What Does a WordPress Maintenance Plan Include? (And What Should It Cost?)
A WordPress maintenance plan is a monthly service that keeps your site’s core software, theme and plugins updated, backs the site up off-site, and fixes problems when an update breaks something. Basic plans usually cost $50–$150 a month; plans that include developer time for fixes and small jobs cost more.
What a good maintenance plan includes
At minimum, a maintenance plan should cover the work that keeps a WordPress site safe and running:
- Updates to WordPress core, your theme and every plugin, on a regular schedule
- Off-site backups, so a server failure doesn’t take your backups with it
- Repair or rollback when an update breaks the site
- Someone to contact when something goes wrong
Higher-tier plans add time for small jobs such as plugin setup and layout fixes, plus hack cleanup and proactive suggestions.
What cheap plans usually leave out
Very low-cost plans often automate updates and stop there. The questions to ask: does a person check the site after updates? Who fixes it if an update breaks something, and is that included? Are backups stored somewhere other than your web server? Is malware cleanup included or billed separately?
How much should WordPress maintenance cost?
Pricing depends on how much human time is included. Update-and-backup plans sit at the lower end. Plans that include fixes, small jobs and security cleanup cost more because someone is doing real work each month.
For reference, our Maintain plan is $100/month (weekly updates, daily off-site backups, failed-update repair), and the Manage plan is $150/month, adding small technical jobs under 30 minutes, free hack cleanup, backup storage for covered sites and domain email setup.
Do you need a maintenance plan?
If your site brings in leads or sales and nobody on your team is comfortable updating plugins and fixing what breaks, yes. An out-of-date plugin is one of the most common ways WordPress sites get hacked, and cleaning up a hacked site usually costs more than months of maintenance.
Frequently asked questions
How often should WordPress be updated?
Check for updates at least weekly. Security releases should be applied as soon as they’re available.
Can a maintenance plan work with any host?
Usually, yes. Our care plans work with any host.
Want someone to handle it? See what’s included in the Manage plan.
