Many web design agencies offer site maintenance plans that keep clients’ websites up to date with the latest security measures.

Some agencies also offer plans that include updates to design and/or site functionality that aid in ongoing optimization of customer conversion. Either way, website maintenance rates around the industry are something web professionals should be aware of.

If you run a digital marketing agency that offers sites, it’s important to understand what your competitors’ monthly website maintenance costs are and price your sites accordingly.

Ideally, you want to offer something that keeps up with industry averages, but is competitive enough to give you an edge. And this makes your choice of site-building and hosting platforms very important.

Certain CMS (content management systems) platforms, like WordPress, require significant maintenance compared to website builders like Duda, and can become quite costly. The monthly costs for uptime monitoring, edits, backups and more is significantly lower for website owners, service providers and agencies who use Duda as their website builder.

There are multiple website builders and types of hosting providers, from Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, WordPress, Joomla, etc. If you run an agency, it’s critical you choose to work with tools that keep your own website maintenance and production costs as low as possible. This way you have the bandwidth to price yourself into the market while keeping revenue as high as possible.

How much does website maintenance cost?

Website maintenance rates can run anywhere from a $30 monthly fee for basic websites to $1,500 per month for custom eCommerce websites, according to the Designs Desk. Additionally, the internet marketing company WebFX estimates general website maintenance services rates along the following lines for different type of websites:

• $25-$75 per month for professional blogs
• $35-$100 per month for small business websites
• $125-$500 per month for small to medium business websites
• $200-$3,500 per month for corporate websites
• $25-$6000 per month for an E-commerce site/online store

If we break it down even more depending on website needs:

• $5 – $250 per month for web hosting costs depending on hosting plan
• $10–$90 per year for domain name and domain registration
• $50-$500 for Security plugins that would help secure your website with a firewall, malware scanner, brute-force protection, and login protection.

Plans on the low-end of these price ranges include things like basic WordPress updates and site backups. Plans on the high-end include things like upgrades to content/design and keeping complicated eCommerce sites secure and functional.

Digital marketing services like SEO, email marketing and social media could also be added.

Hosting services companies tend to offer less-inclusive plans or à la carte options with steep prices for each add-on. For instance, GoDaddy charges $63.99 a year for an SSL certificate (Secure Sockets Layer)— if the client manages it. The price jumps to $149.99 if GoDaddy manages it. GoDaddy also offers numerous additional upgrades:

• Their security plans run from $5.59 per month to $25 per month
• Regular backups of the website run $2.99 per month
• Basic SEO (search engine optimization) analytics average $6.99/month

Website maintenance is critical, but not always well priced

For agencies, calculating time spent on web maintenance for client websites is critical to profitability. For WordPress, these time commitments can quickly add up.

Canada-based Conscious Commerce CEO Brandon Klayman found this out the hard way. “There is just too much baggage that comes with WordPress. Performance is an issue, getting the hosting right is a pain, and there are way too many security problems,” Klayman explained.

Klayman’s predicament meant the agency was sinking significant time into making customers’ websites work, and not on the integrated marketing solutions that comprise the Conscious Commerce’s core work. Now, using Duda, the agency is able to keep site maintenance average costs low so customers can invest in outbound and inbound marketing efforts, which is where Conscious Commerce provides the bulk of its value.

What does a robust website maintenance plan look like?

Web design agencies typically provide the most-inclusive plans with the types of services that GoDaddy with additional upgrade and update offers. Basic site maintenance plans can include images, text, and layout changes, according to Divi Cake, a premium WordPress theme developer. The website maintenance rates for these plans can run up to $150 an hour in packages starting at 2 to 5 hours a month.

Some web design agencies outsource maintenance tasks related to security plugins, regular updates, backups and analytics to tech support teams and freelancers because these types of regular maintenance require so much technical support and web developer time. In fact, there’s a whole industry dedicated solely to WordPress maintenance, with companies like WP Buffs making all revenue this way.

To stay always up to date with software development rates, you can use tools such as YouRate. It can show you how high are the rates based on the developer's tech stack, years of experience and geographical location.

How can agencies lower maintenance rates for customers?

If an agency goes with a solution like Duda that requires very little maintenance, (having no millions of plugins or downtimes like wordpress websites) the company can pass on those savings to clients and offer more competitive pricing plans. This is what website design agency Superdental does.

Duda is secure and simple enough to use that clients can engage the platform’s drag-and-drop editor to make basic updates to their personal website on their own (no need for customer support), allowing Superdental to charge less and put the time savings from would-be site maintenance hours into taking on new clients.

What can agencies do with the time they save from website maintenance?

Other agencies take the time they save to expand service offerings and offer more robust retainer plans to clients. When Olive Street Design moved to Duda, company leaders used the time saved to offer a variety of new products and services to clients, such as website personalization, HTTPS encryption, eCommerce, and more. Those additional offerings and maintenance plans mean more money goes to Olive Street’s bottom line and customers are more satisfied with their websites.

How to think about your website maintenance rates

When it comes to website maintenance rates, there is no hard and fast rule for pricing your services.

The most important aspect of maintenance pricing to remember is to price your services competitively without undercutting your value. The most effective way to do this is to work with a website builder and/or website hosting platform that provides you with built-in security benefits and uniform platform-wide updates that don’t require monitoring by your team.

This frees up your in-house website development team to build new sites, lowers overall website maintenance costs, improve user experience, and ensures more revenue for you and your customers.

So check out Duda, the only website builder offering all that, and much more.

Try Duda free for 14 days.