Website maintenance packages should be priced by what can break, and that is different for each platform. A WordPress content site breaks on updates and PHP changes, and a fair price is about $99 a month. A WooCommerce store breaks at the checkout, where the money is, and needs a test order after every relevant update, so a fair price is about $299. A Shopify store has no core or server updates to manage, but its apps, theme and checkout still change under you, and ecommerce website maintenance on Shopify sits at the same $299 because the failure that matters, an order that does not complete, is the same. The table below is the comparison; the sections after it explain each row.
Website maintenance packages by site type
| Site type | What breaks | What must be watched | Fair monthly price |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress content or lead-generation site | Plugin conflicts after updates, theme layouts after core releases, forms that stop sending, PHP end-of-life upgrades forced by the host | Uptime, file changes and malware, form deliverability, backup integrity, PHP version | $99 (our Care plan) |
| WooCommerce store | Everything above, plus checkout and payment gateway plugins after updates, order storage changes, shipping and tax extensions, cart behavior under caching | Everything above, plus a completed test order after checkout-related updates, failed orders, payment failures, checkout speed | $299 (our Commerce plan) |
| Shopify store | App updates that change theme code, theme version upgrades, apps that stop being maintained, checkout and platform changes you did not schedule | Completed test orders after app or theme changes, failed orders, app fees against what each app still does, theme customizations surviving upgrades | $299 (our Commerce plan) |
| Any site that changes every month | Changes made without a staging environment, performance drift as content and plugins accumulate | Everything for its type, plus a monthly performance check and a staging copy for every change | $599 (our Scale plan) |
All four are published on our maintenance plans page. They are billed monthly in US dollars, unused hours roll over one month, and any of them can be cancelled at any time. Agencies with five or more sites pay from $79 per site with white-label reporting.
WordPress: the failures are routine and the cost is low
A WordPress site that does not take payments fails in predictable ways. Plugins update weekly and WordPress ships several core releases a year, so a conflict between a plugin and a new core version is not an unusual event, it is a scheduled one. PHP versions reach end of life on a published timetable and hosts move sites to a newer version whether the theme is ready or not. Forms are the quiet failure: a change to the mail plugin or the host's mail configuration and the enquiries stop with no error on screen.
None of that is expensive to prevent. Tested updates, daily backups on a different provider from the host, uptime and security monitoring, and a person who submits the contact form once a month cover nearly all of it. That is why the Care plan is $99 and includes 30 minutes of changes: the proactive work is systematized across many sites, so the price of one site's share is small.
WooCommerce: ecommerce website maintenance is about the checkout
A store fails where the money moves, and a store that is up but not taking orders passes every uptime check. Two platform changes made this worse for older stores. High-Performance Order Storage became the default for new stores in WooCommerce 8.2, and the block-based checkout became the default in 8.3, while most stores built before then still run the classic shortcode checkout. Extensions written for one path and updated for the other can stop an order without an error you would notice. Cart fragments fire on every page load, page caching cannot cache the cart, checkout or account pages, and a caching change that looks harmless on the homepage can serve one customer another's cart.
So ecommerce website maintenance on WooCommerce has one non-negotiable inclusion: a completed test order, through the real gateway in test mode or a low-value live order, after every update that touches checkout, payments, shipping or tax. The Commerce plan does that, monitors failed orders and payment failures, includes 2 hours of changes and a priority response. Anything beyond maintenance, a new checkout field, a pricing rule, an integration, is project work through our WooCommerce development service, quoted separately against a written scope.
Shopify: fewer failures, less control, ongoing fees
Shopify is a hosted platform, so there is no core to update, no PHP version to track and no server to back up. That removes about half of the WordPress list. What remains is the app layer and the theme. Apps inject code into the theme and update on their own schedule; an app that is abandoned by its developer keeps running until a platform change breaks it. Theme upgrades can drop customizations made to the previous version. Shopify also charges app fees the way BigCommerce and other hosted platforms do, so part of maintaining a Shopify store is reviewing each month which apps are still earning their fee and which have been replaced by a platform feature.
The checkout risk is the same as WooCommerce, which is why the Commerce plan covers Shopify stores at the same price: a test order after app or theme changes, and monitoring of failed orders. Store owners who reach the point where the app fees and the limits on customization outweigh the convenience sometimes move; that is a Shopify to WooCommerce migration, from $2,500, and the one thing that cannot come across is customer passwords, because Shopify does not export them. It is a project, not a maintenance task, and the store should be stable on a plan before it starts.
What every package must include, whatever the platform
- Testing after changes. Load the pages that matter, submit the forms, complete an order. Applying updates without checking is a script, not a service.
- Backups the provider does not control. Off-site for WordPress and WooCommerce. For Shopify, an export of products, customers and orders on a schedule, since the platform's own backup is not yours to restore.
- Monitoring with a person on the end. An alert that emails nobody is decoration.
- Hours for changes and a stated response time. Without hours, every request is a quote. Without a response time, "we will get to it" is the agreement.
- A monthly report that was written, not generated. What was updated, what was found, what was fixed, hours used.
How to choose between the three
Match the package to the failure you cannot afford. If a broken form costs you a week of enquiries, the WordPress package is enough and the price is low. If a broken checkout costs you every order until someone notices, buy the store package regardless of platform, and confirm the test order is in the inclusions in writing. If the site changes every week, pay for the staging environment, because the alternative is testing on the live site with customers watching. And if you are choosing a platform now, weigh the maintenance cost alongside the build cost: Shopify moves work from updates to app fees rather than removing it.
Common questions
Why does a store cost more to maintain than a content site?
Because the failures are expensive and quiet. A store that is up but not completing orders passes uptime checks, so someone has to place a test order after every checkout-related update and watch for failed payments. That is work a content site does not need, and the price difference is that work.
Does Shopify need a maintenance package at all?
Less than WordPress, but yes. Apps and themes update on their own schedule and can break the checkout or drop customizations, and nobody at Shopify is checking your store after they do. The package is the person who checks.
Can one package cover a WordPress site and a WooCommerce store?
Each site needs its own plan matched to its type, because the work is different. Agencies and owners with five or more sites pay from $79 per site on our Agency plan, with reporting under their own name.
What if the site is already broken?
That is a repair before it is maintenance. We diagnose a broken or hacked site for a fixed $300 and quote a fixed price for the fix, then move it onto a plan once it is stable.
Next step
Tell us which platform the site runs on and what it does for the business through the project form, and we will say which package fits and what it would include.
Want a senior developer to look at your site?
Tell us what you need. You get a written scope and a fixed price, usually within one business day.
