Website management is the hardest service to compare offers on, "maintenance" can mean anything from automatic updates to genuine care with measurement and development. Here's what a retainer must include, what it costs with me, and how to tell whether you need it, or whether on-call fixes are enough.
Website management cost: 2026 pricing
Quick answer: website management with me starts at €200 a month. The price depends on how many edit hours you need each month and how critical the site is to your business.
| Plan | Price | Edit hours | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
Start |
€200/mo |
2 h a month |
a site that must run and stay safe: backups, updates, monitoring, small edits |
Growth |
€400/mo |
5 h a month |
a site that should develop: more edit hours, content changes, evaluation |
Premium |
from €800/mo |
15+ h a month |
business-critical sites and e-shops: priority, development, regular consulting |
No retainer |
€40/h |
as needed |
an occasional edit, billed in half-hour blocks |
Hosting, domain and SSL are included in all three plans. Management has a three-month minimum term. A new website is separate, starting at €800. The full scope of each plan is on the website management page.
The no-retainer alternative: regular edits cost €40/h, billed in half-hour blocks, a small change costs from €20, not a full hour. Urgent faults are handled through 24/7 IT help at €80/hour, minimum one hour, including nights and weekends. The budget is confirmed before paid work.
What monthly management must include
Compare any offer against this list, not just mine:
- Backups someone has actually restored. A backup nobody ever restored is just hoping. Ask the provider when they last ran a test restore.
- Updates with a post-deploy check. An automatic update without verification can take a site down just as well as no update.
- Uptime and speed monitoring. You should learn about an outage from your admin, not from a customer.
- Expiry watch, domain, certificate, integrations. Expiries are one specific cause that can be monitored.
- Edit hours, clearly stated how many and what happens to unused ones.
- A report of what was done. Not "all OK", but what changed, what was handled and what's recommended next.
If an offer can't answer points 1 and 6, it isn't management, it's a standing order.
Worked example: Monthly maintenance needs a status
illustrative example
| Date | Check | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 03 Oct | Update a staging copy | Planned |
| 04 Oct | Back up data + files | Planned |
| 05 Oct | Restore and test form | Not verified |
| Daily | Availability / incident contact | Verify configuration |
Mark a check verified only after a test with a saved result.
Response times: what to ask before signing
"We respond quickly" is not a response time. Ask for it in writing and separately for three situations, because each needs something different:
| Situation | What to ask | How I handle it |
|---|---|---|
| Routine request (text, price list, photo) | When you reply and when it will be done | Email within 24 h, small edits within 24 h as part of the retainer |
| Security patch | Who watches for vulnerabilities and how fast a fix is deployed | Security monitoring and immediate fixes in every plan |
| Website or e-shop outage | Who responds at night and at weekends, and at what price | 24/7 IT help at €80/hour, minimum one hour |
Watch the difference between a response and a resolution. "We're on it" within an hour is useless if the fix takes three days. For a business-critical e-shop, ask about both.
Backups: how often, how many and where
A backup is the foundation of management, but only if it meets three conditions:
- Frequency matching activity. The WordPress documentation recommends backing up smaller sites once a week and high-activity sites daily. An e-shop with orders needs a daily database backup.
- Several copies in different places. The US agency CISA recommends the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of important files, on two different types of storage, one stored off-site. A backup kept only on the same server as the website won't help when that server fails.
- Files and database. Backing up the website files does not automatically back up the database with content, orders and users. You need both.
Above all, a backup needs a test restore now and then. Until then you don't know whether it works. My plans run daily automatic backups with 30 days of history.
Why updates can't be left to autopilot
With WordPress, most of the risk sits in plugins. According to the Patchstack report, 11,334 new vulnerabilities were found in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025: 91% in plugins, 9% in themes and only 6 in WordPress core. For 46% of vulnerabilities, no fix was available in time for public disclosure.
At the same time, WordPress updates plugins and themes in the background only in special cases decided by its security team. Routine plugin updates are the manager's job: back up, update, check that the form, basket and payment work, and roll back if something breaks. The same applies to libraries and dependencies on Next.js and other framework sites.
Retainer, or on-call fixes?
The maths is simple. A one-off edit costs €40/h (30-minute minimum, i.e. €20); the Start plan is €200 a month with edits already included.
- A card-style site that hasn't changed in years and whose downtime doesn't hurt: may suit a scheduled occasional check and the emergency number for when something breaks are enough.
- A site that brings inquiries, or an e-shop: compare downtime impact, preventive scope and the price of care. Management can reduce risk, but does not guarantee uninterrupted operation or a return on investment.
- A site you want to develop: compare hours actually used and included preventive work. Start at €200 includes two edit hours; two standalone hours at €40 cost €80, so savings cannot be claimed without valuing the other services.
A decision aid from the other side: add up what the last year of fixes, outages and postponed changes cost you. Compare that figure with the annual cost and scope of a specific plan. The same package will not suit every website.
Worked example: Maintenance: prevention differs from repair
ORIGINAL EXAMPLE · FICTIONAL DATA
| Event | Planned care | One-off job |
|---|---|---|
| Restore backup | Agreed recurring test | Commission and run a test |
| New photograph | Uses agreed allowance | Separately approved scope |
| Outage | Agreed response time | Check availability and cause |
| New feature | Change request | New quote |
Response time is not a guarantee to fix every fault within it.
What a retainer usually doesn't include
Misunderstandings most often arise around what management doesn't cover. With me, these are ordered separately:
- a new website or redesign (a new website from €800, website redesign by scope),
- larger development beyond the plan's hours, such as a new feature or a connection to another system,
- domains other than .cz and .com (.eu and others for a fee),
- the media budget for ads; Premium includes PPC coordination, not payments to Google.
With any supplier, get in writing what happens to unused hours and how work beyond them is billed. Those two answers decide the real price more than the monthly figure.
Notice period and handover
Fair management has two qualities: you can end it, and you take the website with you when you do. With me the minimum term is 3 months; after that the contract runs monthly with a 30-day notice period, and on termination you get a full data export and the source code at no extra charge.
Before signing with anyone, check who the domain is registered to, who owns the hosting and the access to the admin, analytics and Search Console. What to check at handover is summarised in the website handover checklist.
What happens to a site without management
Without an assigned maintainer, updates, expiries or a broken form can be overlooked. That is a risk, not an inevitable sequence or automatic ranking loss. Repair cost depends on the fault, backups and support availability. For an outage, use the incident guide.
Frequently asked questions
How much does website management cost per month?
With me from €200 a month (Start: backups, updates, monitoring, small edits), €400 (Growth: more hours and development) and from €800 (Premium: business-critical sites). Management has a three-month minimum; a new website is separate.
What if I only need an occasional fix?
Then you don't need a retainer, I do one-off edits at €40/h, billed in half-hour blocks (€20 minimum), with no commitment. For a fault, there is 24/7 IT help at €80/hour, minimum one hour, including nights and weekends. Compare a retainer by its preventive scope, support value and edits actually needed.
Is hosting included in management?
The listed management plans include hosting, a domain and SSL within the agreed scope. I confirm the plan, limits, access and any additional costs upfront. Building a website and ongoing management are separate services; an existing agreement does not automatically incur a new fee.
How do I know the admin actually manages the site?
By the report and by the questions. An admin who genuinely works on the site can tell you when they last tested a backup restore, what changed since last time, and what they recommend next. A monthly "all fine" with no detail is a warning sign.
How much does website management cost for a small business?
For a smaller business website of up to 5-7 pages, the Start plan at €200 a month is usually enough: hosting, domain, SSL, backups, updates, monitoring and 2 hours of edits. If the content changes only rarely, paying for individual edits at €40/h without a retainer works out cheaper.
Can I cancel the management?
The minimum term is three months. After that, the agreement continues monthly with 30 days' notice. The terms are written upfront, with any supplier, ask before signing, not after.
How often should a website be backed up?
A smaller site with occasional changes can be backed up weekly; a site with frequent changes and an e-shop daily. More important than frequency is having several copies in different places (the 3-2-1 rule), including both files and the database, and someone test-restoring it now and then. My plans run daily backups with 30 days of history.
What isn't included in the price of website management?
A new website, a redesign and larger development beyond the plan's hours, domains other than .cz and .com, and the ad budget. Hosting, a .cz or .com domain, SSL, backups, updates, monitoring and the agreed edit hours are included. For any quote, get in writing what happens to unused hours.
Sources and links
- Website management, full plan pricing, canonical prices and scope
- 24/7 IT help, nights and weekends included, €80/hour, minimum one hour
- Patchstack: State of WordPress Security in 2026, vulnerabilities in 2025
- WordPress: backups, frequency and storage of backups
- WordPress: updating, when plugins update automatically
- CISA: back up business data, the 3-2-1 rule