How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost Per Month?

Published Canadian price lists put website maintenance at about $50 a month plus hosting for basic upkeep, up to around $650 a month for a full agency retainer, and complex or ecommerce sites can pay more. A Canadian web host lists WordPress care plans at $49 to $250 a month plus hosting, and a Toronto agency's 2026 guide puts retainers with set hours and response times at CAD 130 to 650. Where you land depends on your platform, how complex the site is, and above all how often you need changes made.

This guide is for owners and marketing leads who are budgeting a new site, or looking at a monthly invoice and wondering whether it is fair. I run a studio that sells a monthly platform, so I will tell you what we charge, and I will also tell you when you need far less.

What does website maintenance include?

"Maintenance" covers two different jobs, and most confusion about price comes from mixing them up.

Upkeep keeps the site safe and online:

• Hosting, the domain and the security certificate
• Software, theme and plugin updates
• Security monitoring and malware scanning
• Backups and the ability to restore them
• Uptime monitoring, so someone knows when the site goes down

Changes keep the site useful:

• Updating copy, prices, team members and photos
• Adding pages, landing pages and seasonal campaigns
• Fixing what breaks when a form, integration or third party tool changes

Upkeep is predictable and fairly cheap. Changes are where the real cost of a website lives, because every change you cannot make yourself is a request, a wait and an invoice. When you compare quotes, ask each provider to split the two.

What does website maintenance cost in Canada?

Here is what two current Canadian providers publish. Treat them as reference points, not market averages.

Over a year, that is roughly $830 for a basic care plan with hosting to $7,800 for a full retainer, before any larger projects.

The Kolonell figures are retainers that include a number of hours for changes and a promised response time. That is why they start higher than care plans that only cover upkeep.

Why do maintenance costs vary so much?

Five things move the number.

1. Platform. All in one platforms such as Shopify, Squarespace, Webflow and Framer handle hosting, security and software updates inside their subscription. A self hosted WordPress site leaves those jobs to you or to whoever you pay.
2. Plugins and integrations. Every plugin, app and connection to a CRM or booking tool is something that can break or need an update.
3. Ecommerce. Online stores handle payments and customer data, so they need more monitoring and faster fixes.
4. Response time. Kolonell's Toronto tiers run from a 72 business hour response on the cheapest plan to 4 hours, seven days a week, on the most expensive.
5. How often you change things. A site that changes weekly needs a different plan from one that changes twice a year.

Is WordPress more expensive to maintain?

Often, yes, because of its plugins. Patchstack, a WordPress security company, counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, and 91% of them were in plugins. WordPress can still be the right choice. Just budget for someone to update its plugins every month.

Three ways to pay for website maintenance

1. Do it yourself, plus hosting. You pay for hosting or a platform plan and handle updates and changes in house. This suits simple sites on all in one platforms, and teams with someone who enjoys the work. The cost is mostly your time.

2. A maintenance retainer. An agency or freelancer handles upkeep and a set number of hours of changes each month. This suits businesses that change their site regularly and want a person accountable. Read the plan carefully: what happens to unused hours, and what counts as "out of scope"?

3. A managed platform. Hosting, security and updates are bundled, and your team makes routine changes through the platform itself. This suits teams who want to update the site often without filing a ticket every time.

There is no single right answer. A cheap plan that leaves your team unable to change anything can cost more over a year than a pricier one that lets them do it themselves.

What maintenance costs at Embark

We do not sell hosting or maintenance on its own. Our Signature Websites are hosted on Oryn, the AI platform we built, and a Custom Website System can run on it when the build is compatible. You can see the details on our Oryn page.

• The Oryn plan: from $199 USD a month billed yearly ($2,388 a year), or $250 USD monthly, at the founding rate for 25 founding seats, kept for as long as you stay subscribed. Regular pricing after the founding seats is $299 a month, or $249 a month billed yearly ($2,990 a year). It includes hosting on your domain, and lets your team update copy, replace images and create pages by asking in plain English, with responsive and publishing checks on every change. It also works with compatible existing websites, not only ones we build.
• Oryn + Care: $799 USD a month, with the Oryn plan included. Embark makes up to 3 hours of changes for you each month, on a 12 month term. Hours do not roll over, and larger projects are scoped separately.

If your site is simple and rarely changes, you probably need less than either of these. A basic hosting plan and an hour of help when something comes up may be all you need, and that is a perfectly sensible choice.

How to budget for website maintenance

1. List what changes and how often. Prices, offers, team, events, seasonal pages. This tells you whether you need hours for changes or only upkeep.
2. Name the person. Decide who makes changes: someone on your team, a freelancer, an agency, or a platform your team can use.
3. Add a year of running costs to the build price. I made the same point in what a small business website costs in Canada: the build is only the first bill.
4. Ask before you sign. "What does the site cost to run after launch, and who updates it?" is one of the questions in my guide to hiring a web design agency. Get the answer in writing.
5. Plan the timing. If you are building something new, the running costs start at launch, so factor in how long the build will take.

Not sure what your current site needs? Our free website audit reviews performance, technical health and accessibility and sends you a recorded walkthrough, usually within 5 business days. It is a useful baseline before you commit to any monthly plan.

Sources

• Ambrite Web Services, How Much Does WordPress Maintenance Really Cost? (26 May 2026)
• Kolonell, Website maintenance retainer cost in Toronto, 2026 (5 September 2026)
• Patchstack, State of WordPress Security in 2026
• Embark Studio, Oryn and FAQ