Most small business owners get a quote for a new website and a separate line that says "maintenance" or "care plan". The first number is easy to judge. The second is where people either overpay or skip it and find out why it existed eighteen months later, usually on a Sunday night when the site is down.
So here is the website maintenance cost in Australia, broken down by platform, in AUD, with a worked yearly example and the questions to ask before you sign anything.
- WordPress: expect roughly $200 to $800 a month for proper care, plus hosting, according to one Australian agency price guide (WP Creative, August 2026).
- Shopify: no maintenance bill as such. You pay the plan fee ($56 a month on Basic, or $42 on annual billing, at the time of writing) and look after your own content and apps.
- Doing it yourself is realistic for a Shopify store or a small site you can edit without help. It is a bad idea for an old WordPress site with a dozen plugins.
- The one thing that usually decides it: how many third-party plugins you rely on. Every one is something that needs patching.
What website maintenance actually covers
Maintenance is not one job. It is four, and quotes get confusing because agencies bundle them differently.
- Hosting and uptime: the server your site lives on, plus someone noticing when it goes down.
- Updates and security: platform, plugin and theme updates, backups, and malware or firewall monitoring.
- Content changes: prices, opening hours, new staff, a new service page.
- Checks: forms still send, checkout still takes payment, pages still load quickly.
A "cheap" plan is usually hosting plus a promise to update, with content changes billed by the hour on top.
Website maintenance cost in Australia: the real numbers
Australian agency price pages are the only public benchmark, and they are sales pages, so treat them as the top of a normal range. WP Creative, a WordPress agency, lists small business care plans at $200 to $800 a month in AUD ex GST, which covers tested updates, daily backups, security monitoring, uptime alerts and one to two hours of development time (WP Creative, updated August 2026). Hosting is not included: it lists managed WordPress hosting separately at $50 to $150 a month and domain renewal at $15 to $50 a year (see our .com.au vs .au guide for domain pricing). A $200 plan without hosting becomes a $280 plan once a managed host is added.
For a Shopify store, the platform bundles hosting, SSL and its own updates into the plan. Shopify's Australian pricing page lists Basic at $56 a month, or $42 a month on annual billing, with Grow at $149 and $114 (at the time of writing, October 2026). Check whether the price you see includes GST before you budget.
Why a neglected site is a real risk, not a nuisance
The case for paying someone is not tidiness. It is attack volume. Patchstack, a WordPress security firm, recorded 11,334 new vulnerabilities across the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, up 42 per cent on the year before, and 91 per cent of them were in plugins rather than WordPress itself (Patchstack, State of WordPress Security in 2026). Its data also showed the heavily targeted ones being exploited fast: a median of about five hours to first exploit, with roughly half of the high-impact ones hit within a day.
That is why plugin count matters more than site size: a ten-page brochure site with twelve plugins has a bigger attack surface than a fifty-page site on three.
On the cost side, the Australian Signals Directorate's Annual Cyber Threat Report 2023-24 put the average self-reported cost of a cybercrime incident for a small business at $49,600, up 8 per cent on the year before (reported by Information Age, 2024). That covers all cybercrime and is self-reported, so it is not the price of a hacked homepage, but it shows what a bad day costs a small business with no backup or plan.
Speed is the quieter cost. Google research from 2017 found the chance of a mobile visitor bouncing rises 32 per cent as load time goes from one second to three (Think with Google). Bloated plugins and heavy images creep in over time, so a monthly speed check belongs in maintenance. Our website cost guide covers the build side.
Maintenance cost by platform, side by side
| Cost line | WordPress | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Separate. Managed hosting listed at $50 to $150 a month | Included in the plan fee |
| Core and security updates | You or your agency, on a schedule | Handled by Shopify |
| Plugin or app updates | Your job, and where most breakages start | Your job, but fewer and usually simpler |
| Care plan (small business) | Listed at $200 to $800 a month ex GST | Rarely needed. Pay by the hour for changes |
| Platform fee | None for WordPress itself, some paid plugins | $56 a month on Basic ($42 on annual billing) |
| Domain | $15 to $50 a year | $15 to $50 a year |
| Biggest hidden cost | Fixing a site that broke after an update | Paid apps that add up month by month |
If you are still choosing between the two, our Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison goes through the fees and trade-offs for Australian stores.
A worked yearly example
Take a ten-page WordPress site for a tradie or physio. Using the WP Creative ranges above, ex GST and per year:
- Care plan: $2,400 to $9,600
- Managed hosting: $600 to $1,800
- Domain: $15 to $50
- Total: roughly $3,015 to $11,450
The bottom of that range is the realistic target for a small, simple site. The same business on a Shopify Basic plan with annual billing pays $504 a year in plan fees (12 x $42), plus the domain and any paid apps. Content changes come on top, and nobody quotes those up front.
One way to push that last number down is to build the site so you can edit it yourself. On our Afghan Kebab House project we built a custom CMS so the family can change the menu, opening hours and page copy without calling a developer. Every change you can make yourself is an invoice you do not receive.
Can you maintain your own website?
Sometimes. On a hosted platform like Shopify with a handful of apps, a monthly routine is enough:
- Submit your contact form and place a test order from a phone.
- Update apps and plugins, reading what changed first.
- Confirm a recent backup exists and you know how to restore it.
- Check domain renewal dates and run a speed test.
An older WordPress site with many plugins is different. Updates can conflict, and rolling back a bad one needs a staging copy and some technical comfort. My honest view: if the site brings in enquiries, pay for care. If it is a brochure you rarely touch, move it to a simpler platform instead.
What to check before you sign a care plan
- Is hosting included, and is the hosting account in your name?
- How many hours of changes are included each month, and what does an extra hour cost?
- How often are backups taken, and has anyone ever tested a restore?
- Is there a lock-in contract, and what do you get if you leave (files, logins, domain)?
We run optional care plans after launch that cover hosting, updates, backups, security and small content changes for a flat monthly fee, with no lock-in, and the domain and files stay yours. You can see how that fits into our fixed-price tiers on the web design packages page.
