Website Maintenance Cost Calculator

Count the hours before the dollars

Most maintenance quotes start with a price. This starts with the work, because the hours are the thing that does not change no matter who does them. Your own time is counted at a rate you set, since that is the cost almost every other calculator leaves out.

This scales the checking after an update, not the updating itself.
Plugins are what generate update work, and what break when updated.
Edits, new pages, new posts, swapping images.
A store adds checkout and gateway testing after every update, because a silent payment failure costs more than the site does.
If you do this yourself, this is the real price. Use what you bill, or what you would earn doing your actual job.
What you already pay. This is the same in all three columns, so it never changes the comparison.
Annual licences divided by twelve. Forms, backups, SEO, page builder.

What we actually find when we look

This is not an industry average. It is what was measured on the last nine sites ShaneWebGuy ran a performance pass over, recorded one row per site per pass, including the fixes that turned out to be worth nothing.

What was wrongFound onWhat fixing it was measured to be worth
CSS blocking the first paint9 of 9Shipped in a batch, so the share is unknown. Not claimed.
Third-party JavaScript running before first paint7 of 922 PageSpeed points, measured alone (mobile 78 to 100)
Page cache cold on first visit7 of 9ZERO Time to first byte fell to 10ms and the score did not move.
Fonts blocking text from rendering6 of 9ZERO Largest paint stayed at 4.7s to the decimal.
Store plugins loading on pages with no store on them6 of 9Shipped in a batch, so the share is unknown. Not claimed.
Images not lazy loaded3 of 4Never measured on its own.
Two of those fixes measured zero. They are listed because a maintenance provider who only shows you the wins is showing you half the record, and because the font fix in particular is recommended almost everywhere on the internet and did nothing on the site it was tested on.

What the plans include

Published ShaneWebGuy pricing. The calculator picks a tier on hours alone; these are what the hours buy.

PlanPer monthIncluded
Essential$150WordPress core and plugin updates, daily backups, uptime monitoring, a monthly performance report.
Growth$350Everything in Essential, plus 2 hours of content updates a month, a monthly SEO check and priority support.
Full-Service$750Everything in Growth, plus 5 hours of development or content a month, a quarterly strategy review and ongoing A/B testing.

The hours model is ours and it is visible above under Show the arithmetic, so you can disagree with it line by line. Hosting and licence figures are whatever you typed; they are added to all three columns equally and never change which one wins. Defect frequencies come from the ShaneWebGuy site performance ledger, nine sites, measured rather than estimated. Nothing here is a quote.

Not sure which column is really cheapest for you?

This counts the hours before it prices them, so the answer moves with how much your site actually needs doing. If you want that checked against your real site rather than an estimate of it, send me the details and I will work it out properly and tell you if you are better off doing it yourself.

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