Website maintenance cost is rarely one bill. It is a handful of lines: domain, hosting, SSL, updates, backups, monitoring, security, licences and someone's time. When nobody adds them up, either the budget surprises you or the site quietly goes unmaintained. Here is each line, the prices vendors publish for it, and what moves the total.
What makes up website maintenance cost?
Website maintenance cost has two parts. The first is what you pay for tools: the domain, hosting, an SSL certificate and commercial plugin licences. The second is work: updates, backups, monitoring, security, small content changes and support. Tool prices are public. How much work there is depends on your site.
The table lists each line, what it buys you and, where one exists, a price the vendor publishes. These are examples of the price level, not a recommendation to use these exact services.
| Cost line | What it buys | Published price (example) | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain (.lv) | The address people type to find you | NIC.lv: €12.00 a year before VAT; €8.40 for a name with Latvian letters | Yearly |
| Hosting | The server your site runs on | Hostinger WordPress Premium: €2.49 a month on a 48-month plan, renews at €9.99 a month, before VAT | Monthly or prepaid |
| SSL certificate | HTTPS and an encrypted connection | Let's Encrypt: free; many hosting plans include one | With hosting |
| Core, theme and plugin updates | Security fixes and compatibility | Labour time | Weekly or monthly |
| Backups | A way back after a failure | Hostinger: weekly on Premium, daily on Business | Daily or weekly |
| Uptime monitoring | An alert when the site goes down | UptimeRobot: free plan checks every 5 minutes; Solo from €9 a month billed yearly | Continuous |
| Security | A lower risk of a break-in | Labour time; some tools come with hosting | Continuous |
| Commercial plugin licences | Updates and support from the plugin's maker | ACF PRO: $49 a year; WP Rocket: €49.95 a year (one site each) | Yearly |
| Small content changes | New text, images, prices | Labour time | As needed |
| Support | Answers to questions, bug fixes | Labour time | As needed |
How much do a domain and hosting cost?
The domain and hosting are the smallest and most predictable part. A standard .lv domain costs €12.00 a year before VAT at NIC.lv, and a name with Latvian letters costs €8.40. WordPress hosting runs from a few euros to over €20 a month, depending on resources and how often backups are taken.
When you compare hosts, look at the renewal price, not the headline one. Hostinger's WordPress Premium plan, for example, is €2.49 a month if you pay for 48 months upfront (€119.52), then renews at €9.99 a month. The Business plan is €3.49 and renews at €16.99. All of these exclude VAT.
The plans differ in more than price. Premium takes a backup once a week, Business once a day. If orders or enquiries reach your site every day, a week-old backup means several days of data are gone when something fails.
Why do updates take the most time?
On a WordPress site, updates are the main recurring job. The core, the theme and every plugin get new versions, and some of them close security holes. After each round, someone has to check that forms, payments and the layout still work. That is labour, and it grows with every plugin you add.
Plugins carry most of the risk. Patchstack's 2026 report counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, 42% more than the year before. 91% were in plugins and 9% in themes; WordPress core had only 6, all low priority.
The server needs updating too. Security support for PHP 8.2 ends on 31 December 2026 and for PHP 8.3 on 31 December 2027, and WordPress recommends PHP 8.3 or newer. Before a move to a newer PHP version, someone has to check that older plugins and the theme still run on it.
Commercial plugin licences
Free plugins update at no charge. Commercial ones need an active licence, because the licence is what pays for updates and support. ACF PRO Personal costs $49 a year for one site, and WP Rocket Single €49.95 a year for one site. Count the commercial plugins on your site and put their renewal dates in a calendar, so no licence lapses unnoticed.
What makes maintenance more expensive?
The price mostly depends on how many moving parts your site has. A brochure site with a few plugins needs little work. An online store with payments, integrations and more visitors needs more, because each part has to be updated, tested and watched.
Should you maintain the site yourself or pay for a plan?
Doing it yourself costs less money and more time. It works if someone on your team knows WordPress, updates the site regularly, checks the backups and knows what to do when something breaks. A maintenance plan makes sense when that time is better spent on your own business.
Before you decide, answer these:
- Who updates the site, and how often?
- Where are the backups kept, and when did you last check that the site can be restored from them?
- Who finds out if the site goes down at night or over a weekend?
- Who owns the domain, the hosting account and the licences?
If you choose a plan, compare what it actually covers: how often updates happen, backups, monitoring, how many content changes are included and what happens when something fails. A price without that list tells you little. Our website maintenance and hosting puts hosting, updates and security monitoring in one place, and we still look after the LAFI site we developed.
What happens when nobody maintains a website?
An unmaintained site does not stop at once. It keeps running until a plugin with a known flaw is attacked, the PHP version stops getting security fixes, or the domain or a licence expires. Then the fix happens in a rush instead of on schedule.
There is little time to spare. In Patchstack's data, 46% of vulnerabilities had no patch by the time they were made public, and for the most heavily exploited ones the median time to mass exploitation was 5 hours. Security updates need to go on soon, not once a year.
What that can look like:
- a hacked site that sends spam or redirects visitors elsewhere;
- forms or payments that stop working after a server change;
- an expired domain that takes the website and the email on it offline;
- no recent backup to restore the site from.
Frequently asked questions
How much does website maintenance cost per month?
For a simple site, the tools can cost just a few euros a month: a standard .lv domain is €12 a year before VAT at NIC.lv, WordPress hosting plans start at a few euros a month, and an SSL certificate can be free. The rest is work: updates, checks, backups and changes. How much of it you need depends on the size of the site and its plugins.
How much does website maintenance cost per year?
Add up the yearly lines: the domain (€12 before VAT for a standard .lv name), twelve months of hosting at its renewal price, not the introductory one, and every commercial plugin licence, such as ACF PRO at $49 or WP Rocket at €49.95 a year for one site. Then add the hours for updates, checks and content changes, which depend on how your site is built.
Do I need to pay for an SSL certificate?
Usually not. Let's Encrypt is a nonprofit certificate authority that issues TLS certificates for free, and many hosting plans include them; Hostinger's WordPress plans, for example, come with unlimited SSL certificates. What matters more is that someone checks the certificate renews on time and that every page opens over HTTPS.
How often should a WordPress site be updated?
Check for updates at least once a week and apply security fixes as soon as you can. In Patchstack's data, the median time to mass exploitation for heavily exploited vulnerabilities was 5 hours. Take a backup before you update, and afterwards test the forms, payments and main pages to make sure nothing broke.
Why does hosting cost more after the first term?
Some hosts advertise an introductory price that applies only to the first term and asks you to pay for several years upfront. Hostinger's WordPress Premium plan, for example, is €2.49 a month on a 48-month plan but renews at €9.99 a month, both before VAT. When you compare hosts, budget with the renewal price.
