plans?
Price a plan from your own cost per site, then add your margin. Your cost is the hours you spend each month, at what an hour costs your business, plus the tools.
- Time the routine tasks on three sites for one month.
- Multiply the hours by what an hour of your time costs the business.
- Add the monthly cost of your tools, divided by the sites that share them.
- Divide the total by one minus the margin you want.
Here is the sum with made-up figures.
| Line | Made-up monthly figure |
|---|---|
| Routine tasks, 1.5 hours at a cost of $60 | $90 |
| Included edits, 1 hour | $60 |
| Tools, per site | $12 |
| Cost per site | $162 |
| Price at a 45% margin | $295 |
Three website maintenance packages are easier for a client to choose between than one. Vary the edit hours and the response time, and keep the routine tasks in all of them. The prices below use the same made-up costs, each divided by 0.55.
| Package | Routine tasks | Included edits | Reply to a request | Made-up price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | All | None | Within 2 working days | $185 |
| Standard | All | 1 hour | Within 1 working day | $295 |
| Plus | All | 3 hours | Same working day | $513 |
Published prices for plans differ widely, and this guide quotes none of them. Your own hours are the sound base. They should fall per site as you add sites, since one dashboard can run updates for all of them, so time yourself again after six months. Our guide to web design packages shows how to lay out tiers.
When do you sell a maintenance plan?
Sell the plan before the build ends. It belongs in the proposal as its own line and in the contract with a start date on launch day.
- In the proposal. Show the build price and the monthly plan side by side. Our web design proposal template has a place for it.
- In the contract. State what the plan covers, the edit limit, the notice period and what happens to hosting and logins if it ends. Our web design contract template shows the clauses.
- At handover. Walk the client through the task list and offer two honest options. You do the work for the monthly fee, or they take the list and do it themselves.
- After 30 days. Send one report to clients who declined. The updates waiting since launch make the case without a pitch.
In a made-up example, 12 clients on the $295 plan come to $3,540 a month before any new build.
Do not sell on fear. A plan lowers the odds of trouble and shortens the repair. It cannot rule trouble out, and a client who was promised safety will hold you to it.
Which businesses need a plan and are not your clients yet?
The businesses that need a plan most are the ones whose website shows neglect from the outside. You can see it without a login.
- The footer year is several years old.
- The address bar says "Not secure".
- The contact form returns an error.
- The homepage announces an event long past.
Each sign is a reason to write to the owner, and the owner can check it in ten seconds. Our list of nine signs a business needs a new website explains how to test for each.
Checking sites one by one is slow work. Leadodo's AI, Twip, scores every website in a search out of 100 across 10 domains, and security, speed and technology are three of the ten. Sites that score below 40 form the shortlist.
A site you did not build carries more risk than one you did. Start with a paid audit and a one-time cleanup, then begin the monthly plan. Our website audit checklist covers the audit.
If you would sooner not do the upkeep yourself, a partner can do it under your name. The margin arithmetic in our guide to white label web design applies here too.
What should a plan never promise?
A plan should never promise that a site cannot be hacked, that edits are unlimited or that rankings will rise. Each of those turns into unpaid work or a broken promise.
- Safety. Say "we update, scan and back up, and we restore the site if something goes wrong".
- Unlimited edits. Give a number of hours.
- Results. Maintenance keeps a site working. Growth is a different service at a different price.
- A response time you cannot staff. "Within one working day" that you keep is worth more than "within the hour" that you miss.
Questions
What is included in a website maintenance plan?
The core is software updates, backups with a restore test and uptime monitoring. Security scans, form tests, a speed check and a monthly report complete it. Many plans add a set number of hours for small edits. Hosting is a separate service that some agencies bundle in.
How much do website maintenance plans cost?
Published prices range widely, because plans differ in what they include and how many edit hours come with them. An agency should build its price from its own hours and tools. In this guide's made-up example, 2.5 hours and $12 of tools came to $295 a month at a 45% margin.
Are website care plans worth it for a small business?
They are worth it when nobody at the business updates the software, tests the forms and checks the backups. If a member of staff already does all three every month, a plan repeats that work. The honest test is to ask who did those three things last month.
Is hosting part of a maintenance plan?
Hosting is a separate service. Some agencies bundle the two, which gives the client one invoice and one contact. State in the contract who owns the hosting account and what happens to it if the plan ends.
Can you white label website maintenance?
Yes. A partner does the upkeep and you bill it under your own name. Count your own time for client contact and checking before you set the price.
What happens when a client cancels the plan?
Hand over the logins, the latest backup and the task list. The site belongs to the client. A clean exit keeps the door open for the next build.
Next step. Find the local businesses whose websites show neglect. Leadodo scores every website in a search and puts the weakest on your shortlist. See the features.
