The build is the number everybody asks about. Maintenance is the number that decides whether the site is still working in three years. It is also the one that gets quoted in the widest range, from nothing to a thousand dollars a month, usually without saying what is inside it. Here is what website maintenance actually covers, what each level costs in Australia, and why the platform the site was built on sets the price more than anything else.
In Australia, website maintenance costs from about $10 a month for hosting alone, $50 to $150 a month for a care plan that keeps the site patched and monitored with a few content edits, and $200 to $1,000 a month when it includes new pages and posts every month. What moves it most is the platform: a WordPress site needs constant patching, a static site built on a framework like Astro has almost nothing to patch, so the same money buys content instead of upkeep.
What maintenance actually covers
The word gets used for two different jobs, and most of the confusion in pricing comes from mixing them.
Keeping the site up. Hosting, the SSL certificate, the domain renewal, DNS, backups, uptime monitoring, and security patching. None of it is visible when it is working. All of it is a crisis when it is not: an expired certificate shows every visitor a warning page, an unpatched plugin is how sites get hacked, and a lapsed domain can take the email down with it.
Keeping the site current. Content edits, a new staff photo, a price change, a new page for a new service, a blog post. This is the part that makes the site earn more over time rather than just survive.
A quote that says maintenance without saying which of those it means is not a quote yet.
What it costs, by level
- Do it yourself: $10 to $30 a month, plus your time. Shared hosting, a domain, and you log in to apply updates and fix what breaks. Realistic for a technical owner on a simple site. For everyone else the hidden cost is the Sunday afternoon the site went down and nobody knew until Tuesday.
- Hosting only: $10 to $50 a month. Managed hosting that keeps the server patched and takes backups, but nobody looks at the site itself. Plugins, themes and content are still yours to manage.
- A care plan: $50 to $150 a month. The most common product in Australia. Hosting, SSL, monitoring, software updates, backups, and a small number of content edits each month. The edit allowance is the line to read: some plans include two, some include none and charge hourly.
- A support retainer: $200 to $1,000 a month. Everything in a care plan plus content on a schedule: a new page a month, a blog post a month, a seasonal refresh. This is the level where the site grows rather than holds.
- Agency retainers: $1,000 and up. Campaign work, multiple posts a week, ongoing design. Right for a business with marketing as a department; overkill for one with marketing as a person.
Why the platform sets the price
A WordPress site is a stack of software that changes weekly. The core, the theme, and typically fifteen to thirty plugins each release updates, and each update can break something else. Most of a care plan's hours go on applying those updates and checking nothing fell over. That is real work and it is why WordPress care plans cluster at $80 to $150 a month even for a site nobody edits.
A static site is different. Built on a framework like Astro, the pages are generated once and served as plain files from a CDN. There is no database to patch, no plugin to update, no admin login to attack. What is left to maintain is the framework's own dependencies, checked and patched a few times a year, plus the domain, DNS and certificate. That is why the same $50 a month can cover hosting, monitoring, patching and content edits on a static site where on WordPress it would cover hosting alone. The difference between the two platforms is set out in WordPress versus Astro.
What we charge, so you have a real number
Newcastle Web Co runs three support plans, and any build can sit on any of them.Maintain is $50 a month: Cloudflare hosting, uptime monitoring, framework and security patching, domain, DNS and SSL, and up to two small content edits a month.Momentum is $200 a month and adds a suburb page and a blog post every month, a seasonal copy refresh each quarter and a new page each quarter. Scaleis $550 a month with four to six suburb pages and four posts a month on a 48-hour turnaround. Clients move between them from the next billing cycle. The full detail is on the hosting and maintenance page.
What it costs to not maintain a site
This is the number nobody quotes. An expired SSL certificate turns every visit into a browser warning, and most people leave. A hacked WordPress site takes days to clean and can be blacklisted by Google in the meantime. A domain that lapses because the renewal went to an old email address can be gone for good, along with the email. A site whose last update was 2022 tells a visitor the business might not still exist. None of those cost $50 a month. All of them cost more.
Questions to ask before you sign
- What is included, line by line, and what is charged extra?
- How many content edits a month, and what counts as one?
- Who owns the hosting account and the domain? It should be you.
- What happens if I stop paying? A good answer is that the site keeps working and you take the files.
- What platform is the site on, and how much of the fee is spent keeping that platform patched?
The last one is the question most people never ask, and it is the one that explains the price. If you are paying $120 a month to keep a five-page site alive, the money is going to the platform, not to you.
If you have a site and a maintenance quote and want to know whether the number is fair, send it through. We will tell you what it should be buying.
Written by Newcastle Web Co, web design & seo in Cameron Park NSW 2285. Last updated 6 September 2026.
