Website maintenance in Canada usually costs $100 to $800 or more a month for a professional care plan, or an hourly rate if you only call someone when something breaks. Doing it yourself costs little beyond hosting and software renewals, but takes regular time and some technical comfort. Prices here are in Canadian dollars, before GST/HST.
What you pay depends mostly on what the site does. A five-page brochure site needs far less attention than an online store or a site with bookings, logins and integrations. This guide covers the three ways to handle maintenance, what each price level should include, and what it costs when nobody is looking after the site.
Website maintenance costs at a glance
- Do it yourself: hosting, domain and software renewals only, plus a few hours a month of your time
- Hourly freelancer: commonly around $75 to $150 an hour, billed per task, with no monitoring between calls
- Basic care plan: about $100 to $250 a month for updates, backups, monitoring and a small amount of edit time
- Business care plan: about $250 to $500 a month, adding more edit time, performance and accessibility checks, and faster response
- Priority or e-commerce plan: about $500 to $800 or more a month for stores, complex sites and businesses that cannot afford downtime
These are typical ranges in the Canadian small business market. Plans with similar names can include very different work, so compare the details, not the label.
What website maintenance actually involves
A website is software. A WordPress site, for example, combines the core software, a theme and a set of plugins, each updated on its own schedule. Maintenance means keeping all of that current and confirming the site still works afterwards. The regular tasks are:
- Applying core, theme and plugin updates, and testing the site after each round
- Taking automatic off-site backups and checking that they can actually be restored
- Monitoring uptime, security and malware, and responding when something trips
- Renewing the domain, hosting and paid software licences on time
- Confirming the SSL certificate renews and the site loads over HTTPS
- Testing contact and quote forms so leads are not silently lost
- Watching page speed and fixing what slows it down
- Checking new content for accessibility problems
- Making small content edits: hours, staff, prices, promotions
Option 1: Do it yourself
If your site runs on Squarespace, Wix or Shopify, the platform handles software updates, hosting and SSL as part of the subscription. You still own the content, the forms, the apps you install and accessibility, but the technical load is lighter.
A self-hosted site such as WordPress is different. You are responsible for updates, backups and security. The cash cost is small: hosting, a .ca domain, and renewals for premium plugins. The real cost is a few hours a month, and the risk that an update breaks the site on a day you cannot fix it.
DIY works well for owners who enjoy the technical side and have a simple site. It works poorly when updates get postponed for months, which is how most small business sites end up compromised.
Option 2: An hourly freelancer
Some owners keep a developer on call and pay by the hour when something comes up. Canadian freelance rates for this kind of work commonly fall somewhere around $75 to $150 an hour, depending on experience and location. Ask for the rate, the minimum billing increment and the expected response time in writing.
Hourly works if your site rarely changes and you are happy to handle updates yourself. The gap is that nobody is watching between calls. You find out about a broken form or a hacked plugin when a customer tells you, and emergency work is usually billed at a higher rate.
Option 3: A monthly care plan
A care plan is a fixed monthly fee for a set list of work, so the site is updated, backed up and monitored on a schedule rather than when you remember. Here is what to expect at each level.
Basic: about $100 to $250 a month
- Monthly or more frequent software updates with a post-update check
- Daily or weekly off-site backups
- Uptime and security monitoring
- Domain, SSL and licence renewal tracking
- Around 30 minutes to an hour of small edits a month
- A short monthly report
Suits a brochure site for a trade, clinic or professional office that changes a few times a year.
Business: about $250 to $500 a month
- Everything in Basic
- One to three hours of content changes or small improvements
- Page speed checks and fixes
- Accessibility spot checks on new content against WCAG 2.0 Level AA
- Form and lead tracking checks
- Faster response times for problems
Suits a business where the website is a main source of leads and content changes monthly.
Priority or e-commerce: about $500 to $800 or more a month
- Everything in Business
- More development time each month for new features and landing pages
- Staging site testing before updates go live
- Checkout, payment and integration monitoring for online stores
- Same-day response for critical issues
- Quarterly reviews of analytics, search performance and priorities
Suits online stores, membership sites and anything where an hour of downtime costs real money. See Shane's website maintenance plans for how these levels are set up in practice.
The hidden cost of no maintenance
Skipping maintenance does not save money. It moves the cost to a worse moment.
- Security breaches. Out-of-date plugins are a common way into small business sites. Cleaning up malware, restoring from backup and getting off blocklists costs far more than a year of updates.
- Broken plugins and forms. One incompatible update can stop a quote form from sending. Many owners only notice when leads dry up.
- Expired SSL certificates. Free certificates from Let's Encrypt are valid for 90 days and rely on automatic renewal. When renewal fails, browsers show visitors a security warning instead of your site.
- Accessibility drift. A site that met WCAG 2.0 Level AA at launch can fall out of compliance as new pages, images and PDFs are added without alt text or proper structure. Ontario businesses and non-profits with 50 or more employees are required to meet that standard under the AODA.
- Privacy and consent gaps. New tracking tools and forms can collect personal information without the notices that Canadian privacy law expects.
- Lapsed domains. A missed renewal can take the site and email offline, and in the worst case let someone else register the name.
- Slow decline in search. Slow pages, broken links and stale content gradually cost rankings.
If you are not sure where your site stands now, the free website check is a quick way to spot common problems before they turn into emergencies.
How to choose a website maintenance plan
Use this checklist when comparing plans:
- Is the list of included tasks written down, with how often each happens?
- Are backups stored off the server, and when were they last test-restored?
- Are updates tested afterwards, ideally on a staging copy first?
- How many hours of edits are included, and do unused hours roll over?
- What is the response time for an outage or a hack, and is cleanup included?
- Is accessibility checked as content changes, or only at launch?
- Who holds the admin, hosting and domain logins? You should always have them.
- What is the notice period to cancel, and will you get a full handover?
- Is GST/HST included in the monthly price or added on?
Match the plan to the site. A brochure site does not need same-day development support, and an online store should not be on a plan with weekly backups and no checkout monitoring.
What maintenance plans usually do not cover
Read the exclusions as carefully as the inclusions. Most care plans do not cover:
- New features, new page templates or a redesign beyond the included hours
- Writing new content, photography or translation
- Third-party costs such as premium plugin licences, paid apps, booking software or email marketing
- Hosting, unless the plan says it is included
- Problems caused by changes someone else made outside the plan
None of that is unreasonable, but it should be written down so a bill never comes as a surprise. Ask what extra work costs per hour under the plan, and whether unused hours can be put toward a larger task.
When a redesign makes more sense
Sometimes the maintenance bill is high because the site is old, built on abandoned plugins or a theme nobody supports. If every update breaks something, the money may be better spent on a website redesign that starts clean and costs less to maintain afterwards.
Questions people ask
How much does website maintenance cost per month in Canada?
Most professional care plans for Canadian small businesses fall between about $100 and $800 a month before tax. Basic plans covering updates, backups and monitoring sit at the low end. Plans with several hours of development time, staging tests and e-commerce monitoring sit at the high end. Doing it yourself costs less in cash but takes your time.
Is website maintenance worth paying for?
For a site that brings in leads or sales, usually yes. The cost of a hacked site, a broken quote form or an expired certificate, measured in cleanup work and lost customers, is typically higher than a year of basic maintenance. For a simple builder site that rarely changes, the platform handles much of the technical work and a plan may not be necessary.
What should a website maintenance plan include?
At minimum: regular software updates with testing afterwards, off-site backups that are checked, uptime and security monitoring, renewal tracking for the domain, SSL and licences, and a small amount of time for edits. Better plans add performance and accessibility checks, staging tests, faster response times and a monthly report on what was done.
Do Shopify, Wix and Squarespace sites need maintenance?
Less than a self-hosted site, because the platform updates its own software, hosting and SSL. You are still responsible for content, the apps and integrations you add, form testing, accessibility of what you publish and privacy notices. Many store owners pay for a smaller plan covering app updates, content changes and checkout testing.
Can I cancel a website care plan?
Most plans run month to month or with a short notice period, but check the agreement. Before you sign, confirm you will keep the admin, hosting and domain logins and receive a full backup on cancellation. A plan that holds your accounts hostage is a red flag, whatever the price.