Most small businesses in Cumbria should expect to pay somewhere between £25 and £100 per month for website maintenance, or £30 to £60 per hour for pay-as-you-go support. Where you land in that range depends on what the site is built on, how large it is, and how much actually needs doing each month.
That is the short answer. The longer answer is that maintenance pricing is one of the murkiest areas of the web industry — plans are often vague about what is included, and plenty of businesses are paying monthly for work that is not happening. This post breaks down how maintenance is priced, what affects the cost, and how to tell whether a plan is worth paying for.
What does website maintenance actually cover?
Before talking about price, it is worth being clear about what you are paying for. Proper maintenance typically covers:
- CMS, plugin, and theme updates
- security monitoring and hardening
- backups, and checking those backups actually restore
- fixing bugs, broken layouts, and broken forms
- speed and performance checks
- small content updates and changes
Not every plan includes all of these, and that is where a lot of the price difference comes from. A £25 per month plan that only runs automatic plugin updates is a very different service to a £100 per month plan that includes monitoring, backups, and a set amount of hands-on time.
Why maintenance prices vary
What the site is built on
This is the biggest factor. A WordPress site with a page builder and fifteen plugins needs regular attention — every plugin is a moving part that receives updates, and every update is a chance for something to break or a hole to appear. We covered what happens when that goes wrong in our post on how WordPress sites get hacked and what to do about it.
A static site built without a database-driven CMS has far fewer moving parts, so there is simply less to maintain. That difference shows up directly in the monthly cost.
The size and complexity of the site
A five-page brochure site takes less time to check, update, and back up than a thirty-page site with a booking system. More functionality means more things that can break and more time spent keeping them working.
How much changes each month
A site that needs regular content updates — new prices, new photos, seasonal offers — costs more to look after than one that stays largely the same. Some plans include an allowance of update time each month; others charge for content changes separately.
The three common pricing models
Pay-as-you-go — you pay an hourly rate when something needs doing, typically £30 to £60 per hour for a freelancer or small studio. Good for stable sites that rarely need attention. The risk is that nobody is watching the site between jobs, so problems are found late rather than prevented.
Monthly plan — a fixed fee, typically £25 to £100 per month for a small business site, covering updates, monitoring, backups, and usually some hands-on time. This is the right model for WordPress sites and any site a business genuinely depends on for enquiries.
Bundled with hosting — some providers roll maintenance into a hosting package. This can be good value, but read carefully what is actually included. “Maintenance” in a hosting bundle sometimes means little more than the server being kept online — which is hosting, not maintenance.
Maintenance is not the same as hosting
This catches a lot of business owners out. Hosting keeps your website live and reachable. Maintenance keeps the website itself healthy. They are separate jobs, usually separate costs, and paying for one does not mean you are getting the other.
If you are unsure what your current hosting actually includes, it is worth checking — our hosting and business email support page covers what a solid setup looks like.
What to watch out for
Paying for nothing — the most common problem. A monthly fee has been going out for years, but nobody can say when the site was last updated or whether a backup exists. Ask for a record of what was done last month. A good provider can answer immediately.
Vague plan descriptions — “we keep your site up to date and secure” is not a specification. What gets updated, how often, and what happens when something breaks should all be written down.
No backups, or untested ones — a backup that has never been test-restored is a hope, not a backup. Ask where backups are stored and when a restore was last tested.
Long contracts — maintenance should earn its keep month by month. Be cautious of anything that locks you in for twelve months before you have seen how the service works.
Paying maintenance rates for a site too old to maintain — sometimes ongoing patching is money down the drain and a rebuild is the honest recommendation. If you are weighing that decision, our breakdown of what a new website should actually cost in Cumbria covers the realistic numbers.
The honest answer on price
For a typical small business site in Cumbria:
- A static or lightweight site — £25 to £50 per month, or pay-as-you-go if it rarely changes
- A standard WordPress site — £50 to £100 per month for proper updates, monitoring, backups, and some hands-on time
- A larger or more complex site — £100+ per month, justified by genuine functionality rather than provider overhead
The right question is not “how cheap can maintenance be?” — it is “what does it cost to make sure my website is never the reason I lose an enquiry?” A broken contact form that goes unnoticed for a month costs far more than a year of proper maintenance.
If you are paying for maintenance and not sure what you are getting, or your site has been left to look after itself, get in touch and we can review it and give you a straight answer.
1418 provides website maintenance and security services for businesses in Cumbria, including updates, monitoring, bug fixes, and hacked site recovery.