Short answer: most UK website maintenance packages sit between £39 and £85 a month for a small business site, with agency retainers running to £280 or more. What you are paying for is updates, backups, security scanning and someone who answers when something breaks. The price gap between plans is usually support time, not technical ability.
Website maintenance packages are one of those things you buy once, forget about, and then squint at eighteen months later wondering what the £59 a month is actually doing.
Something I keep noticing when people come to me from another provider: they can tell me exactly what they pay, and not one thing they get for it. That is not their fault. The plans are often sold as a tier name and a number, and the detail sits in a PDF nobody reads twice.
So this is the plain version. Real published UK prices, what sits behind them, and how to tell whether the one you are on is fair.
What do website maintenance packages actually cost in the UK?
Rather than give you a vague range, here are three UK providers with prices published openly on their own websites, read on 12 September 2026. Prices move, so check before you rely on them.
| Provider | Entry plan | Mid plan | Top plan | VAT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Marketing Mouse | £39.99/mo | £69.99/mo | £299.99/mo | Not stated |
| SWS Web | £49/mo | £79/mo | £279/mo | Ex VAT |
| Semibold | From £45+VAT | From £60+VAT | From £85+VAT | Plus VAT |
For comparison, my own Website Care Plan is £39 a month.
Two things in that table matter more than the headline numbers.
The first is VAT. One of those three states prices ex VAT, one states plus VAT, and one does not say. On a £79 plan that is a £15.80 difference every month, which is £190 a year. Ask the question before you sign, not after the first invoice.
The second is that the jump from the entry plan to the top plan is rarely about better maintenance. Look at what actually changes: SWS Web moves from 30 minutes of support time to 60. The Marketing Mouse moves from no included support to one hour, then four, then eight. The updates and backups are much the same all the way up the ladder. You are buying someone’s time, not a better class of security.
What should be in a website maintenance package?
A maintenance package that is doing its job covers five things. If a plan is missing one of these, that is the question to ask, and the answer tells you a lot.
- Updates. WordPress core, plugins and themes, applied on a stated schedule rather than whenever someone remembers.
- Backups. Taken off the server, kept for a stated number of days, and restorable. Restorable is the word that matters.
- Security scanning. Something watching for malware and known vulnerabilities, with a named response if it finds one.
- Uptime monitoring. So the provider finds out the site is down before you do.
- A human. Someone who replies, and a stated amount of their time.
The updates line is the one people underrate, and the numbers behind it explain why. Patchstack’s State of WordPress Security in 2026 recorded 11,334 new vulnerabilities across the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, up 42% on the year before. Of those, 91% were in plugins and 9% in themes. Only six were in WordPress core itself.
That last figure is the useful one. WordPress is not the weak point. The eleven plugins doing your contact form, your cookie banner and your booking calendar are. Those are exactly what a maintenance plan is for, and exactly what nobody updates on their own site for nine months running.
The same report found that 46% of those vulnerabilities had no patch available at the time they were disclosed. So a plan that only promises to apply updates is promising less than it sounds. What you want alongside it is a firewall or scanning layer covering the window where the fix does not exist yet.
Is a website maintenance package worth it for a small business?
Honestly, not always, and I would rather say so.
If your site is three static pages with no forms, no bookings and no shop, and you are comfortable logging in monthly to run updates and take a backup, you can look after it yourself. Plenty of people do. There is no point paying £50 a month for reassurance you do not need.
The government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025 found that 32% of UK businesses have a policy to apply software security updates within 14 days. Just under a third. The other two thirds are not reckless, they are busy, and that is the honest reason most small sites drift.
I know that shape of week from my own. There was a day last month where admin took an hour and a half, then I had one genuinely good client meeting, and by the time I was ready to start the actual work the day had closed. Nothing had gone wrong. The day had simply been used up running the business rather than doing the work.
Another day the same month was full before it started. Ordinary commitments through the middle of it, nothing dramatic, and I sat down to client work at five o’clock with the evening having to absorb a full day’s worth. If you run a practice single-handed you will recognise both of those days, and you will recognise which job gets dropped. It is never the client in front of you. It is the admin task with no deadline attached, which is precisely what updating your plugins is.
That is the actual argument for a maintenance package. Not fear, and not a figure about what a hacked site costs you. It is that the job is small, dull, easy to defer, and the consequences of deferring it arrive all at once, usually at the worst moment.
How to tell whether you are paying a fair price
Four questions. You can send them in an email to your current provider this afternoon and the replies will tell you where you stand.
- How often are updates applied, and who checks the site afterwards? “Automatically” on its own is not a great answer. Automatic updates break things quietly, and the checking is the part you are paying for.
- Where are backups stored, how far back do they go, and have you ever restored one? The NCSC’s guidance on backups is blunt about this: knowing how to restore is the point of having one. A backup nobody has tested is a hope.
- How much support time is included, and what happens when I use it up? This is where the price differences actually live, so get it in writing.
- Is that price plus VAT? Ask it plainly.
If the answers come back clear and quick, you are probably on a reasonable plan, whatever it costs. If they come back vague, the price is not really the problem.
Where maintenance sits in a monthly website plan
One thing that muddies the comparison: a lot of what gets sold as a maintenance package is also bundled into monthly website plans, and then it is invisible.
My own Pay Monthly plans start at £59 a month and include the site being built, hosted and maintained, so the maintenance is in there rather than sitting alongside as a second bill. That is worth checking on any plan you are comparing, because a £59 plan that includes maintenance and a £39 maintenance plan on top of separate hosting are not the same purchase at all.
I look after 33 sites on maintenance at the time of writing. The pattern across them is dull and consistent: the sites that cause trouble are the ones that went a long stretch untouched, and the fix is almost never clever. It is just regular, boring attendance.
For what it is worth, RTWD was named Best Web Design Service in Somerset at the Southern Enterprise Awards in 2021. The work behind that is mostly this: turning up every week and updating things nobody sees.
Frequently asked questions
How much does website maintenance cost per month in the UK?
For a small business website, most UK maintenance packages sit between £39 and £85 a month. Checked on 12 September 2026, The Marketing Mouse published plans at £39.99, £69.99, £189.99 and £299.99 a month paid quarterly; SWS Web published £49, £79 and £279 a month ex VAT; and Semibold published plans from £45+VAT, £60+VAT and £85+VAT. Agency retainers with larger blocks of included hours run higher again. The entry plans across providers cover broadly the same ground, which is updates, backups, security scanning and monitoring. What rises as you move up the tiers is the amount of support time included, not the standard of the maintenance itself. Always confirm whether a quoted price includes VAT, since providers differ and the difference on a £79 plan is around £190 a year.
What is included in a website maintenance package?
A maintenance package should cover five things. WordPress core, plugin and theme updates applied on a stated schedule. Backups stored away from the server, kept for a stated period, and tested so they can actually be restored. Security scanning for malware and known vulnerabilities. Uptime monitoring, so your provider notices an outage before you do. And a named amount of human support time for the small changes and questions that come up. Plans vary most on that last item. Some entry plans include no support time at all and charge hourly on top, while mid-tier plans typically include between 30 minutes and an hour a month. Ask what happens when the included time runs out, because that is the part most likely to produce a surprise invoice.
Do I really need a maintenance plan for a small website?
Not necessarily. If your website is a few static pages with no forms, no booking system and no online payments, and you are comfortable logging in each month to run updates and take a backup, you can reasonably look after it yourself. There is no sense paying for reassurance you do not need. A plan earns its money when the site does a job for your business, when plugins are doing real work like contact forms or bookings, or when you know from experience that a monthly admin task with no deadline is the one that slips. The UK Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025 found only 32% of businesses have a policy to apply security updates within 14 days, which suggests most sites drift not through carelessness but through ordinary busyness.
Why are WordPress plugins the main security risk?
Because that is where nearly all the vulnerabilities are. Patchstack’s State of WordPress Security in 2026 recorded 11,334 new vulnerabilities across the WordPress ecosystem during 2025, a 42% increase on the previous year. Of those, 91% were found in plugins and 9% in themes, while WordPress core itself accounted for just six. So the risk on a typical small business site is not WordPress, it is the eleven or twelve plugins running the contact form, the cookie banner, the gallery and the booking calendar. The same report found 46% of those vulnerabilities had no patch available when they were publicly disclosed, which is why a good maintenance plan pairs regular updating with a firewall or scanning layer to cover the gap.
Is website maintenance included in a monthly website plan?
Often, yes, and it is worth checking carefully when you compare prices. Monthly website plans usually bundle hosting, maintenance and the build itself into one figure, so there is no separate maintenance bill. My own Pay Monthly plans start at £59 a month and work this way. That makes a direct price comparison misleading unless you add everything up. A £39 maintenance plan sitting on top of separate hosting at £10 or £15 a month is not cheaper than a £59 plan that includes hosting, maintenance and the site itself. Before comparing two quotes, write down everything each one covers, including hosting, domain, SSL, updates, backups and support time, and compare the totals rather than the headline numbers.
What should I ask my current provider about my plan?
Four questions will tell you almost everything. How often are updates applied, and who checks the site afterwards, since automatic updates can break things quietly and the checking is what you are paying for. Where are backups stored, how far back do they go, and has anyone ever tested a restore. How much support time is included each month, and what happens when it runs out. And is the price quoted plus VAT. If those answers come back clearly and quickly, you are likely on a fair plan whatever the number is. If they come back vague or take a fortnight, the price is not the real issue and it may be worth speaking to someone else.
If you would rather just ask someone
If you are not sure whether your current plan is fair, or whether you need one at all, feel free to get in touch. I am happy to take a look at what you are paying for and tell you honestly if it stacks up, including if the answer is that you are fine as you are.
You can see what my own Website Care Plan covers at £39 a month, or how maintenance is folded into the Pay Monthly plans from £59. If you would rather talk it through, book a free 30-minute chat. No pressure, no pitch.
Related reading: What is a website maintenance plan, and do you actually need one? and What is included in a pay monthly website package.