What should you actually pay for website support?
Nobody publishes their prices, so nobody knows what normal looks like. Here is a straight answer on what website support costs, what drives the price, and how to tell value from a bill.
Ask what website support costs and you tend to get one of three answers: a shrug, "it depends," or a proposal three weeks later with a number that seems to have appeared from nowhere.
The vagueness is not an accident. It benefits whoever is selling. If you do not know what normal looks like, you cannot tell whether you are being looked after or simply billed.
So here is a straight answer, including where we sit and why.
The three ways businesses handle it
Almost everyone lands in one of three camps. Each has a real cost, and two of them hide it.
Do it yourself
You or someone on the team keeps it ticking over between everything else.
The catch: it does not cost nothing. It costs your time, and your time is the most expensive thing in the business. It also means the site only ever gets touched when something is on fire.
Call someone when it breaks
Ad-hoc support. Something goes wrong, you find a developer, they fix it, you pay for the time.
The catch: you only ever repair, you never improve. And whoever you call has to relearn your site from scratch every single time, which you also pay for.
A monthly retainer
A team that knows your site, works to a monthly allocation, and improves it as well as maintaining it.
The catch: it is a real, visible cost every month. Which is precisely why people hesitate, even when it is the cheapest option overall.
Notice the pattern. The two "cheap" options are cheap because their cost is hidden, paid in your time and in the customers a neglected site quietly loses. The retainer looks expensive because it is the only one where the cost is honest and on the invoice.
So what are the actual numbers? Nobody publishes a rate card, so here is an honest ballpark of what you will come across. These are based on what this work typically costs, not on any formal survey, so treat them as a guide rather than a quote.
Roughly what you will see
- Ad-hoc, paid by the hour: usually somewhere around £50 to £150 an hour, depending on how senior the person is.
- Basic "keep it alive" maintenance: often £50 to £300 a month for updates, backups and the occasional fix.
- Support that also improves the site: commonly £500 to £3,000 a month, driven mostly by how many hours are genuinely set aside for you.
Those are ranges, not promises. Where a provider lands inside them is what the rest of this comes down to.
What actually drives the price
Website support is not priced by magic. It comes down to four things, and any honest provider will tell you exactly where they sit on each.
The four things you are paying for
- Hours. How much time is genuinely set aside for you each month. This is the single biggest driver, and the one most often left vague.
- Seniority. Whether experienced people actually touch your site, or whether it is handed to whoever is cheapest and free that week.
- Scope. Whether you are buying "keep it alive" or "keep making it better." These are very different products at very different prices.
- Responsiveness. How quickly you can get hold of someone, and how quickly things actually happen once you do.
The comparison that actually matters
"Is a retainer expensive?" is the wrong question. Expensive compared to what? Because the alternatives are not free, they just do not send you an invoice.
The most useful comparison is against the thing most owners consider instead: hiring someone.
Hiring a part-time person
- A salary, every month, regardless of workload
- Tax and statutory costs on top
- Holiday, sick leave, and no cover when they are off
- Equipment, software and licences
- Your time spent managing them
- One person's skillset, not a team's
- The risk and cost of them leaving
A support retainer
- One predictable monthly cost
- No employment tax or statutory burden
- No holiday gaps, no sick leave, always covered
- No equipment or software to buy
- No managing anyone
- Design, development and strategy in one place
- Month to month, so you can walk away
And then there is the comparison nobody makes: the cost of doing nothing. A neglected website is not a saving, it is a slow leak. 39% of people say they have walked away from a business because its website was poor or missing (DreamHost). Those customers do not appear on any invoice either.
The question is never whether website support is expensive. It is whether it is more expensive than the customers you are quietly losing.
What good value looks like
Value is not the lowest number. It is knowing exactly what you get, seeing it happen, and being able to leave if it stops being worth it. Whoever you use, hold them to this list.
Insist on all five
- You know exactly how many hours a month you are paying for
- You can see what was actually done with those hours, without asking
- The site improves over time, it does not just stay alive
- You can talk to the person doing the work, not an account manager relaying messages
- You are free to leave, month to month, with no penalty
Red flags worth watching for
If you see these, ask harder questions
- "We will look after it" with no hours, no scope, no detail
- A twelve month lock-in before they have proved anything
- No way to see what was done, so every month is a leap of faith
- "You have used up your hours" arriving as a surprise, after the fact, not before
Since we are asking for transparency, here is ours
It would be a bit rich to demand transparency and then hide our own numbers, so we publish them. Support starts at £1,500 a month for 18 hours, and goes up to 30 hours a month when a business wants the site actively growing rather than just maintained. Work outside the retainer is quoted at a clear hourly rate before anything starts. It is month to month, with no lock-in. You can see the full breakdown on our services page.
Is that the cheapest option available to you? No. It is not meant to be. It is built for businesses that want the website to actually get better, with senior people doing the work and a clear view of where every hour went. If all you need is someone to restart the server when it falls over, you should pay a lot less than this, and you should not sign a retainer.
That is the honest answer. The right price is the one where you can see exactly what you are getting, and it is worth more to the business than it costs.
Not sure what your site actually needs?
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Get your free health scoreFrequently asked questions
Is a monthly retainer worth it for a small business?
It depends on what your website is supposed to do. If it is a static business card that nobody visits, a retainer is overkill. If it is a genuine route to customers, then leaving it unmaintained is the expensive choice, not the safe one. The honest test: if your website stopped bringing in enquiries tomorrow, would you notice, and would it hurt?
What if I only need help occasionally?
Then pay hourly and do not sign up for a retainer. Ad-hoc support is the right answer for a site that genuinely just needs the occasional fix. The trade-off is that you only ever repair, never improve, and whoever you call has to relearn your site every time. A retainer only makes sense when you want the site to get better, not just stay alive.
Should I be locked into a long contract?
No. Be very wary of anyone who needs a twelve month commitment to look after a website. Good support keeps your business by doing good work, not by making it difficult to leave. Month to month is entirely workable, and it keeps the incentives pointing in the right direction.
How many hours a month does a small business website actually need?
For a site that is genuinely being looked after and improved, rather than just kept online, somewhere in the region of 15 to 30 hours a month is realistic. Below that you are firefighting. The exact number depends on how much the site matters to the business and how ambitious you are about what it should be doing.
Before you pay anyone, find out what you actually need.
Get a free website health score. We will tell you what is working, what is broken, and what genuinely needs attention, so you can spend on the right things instead of guessing. No call, no obligation.
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