Website Maintenance Cost: Three Bills in One Month

A cheap host bill is not your website maintenance cost. It is the charge that arrives every month. The retainer for small edits, and the invoice when something breaks, arrive in other months, so the three never get added.

Short answer: Add the host bill, the retainer, and a typical repair invoice before you compare prices. Managed Website Hosting & Care puts hosting and that work on one price from $99 a month. The website maintenance cost page lists each plan. The hosting cost calculator sets your current setup next to the plan that fits.

What is the real website maintenance cost?#

Your website maintenance cost is the host bill, the invoice for changes, and the emergency bill when the site breaks. Those three rarely land in the same month, so the real monthly number stays hidden. I fold that into one price from $99 a month.

Say you run a bakery. The host drafts the card on the same day each month. A new photo and a change of hours sit in an email until someone invoices them. A broken order form becomes a separate bill. Each vendor can point at their own line. None of them sends the total.

That total is the number worth comparing. A host bill pays for the space the site sits on. It does not pay for core, plugin, and theme updates, a backup stored somewhere else, or a person who answers when the form stops sending. A retainer pays for changes and often goes quiet in a month with no edits. An emergency invoice pays for the bad day, then drops out of next year’s budget because it is not on the monthly draft.

I sell that work as one monthly plan. The price is the plan, not a stack of surprise lines.

What should you add up before you compare?#

List the host bill, any monthly retainer, and the last emergency invoice. If that emergency was a one off, note how many months passed since the one before it. If nobody applies updates, or you cannot find a backup, that gap belongs on the same list.

Pull the papers, even if they are on different cards.

1. The host charge for one month. If you pay the host once a year, split that receipt across the year so it sits next to a monthly plan.
2. What you paid last time the site needed a change: a retainer, an hourly invoice, or the hours if you did it yourself.
3. The last bill from a break, a hack, or a restore, and the date of the one before it if you can find it. A quiet year still had a cost. It arrived late.

Then write what you cannot find. A backup you have never opened is a gap. An update notice you keep leaving for later is a gap. If you do not know who would restore the site on a Tuesday morning, that belongs beside the bills.

What does one monthly price cover?#

Every plan includes hosting and SSL, daily backups stored apart from the site, updates, monitoring around the clock, security hardening, and a fix when something breaks on my watch. Plans differ in change time, staging, malware cleanup, and how fast I answer if the site goes down.

Security hardening here means locked-down logins, firewall rules, and safe defaults. You do not get a server login or a control panel to manage.

You can keep your current host. Same plans, same price. I look after the site on your existing account, and your host keeps billing you for hosting. I still keep a daily backup stored separately from the site. Priority’s dedicated server applies only when I host.

Small changes are what the monthly time is for. Email michael@michaelheredia.com. A link or a screenshot helps. Text, photos, hours, a new post, or a section use the included time first: 30 minutes on Essentials, 1 hour on Business, 3 hours on Priority. After that it is $125 an hour, and I tell you before going over. Unused time does not roll over.

Malware cleanup is $125 an hour on Essentials and included on Business and Priority. A fix on my watch, including a backup restore, is included on every plan. On Essentials and Business an outage goes to the front of the line during business hours.

Moving one standard site in is included: I copy it, test the copy, then switch the domain at a quiet time. A large online store or a custom app gets a fixed quote first. Redesigns, new features, online stores, and integrations are quoted before any work starts.

Which plan fits which owner?#

Essentials is $99 a month: 30 minutes of changes, and a reply within 2 business days. Business is $249 a month: 1 hour, staging before updates go live, malware cleanup included. Priority is $499 a month: 3 hours, a dedicated server, and 24/7 response if the site goes down.

Plan	Price	What you actually get
Essentials	$99 a month	Hosting, SSL, daily backups, updates, 30 minutes of changes, response within 2 business days. Malware cleanup is $125 an hour. A fix or backup restore is included. Outages jump the line during business hours.
Business (most popular)	$249 a month	Everything in Essentials, 1 hour of changes, updates tested on a staging copy before they go live, malware cleanup included.
Priority	$499 a month	Everything in Business, 3 hours of changes, a dedicated server, 24/7 response if the site goes down.

All three are billed monthly through Stripe, and you can cancel any time. The plans cost the same if I host or if I look after the site on the host you already pay. “Most popular” is only the label on Business.

Checkout takes a couple of minutes. I email you within 1 business day to start. If you cancel, the plan runs to the end of the paid month. Before it ends you get a full copy of the site and help pointing the domain to a new host.

When this isn’t the right fit#

This is the wrong plan if the site needs a redesign, a new feature, an online store, or an integration first. Those get a fixed quote before work starts. It is also the wrong fit when your staff already handles updates, backups, and small edits.

If the pages themselves are the problem, start with web development. I quote that project before it starts. These plans look after the site you already have.

If your staff already does the updates, the backups, and the small edits, you do not need this. The monthly price is for work that otherwise shows up as three separate bills.

If the three bills are the problem, open the plans and pick one. I email you within 1 business day after checkout to start. If you want the columns checked before you pay, send a question and attach the host bill or a screenshot.