Website maintenance is the ongoing work of keeping a website online, secure, backed up and up to date after it goes live, plus the small changes the business needs along the way. It usually shows up on an invoice as one number, called hosting, a care plan or a retainer. Underneath, it is six separate jobs.
It matters because most owners only find out what their plan covers when something goes wrong: a hosting renewal that jumps, a plugin update that breaks the contact form, or a hacked site with no recent backup. Two quotes with the same monthly price can cover very different amounts of work.
This guide lists what a maintenance plan should include, what Australian plans cost each month, what each part costs if you buy it separately, and the red flags to look for in a quote. Prices were checked on the providers' own pages on 12 October 2026.
What website maintenance should include
"Maintenance" is a catch-all word, which is why it is easy to sell short. A complete plan covers six jobs. Each one has its own cost, and each one causes a different problem when it is skipped.
- Hosting and domain: the server the site runs on, and the .com.au address that points to it.
- Security: a firewall, malware scanning and someone to clean up the site if an attack gets through.
- Backups: a recent copy of the site, stored away from the server, that can actually be restored.
- Uptime and performance monitoring: an alert when the site goes down or slows, before a customer tells you.
- Software updates: keeping the CMS, theme, plugins and other software patched, ideally tested on a copy first.
- Content changes and small features: new prices, photos, pages and fixes, either in a monthly allowance or billed by the hour.
What to pay for a maintenance plan in Australia
Few providers publish their prices, so published ranges are the best guide. Chillybin, an Australian WordPress agency, publishes these 2026 tiers for managed maintenance plans, in AUD:
- Basic, A$100 to A$200 a month: core and plugin updates, a monthly backup and uptime monitoring. For small brochure sites with low traffic.
- Standard, A$200 to A$400 a month: adds security scanning, 1 to 2 hours of support and testing updates on a staging copy.
- Advanced, A$400 to A$700 a month: adds priority support, performance checks and monthly reporting.
- Enterprise, A$700 to A$2,000 or more a month: online shops, membership sites and high-traffic sites, with dedicated support hours and agreed response times.
If you pay as you go instead of a plan, Chillybin puts ad hoc developer time at A$100 to A$150 an hour. Freelance web developer rates across Australia run wider, roughly A$32 to A$138 an hour.
For a typical small business brochure site, that means somewhere between A$1,200 and A$4,800 a year for a managed plan. Online shops and busy sites sit higher.
Hosting, security and backups: the costs that run whether you touch the site or not
If you put a plan together yourself, these are the baseline costs. They exist even if nobody edits the site again.
- Hosting: VentraIP's WordPress hosting is A$18.50 a month including GST at its standard price. SiteGround's StartUp plan renews at A$26.99 a month before GST, after a cheaper first year.
- Domain: VentraIP lists a .com.au name at a standard A$22.95 a year including GST.
- Security: Sucuri's website security platform, which includes malware removal, is US$229 a year on Basic, US$339 on Pro and US$549 on Business. Wordfence Premium is US$149 a year, or US$590 for Wordfence Care, where its team configures, monitors and handles incidents for you.
- Backups: BlogVault lists automatic daily backups at US$99 per site a year, and twice-daily backups with staging at US$299.
Skipping this layer is a real risk. In Sucuri's most recent Hacked Website Report, covering 2023, 39.1% of the content management systems it cleaned were out of date at the point of infection. Patchstack counted 11,334 new WordPress vulnerabilities in 2025, 91% of them in plugins. Our guide to what to do if your website is hacked covers the recovery side.
Monitoring and updates: catching problems before a customer does
Uptime monitoring is a small cost for what it catches. UptimeRobot has a free plan that checks every 5 minutes across up to 50 monitors, which it describes as for hobby and non-profit projects. Paid plans start at US$108 a year for checks every 60 seconds, and US$420 a year for a team plan. The tool matters less than whether someone reads the alert and acts on it.
Updates are the least visible job and the easiest to put off, which is why they are the one most often skipped. The CMS, theme and plugins all release fixes on their own schedules. Applying them safely means testing on a staging copy first, then checking the live site after. That testing is where much of a plan's time goes. Our guide to WordPress plugin updates and security shows what the routine involves.
Content changes and feature work: the part that varies most
Content work scales with what you ask for, not with the size of the site. A new page, a price change, a seasonal banner or a staff photo is either covered by a monthly allowance or billed by the hour once the allowance runs out. Chillybin's Standard tier, for example, includes 1 to 2 hours of support a month.
Bigger features are different. An online booking flow, a CRM connection or a new section of the site is project work, quoted on its own, whether or not you're on a plan. A good plan says clearly where the allowance ends and project work begins.
What a page builder subscription covers, and what it doesn't
Squarespace and Wix bundle hosting and an SSL certificate into the subscription, and they look after the platform's own software for you. Squarespace's Australian plans run from A$17 to A$109 a month on annual billing, before GST. Wix shows A$21 to A$199 a month on yearly plans, with GST included. For the parts they bundle, that is often good value.
What they don't include is the content work. Every change is still your time or a contractor's. Features the platform doesn't offer cost extra or can't be added. And the site is rented: stop paying and it comes down. Maintenance on a page builder covers the platform, not your website's content. Our guide to what a Squarespace website costs in Australia adds up the full yearly bill.
Red flags in a maintenance quote
- No list of what's included: a single monthly price with no breakdown of the six jobs.
- Backups stored on the same server: if the server fails or is hacked, the backups go with it.
- Updates with no testing: fine until an update breaks something on a busy day.
- No edit allowance or hourly rate stated: you find out what changes cost when the invoice arrives.
- A cheap first year with no renewal price: hosting and licences that jump in year two.
- Accounts in the provider's name: your domain, hosting and site should be in your business's name, so you can leave.
For comparison, Lumeen's hosting plans include maintenance. Essentials is A$24.99 a month and covers hosting, SSL, DDoS protection, automatic backups and 5 website edits a month. Growth is A$49.99 a month and adds 15 edits a month, new feature development, quarterly performance tune-ups and quarterly SEO. Both include GST, with no lock-in contract.
Maintenance, in the end, is the ongoing price of a website that keeps working: safe from attack, recoverable when something breaks, current with its software and able to change when the business does. Whatever you're comparing, check the quote covers all six jobs. The cheapest number is usually the one that covers three.
Key takeaways
- (01)
A complete maintenance plan covers six jobs: hosting and domain, security, backups, monitoring, updates and content changes.
- (02)
Published Australian tiers put managed plans at A$100 to A$200 a month for a small brochure site and A$200 to A$400 for a growing business site.
- (03)
Skipped updates are a real risk: 39.1% of the CMS sites Sucuri cleaned in 2023 were out of date when they were infected.
- (04)
A page builder subscription covers the platform, not your content. Changes and new features still cost your time or a contractor's.
Frequently asked questions
What does a website maintenance plan usually include?
A complete plan covers hosting, security monitoring and malware cleanup, backups, uptime monitoring, software updates, and an allowance for content changes. Many cheaper plans cover only some of these, so ask for a list.
How much should website maintenance cost per month in Australia?
Chillybin's published 2026 tiers put managed plans at A$100 to A$200 a month for a small brochure site, A$200 to A$400 for a growing business site, and A$400 to A$700 for busier sites. Online shops and membership sites can cost A$700 to A$2,000 or more.
Is maintenance included in a Squarespace or Wix subscription?
The platform side is: hosting, an SSL certificate and the platform's own software. Content changes and features the platform doesn't offer still cost your time or a contractor's, and the site stops when the subscription does.
Can I maintain my own website?
Yes, if you have the time and take backups before every update. Free tools cover the basics, such as UptimeRobot's free monitoring and Wordfence's free plugin. The risk is the day something breaks and you need to fix it quickly.
More answers on price, hosting and timing in our FAQ.