Two costs are unavoidable and both are small: hosting at $2 to $30 a month (Forbes, 2026) and a domain name at $10 to $25 a year (Elementor, 2026). Everything else on a maintenance invoice is labour, and how much of it you need was decided by what the site is made of. Plain files have almost nothing to keep current. A content system carrying a dozen plugins has a standing update list. Our plans are $49, $99 and $249, paid once, and none of them is a monthly plan.
Ask three companies what it costs to maintain a website and you get three numbers, none of them itemised. Here is the itemised version.
Only two parts of maintenance have a price you can look up
Hosting is the machine that stores your files and hands them to visitors. Forbes puts that at $2 to $30 a month for a small business. Your domain name is the address people type, and Elementor puts a .com at $10 to $25 a year.
At the top of both ranges you are under $400 a year. At the bottom, under $50. That is the whole unavoidable bill for a simple site, and it does not move whether you get four visitors a day or four hundred. On a builder you still pay for hosting, but it sits inside the subscription rather than on its own line.
The rest is labour, and what your site is built from decides how much you need
Three things get billed as maintenance beyond hosting and the domain:
- Security and software updates. Anything you install ships patches. Somebody has to apply them.
- Content changes. New opening hours, a price, a photo, a staff member who left two months ago and is still on the about page.
- Breakages. A contact form that quietly stopped sending. A layout that came apart after an update.
All of that is a person's hours, priced by whoever does the work. We are not printing a monthly retainer range here, because the ranges circulating online are published by the firms selling retainers. The one labour figure we will stand behind is HubSpot's: a freelancer or agency redesign runs $2,000 to $15,000. That is a project rather than a month, and a retainer is the same rate sliced thinner.
How many of those hours you need was settled before launch. A content system with plugins earns its keep when you publish constantly, and the price of it is a schedule: every plugin, the theme and the system itself ship updates. Skip them and the neglected one becomes the way in. Apply them and something occasionally breaks in a way that needs a person. None of that scales with your revenue.
A site that is plain files sits at the other end. No admin to log into, nothing to patch, nothing that expires. Maintenance is the hosting bill, the domain renewal, and a developer for an hour when you want something changed. It is why what we ship needs so little looking after. The cost that does eventually arrive is the redesign itself, and the usual advice is one every two to three years.
What each way of running a site costs to keep alive
| How the site runs | Recurring cost | Who applies updates | To change a word |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website builder | One platform subscription, hosting inside it | The platform | You, in their editor |
| Content system on your own hosting | $2–$30/month hosting, $10–$25/year domain, plus update time | You, or whoever you pay | You, in the admin |
| Plain files you own | $2–$30/month hosting, $10–$25/year domain | Nothing to patch | You, or any developer, in minutes |
| redesign.llc $249 plan | $249 once, we host it | Us | Five rounds of changes with us |
Prices exclude tax. Any local sales tax is added at checkout.
We are not a maintenance company, and here is what we do sell
There is no retainer here and no support contract. What exists is this:
- Free. Give us your web address and your site comes back rebuilt with your own words and photos. Change anything and put it live in one click, on a redesign.llc address. No card. Your own domain comes with the $249 plan.
- $49. Same day, yours to keep and host anywhere. No rounds of changes at that price.
- $99. Three rounds of changes with us, finished in 48 hours.
- $249. Up to three designs combined into one site, five rounds of changes, and we host it on your own domain, secure it and keep it running. Live in seven days.
The site is yours on every plan. What the higher prices buy is our time with you. Want a read on the site you have now first? audit.redesign.llc scores it for speed, accessibility and search in under a minute, no login.
I could put a maintenance price range on this page and it would rank. I do not have one I can source, and the ones I can find are published by the companies selling maintenance. Two of the costs are public and fixed. The third is decided by how many moving parts your site has, and buying fewer of them mostly ends the monthly question.
— Prajwal
When this isn't right for you
Go elsewhere if:
- You want somebody on call every month. That is a real service and we do not sell it. A local freelancer on a small retainer is the right hire.
- You need backups, uptime monitoring and patching for software you depend on. That is managed hosting.
- Your site runs a shop, a booking system or customer logins. Those are software, and software needs maintaining.
- Several people publish to the site every week. A content system is worth its upkeep for you.
If none of those describe you, your monthly cost is hosting and a domain, and the thing worth arguing about is what the site is built from.
Frequently asked questions
See your redesign first. Pay if you like it.
Give us your web address and get your site rebuilt, free, with your own content. Edit it yourself and publish it in one click.
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