Web Maintenance Services vs Doing It Yourself: Which Costs Less?
Written by Zahid Ali Yaftali, co-founder
Every website owner reaches this question sooner or later: should you pay for web maintenance services, or look after the site yourself? The tasks themselves are not complicated, and plenty of businesses do them in-house. The real question is what each option costs you in time, money and risk.
Here is a straight comparison, with the numbers you need to decide.
What web maintenance actually involves
Whoever does it, a business website needs the same work. These are rough time estimates for a typical small WordPress site with a dozen or two plugins.
| Task | How often | Rough time per month |
|---|---|---|
| Check backups ran and are stored off-site | Weekly | 15 to 20 minutes |
| Install updates (WordPress, theme, plugins) after a backup | Weekly to monthly | 30 to 60 minutes |
| Check the site after updating | After each update | 15 to 30 minutes |
| Review security scans and uptime alerts | Weekly | 15 minutes |
| Test every form and, for stores, the checkout | Monthly | 15 minutes |
| Speed check and broken links | Monthly | 15 to 30 minutes |
| Small content changes | As needed | 30 minutes or more |
| Total | about 2 to 4 hours |
That is a normal month. A month where an update breaks the layout, or a plugin conflicts with the theme, can take a full day to sort out if you are not used to it. The full task list, by week, month, quarter and year, is in our website maintenance checklist.
The cost of doing it yourself
DIY is not free; it is paid in time. A simple way to price it:
Hours per month x the value of an hour of your time = your real monthly cost.
At three hours a month and $40 an hour, DIY costs about $120 a month in time. If you are the owner and your hour is worth more, it costs more. Add to that:
- Tools. Backup, security and uptime tools have free tiers, but the more reliable versions often cost a few dollars a month each.
- The learning curve. The first few months take longer while you learn what to check.
- Interruptions. Maintenance gets pushed back whenever the business is busy, which is exactly when a broken form costs you most.
DIY works best when someone on the team enjoys this kind of work and has protected time for it.
The cost of web maintenance services
Market prices spread widely. Most small business plans land somewhere between about $50 and $500 a month, depending on what is included, with stores and large sites at the higher end. Our own care plans cost $19 or $39 a month, and one-off fixes are $15 an hour. Our guide to website maintenance services explains what each type of plan includes.
The cost nobody budgets for: when something goes wrong
The monthly comparison above misses the expensive part. Most of the cost of a neglected website comes from a handful of incidents:
- A hacked site. Clean-up, lost rankings while Google shows a warning, and the time spent finding out what happened. Restoring a clean backup is quick when one exists; rebuilding without one is not.
- A broken contact form. Every inquiry sent during those weeks is lost, and you never find out how many there were.
- An expired domain or SSL certificate. The site disappears or shows a security warning until someone notices.
- A bad update with no backup. The layout breaks and there is no simple way back.
A good maintenance plan does not make these impossible, but it makes them rare, and much faster to recover from.
Side by side
| Doing it yourself | Web maintenance services | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cash cost | Low (tools only) | $19 and up with us; often $50 to $500 elsewhere |
| Monthly time cost | About 2 to 4 hours | Minutes, to send change requests |
| Happens on schedule | Only if someone protects the time | Yes, it is the provider’s job |
| When an update breaks something | You fix it, or call someone urgently | Fixed as part of the plan |
| Backups tested | If you remember | Should be part of the service |
| Best for | Simple sites and teams with a technical person | Busy owners and sites that bring in leads or sales |
When DIY makes sense
- Your site is on Shopify, Wix or Squarespace, where the platform handles software updates.
- It is a simple site with few plugins and little traffic.
- Someone on your team is comfortable with WordPress and has a few hours each month set aside.
- You keep tested backups and know how to restore one.
When to hire web maintenance services
- Your website brings in inquiries, bookings or sales every week.
- It runs on WordPress or WooCommerce with many plugins.
- Nobody on your team has the time, or the person who used to do it has left.
- You have already had a scare: a hack, a broken form, an expired domain.
- You would rather spend those hours on customers.
The middle path
You do not have to choose all or nothing. Many businesses keep content changes in-house and hand the technical side to a provider: updates, backups, security and monitoring. That is exactly what our basic Care plan covers, at $19 a month. If you want us to make the content changes too, Care Plus adds up to 2 hours of them each month.
8 signs your website needs professional maintenance now
- You do not know when WordPress or your plugins were last updated.
- The dashboard shows a long list of pending updates.
- You are not sure where your backups are, or whether they work.
- Inquiries from the website have dropped and you do not know why.
- Pages load noticeably slower than they used to.
- Google Search Console shows new errors or security issues.
- Old staff or freelancers still have admin logins.
- Your domain, hosting or SSL renewal is tied to someone else’s card or email.
If two or more of these sound familiar, it is time to act. Our web maintenance services start with a check of your site, and we tell you what is urgent before we touch anything. Send us the link through the form below and we will look at it for free.
FAQs
1. Can I maintain my own website?
Yes, if someone on your team has the time and follows a checklist every week and month. The tasks are not hard, but they have to happen on schedule, and someone has to know how to fix a site when an update breaks it.
2. How many hours a month does website maintenance take?
For a typical small WordPress site, plan on roughly two to four hours a month for updates, backups, checks and small edits, plus more when something goes wrong. A Shopify or Wix site takes less.
3. Are web maintenance services worth the money?
For most small businesses, yes. A basic plan usually costs less than the hours it replaces, and it protects you from the expensive problems: hacked sites, lost inquiries and expired domains.
4. What is the biggest risk of DIY website maintenance?
Skipping it. DIY maintenance usually starts well and then slips when the business gets busy, and outdated plugins are one of the most common ways sites get hacked.
