Website maintenance & support packages · UK
Looked after, without a contract holding you there.
A website is not a thing you finish. It is a thing you keep, and most of them quietly rot because nobody was responsible for them.
Werehouse Media's website maintenance and support covers the ongoing work that keeps a site fast, current and trustworthy, whether we built it or somebody else did: content and image changes, updates, backups, uptime and broken link monitoring, and small design tweaks as the business changes. Plans start at £49 a month with no contract and no minimum term.
A site we did not build can stay with the host it is on now, and the first look at it is free. Sites we host have hosting included in the plan, and hosting on its own is from £9 a month. Emergency fixes for a site that is down, hacked or broken start at £99, with or without a plan. You own the domain, the code and every account outright, so the site keeps working whether or not the plan continues.
What is website maintenance, and does a small business need it?
Website maintenance is the work that happens after launch to stop a site degrading: keeping content current, applying updates, taking backups, watching for outages and broken links, and making the small changes a business needs as it changes.
Whether you need it paid for is a fair question, and the answer is not automatically yes. If you are comfortable editing your own site and you will actually do it, you may not need a plan at all. Where care earns its money is with the business owner who knows the opening hours are wrong, has known for four months, and is not going to fix it this week either.
What does website maintenance include?
- Content and image changes. New prices, new photos, new staff, seasonal hours.
- Updates and security patching wherever the platform has anything to update.
- Backups, so a bad change is never permanent.
- Uptime and broken link monitoring, so you hear about a problem from us rather than from a customer.
- Small design tweaks as the business shifts.
- A named person who answers. Not a ticket queue.
What is not included
New pages, new sections, a redesign, or a new feature. Those are projects, and they get quoted as projects. A care plan that quietly absorbs project work ends with a resentful supplier, and you can feel that in the work.
What does website maintenance cost in the UK?
Our plans are £49, £79 and £149 a month, with no contract. Across the UK market, published plans for small business sites mostly start somewhere between £30 and £150 a month in our own reading, and four UK WordPress maintenance plans we checked in October 2026 started between £49 and £90 a month, some of them before VAT. We are not VAT registered, so the price on this page is the price you pay. The full breakdown is in what website maintenance costs in the UK.
| What | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Maintenance plan | From £49/month | No contract, cancel any time. Hosting included when we host the site |
| Emergency fix | From £99 | One-off, for a site that is down, hacked or broken. Priced before we start. No plan needed |
| First look at a site we did not build | Free | What it runs on, what is installed, what is already broken, in writing |
| Hosting on its own | From £9/month | Optional. Host anywhere you prefer |
| Post-launch fixes | Included, 30 days | On every build we make, whether or not you take a plan |
There is deliberately no mandatory retainer. Plenty of studios make hosting or care a condition of the build; that is a way of making a site hard to leave rather than good to keep. Every published price is on the price list.
Why is hosting only £9 a month?
Because that is roughly what it costs to host a site like this properly, and marking it up four times would be charging you for the privilege of not moving. Hosting is a commodity. The value is in the build and in the people who answer when something breaks, not in the server.
If you are looking for web hosting in Sussex, that is what this is: hosting from £9 a month, set up and supported from East Sussex, with a person to talk to rather than a help centre. Moving an existing site is optional, and for a WordPress site on a shared host it is not always worth the risk. We will say which.
What about editing the site yourself?
Some builds are delivered with a login so text and images can be updated without going through us, and blog articles published directly. It is not right for every project and it carries its own cost, so it is discussed at quote stage rather than assumed. Most small businesses making a handful of changes a year are better served by a plan than by learning a system they will use twice.
Sites we did not build
Already have a website someone else built?
We look after websites we did not build, from £49 a month, and the site stays on the host it is on now unless you ask us to move it. Most of these come to us because the original developer has moved on, stopped answering, or was never on a support arrangement in the first place.
What happens when we take a site on
- A free first look. What the site runs on, what is installed, whether it is backed up, how fast it is and anything already broken. You get it in writing before you commit to anything.
- Access and a backup. Logins handed over properly, in your name, and a full backup taken before anything is touched.
- A check of what is installed. Out-of-date software, abandoned plugins, unused accounts and anything that should not be there.
- The plan. One of the three tiers below, chosen by how often the site actually changes.
Which platforms, and what support means on each
The platform decides how much anybody can do, so here is what support covers on each, plainly:
- WordPress. The full job: core, theme and plugin updates, backups, security hardening and malware clean-up, uptime monitoring, speed fixes and content changes. It has its own page: WordPress support and maintenance.
- Shopify. Shopify runs the servers, security and platform updates itself. Support means theme changes, product and content updates, app reviews, and speed and search fixes. The parts Shopify controls, such as its checkout and hosting, stay with Shopify.
- Squarespace and Wix. Both are hosted builders that handle their own updates and security. Support means content and design changes inside the editor, search settings, forms, domains and email set-up. There is no access to the code or the server, so a few things cannot be done on either platform, and we will tell you which before you pay for them.
- Hand-coded and other sites. It depends on how the site was built and whether the code is available. The free first look settles it.
When we would advise a rebuild instead
Sometimes maintaining a site costs more than replacing it: a theme nobody updates any more, a page builder that makes every change a fight, or a site that is slow in ways no plugin will fix. When the first look shows that, the note says so, with a price for the redesign, and you decide. Plenty of sites only need looking after, and when that is the answer we say that too.
Website maintenance plans
Which maintenance plan do you need?
Optional and cancellable, with no contract.
Werehouse Media website maintenance plans come in three tiers, from £49 to £149 a month, and the difference between them is how much change each month includes. None has a contract or a minimum term, and the same tiers apply to sites we built and sites we did not.
| Basic | Standard | Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | £49 a month | £79 a month | £149 a month |
| Backups and SSL | Included | Included | Included |
| Hosting | Included if we host the site | Included if we host the site | Included if we host the site |
| Uptime monitoring and security patching | Included | Included | Included |
| Changes each month | Small text or image swaps | An hour of changes | Three hours of changes, plus content updates |
| Performance checks | Not included | Quarterly | Quarterly |
| Priority response | No | No | Yes |
| Right when | The site rarely changes and you want it kept safe | A few updates a month: prices, staff, opening hours | The site changes every week, or it carries seasonal content |
A site that stays with its current host keeps paying that host as it does now. Every published price is on the price list.
Straight answers
Common questions.
How much does it cost to pay someone to maintain a website?
For a small business site, most published UK plans start somewhere between £30 and £150 a month in our own reading, depending on how much change each month includes and how quickly it is turned around. Werehouse Media plans are £49, £79 and £149 a month with no contract, and one-off emergency fixes start at £99. Plans that include several hours of development every month cost more.
What does website maintenance include?
Updates to the site's software where the platform has any, backups, uptime and broken link monitoring, security patching, and a set amount of content and design changes each month. New pages, new features and redesigns are not maintenance: they are projects, quoted as projects.
What is the average monthly cost of website maintenance in the UK?
There is no official average. Four UK WordPress maintenance plans we checked in October 2026 started between £49 and £90 a month, and some of those prices were before VAT. The real cost depends on the platform, how often the site changes and whether hosting is included.
Do you look after websites you did not build?
Yes, from £49 a month, including WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace and Wix sites. The site stays with its current host unless you ask to move it, and the first look is free: what it runs on, what is installed and what is already broken, in writing, before you commit to anything.
My website is down or hacked. Can you fix it?
Usually, yes. Emergency fixes start at £99 and are priced before we start, with or without a plan. We do not promise a response time we cannot keep: we take a limited number of projects at a time, so we will tell you honestly when we can get to it before you agree to anything.
Do I have to take a plan after you build my site?
No. It is optional, and so is hosting. Every build includes 30 days of fixes after launch regardless, and you own the domain, the code and every account outright, so the site keeps working whether or not you continue with anything.
What is the difference between hosting and website maintenance?
Hosting is where the site lives, the server that serves it to visitors. Maintenance is the human work of keeping the site current and correct: content changes, updates, backups and monitoring. Sites we host have hosting included in the plan. Hosting is also sold on its own from £9 a month, and a site we did not build can stay with its current host.
Can I cancel any time?
Yes. There is no contract and no minimum term. Cancel whenever you like and the plan carries on until your next billing date, with nothing more to pay. Cancelling does not take the site down, because the domain, the code and the hosting account are in your name.
Will you keep my website up to date with Google's changes?
The technical foundations are built to stay correct: structure, speed, structured data and mobile behaviour. Speed is checked against Google's Core Web Vitals guidance, which asks for the main content to load within 2.5 seconds. Google changes its ranking systems several times a year, and its own guide to core updates says "most sites don't need to worry about core updates and may not even realize one has happened." What maintenance does not do is promise rankings. Anyone selling a monthly plan on the promise of keeping you ahead of algorithm updates is selling an outcome they cannot control.
What maintenance actually prevents
What website maintenance costs in the UK
Monthly plans, hourly rates and what each actually buys.
Why website speed costs you customers
Core Web Vitals without the jargon, and what slow costs in enquiries.
Why is my website not showing up on Google?
Eight causes, in the order to check them.
Squarespace or a web designer?
When the builder is genuinely the right answer, and when it is not.
Next step
Keep it, or leave it alone.
Send us the address of the site and how often it actually needs changing. We will look it over for free and tell you honestly whether a plan is worth it. Sometimes the answer is that it is not.