Website maintenance — what it covers, what it costs and whether you need it

A website isn’t like a flyer you print once. It’s software running on a server, relying on a domain and certificates with expiry dates and — with systems like WordPress — made up of dozens of components that regularly receive security fixes. Someone has to keep an eye on all of that. The only question is whether it’s you or someone on your behalf.

In short: website maintenance usually means hosting, domain, SSL, updates, backups, monitoring and small content changes. On the market it typically costs €25–70 net per month. With us the basic plan is €35 net/month and Care Plus €69 net/month. Before choosing a vendor, what matters most is how many hours of changes you get and whose name the domain is registered under.

What website maintenance should include

• Hosting — the server your site runs on. Good hosting means speed, stability and servers located close to your customers.
• Domain and SSL certificate — renewed automatically before they expire. An expired domain means a website and email that stop working overnight.
• Updates — of the system, plugins and libraries. Most break-ins on small sites aren’t targeted attacks but bots scanning for known, unpatched vulnerabilities.
• Backups — regular, and stored off the website’s server. A backup sitting on the same server won’t help when that server fails.
• Monitoring — an alert when the site stops responding, before a customer notices.
• Small content changes — new photos, a price list, opening hours, a holiday notice.

What it costs — the options compared

Option	Monthly cost (net)	Who it’s for
Do it yourself	approx. €7–21 (hosting, domain, SSL)	technical people who will handle updates and backups themselves
Site care	€35	company sites and business cards: hosting, updates, backups, monitoring, up to 1 h of changes
Care Plus	€69	businesses that change things often, and online stores: up to 3 h of changes, priority response
Local visibility	€160 (add-on)	businesses that want to grow on Google: monthly content, Google Business Profile, report

Why €7–21 when you do it yourself? Popular providers lure you in with a first-year price, but what counts is the renewal. At home.pl, one of Poland’s biggest hosts, a year of the cheapest hosting after the promotion is about €160 net, a .pl domain renewal about €42, and the SSL certificate for that plan is paid separately — over €230 net a year in total, or roughly €20 a month. At nazwa.pl, hosting plus a .pl domain after the promotion come to about €160 net a year (around €13 a month). You only get down to a few euros a month with cheaper providers you find and compare yourself. We checked these prices in October 2026 — before choosing a provider, always look at the second-year price, not the first.

You’ll always find the current plans on our website care page.

When you can do without maintenance

• the site is static (no CMS or plugins), and you can renew the domain and hosting yourself,
• the content changes once a year or less,
• you have a technical person in-house who looks after backups and updates.

We build our sites with modern technology that doesn’t need weekly plugin updates, so the risk is lower than with a typical WordPress site. We covered the differences between these approaches in WordPress or a custom website.

When maintenance pays off

• you run an online store — every hour of downtime means lost orders,
• the site runs on WordPress or another CMS with plugins,
• you regularly change prices, your offer or photos, or publish news,
• you don’t want to remember domain and certificate renewal dates, or hunt for “someone who does websites” when something breaks.

What to watch out for when choosing a vendor

1. Whose name is the domain registered under? It should always be yours or your company’s.
2. Will I get access and the site’s files? If you ever switch companies, you need to be able to take the site with you.
3. How many hours of changes are included, and what does each extra one cost? “Small changes” with no hour limit are a common source of misunderstandings.
4. Where and how often are backups made? And has the vendor ever actually checked that the site can be restored from them?
5. How fast do they respond to an outage? Response time should be written down, not promised verbally.

If your website has been left without care and you don’t even know where it’s hosted or who has the logins, get in touch — we’ll start with a review and tell you plainly what needs doing. And if you’re only planning a site and want the build and the care in one monthly payment, see how a website on subscription works.