What website maintenance costs in Ireland and what you're actually paying for.
Short answer: entry-level WordPress care plans in Ireland run €49 to €69 a month. Mid-tier plans run €99 to €149. Managed plans with development hours or a dedicated contact run €240 to €600 and up. Most exclude VAT, and most no longer require a contract. Below about €40 a month you're generally buying an automated plugin with nobody behind it.
The bands, and what sits in each
€0 to €40 a month
Automated. A plugin or SaaS dashboard applies updates on a schedule and emails you a report. Nothing checks whether the site still works afterwards, and nobody answers when it doesn't. Genuinely fine for a hobby site. For a business that takes enquiries through its website, the first failed update costs more than a year of the difference.
€49 to €69 a month
The small business entry point, and where most sole traders and small firms should be. Expect core, plugin and theme updates with a backup taken first, offsite backups, malware protection, uptime monitoring, and a real person to email. This is where my own €49/month Website Care plan sits, and several other Irish providers price their entry tier at €49 to €69.
€99 to €149 a month
Adds a defined allowance of developer time each month — typically thirty minutes to two hours for content edits and small changes — plus daily rather than weekly backups, priority response, and sometimes malware cleanup included rather than charged separately. Sensible if you change your site regularly and would otherwise be paying hourly for small jobs.
€240 to €600+ a month
Managed service. Real-time backups, updates tested on a staging copy before they touch the live site, performance and Core Web Vitals reporting, a dedicated Slack or Teams channel, an account manager, and often hosting bundled in. Appropriate for a busy WooCommerce store or a site where an hour of downtime has a measurable cost. Overkill for a five-page brochure site.
Hosting is not maintenance
This is the single most common confusion, and some providers are happy to leave it that way because bundling makes their price harder to compare.
Hosting is the server. It keeps the machine powered, patched and connected. Even good managed WordPress hosting generally stops at the platform: it will keep PHP current and take server-level backups, but it does not decide whether your booking plugin's major version upgrade is safe to apply on a Friday.
Maintenance is the software on top: WordPress core, your plugins, your theme, your backups, and someone who notices when the contact form silently stops sending. That last one is the most expensive failure in small business websites, because nothing appears broken. The enquiries just stop.
When you compare two quotes, establish which of the two each one includes. A €60 plan with hosting and a €49 plan without are close to the same money.
What a real plan includes
Use this as a checklist against any quote you're given:
- Updates with a backup taken first. Not "we run updates". A backup immediately before, and a check of the site immediately after.
- Offsite backups you can restore from. Backups stored on the same server as the site are not backups. Ask when a restore was last actually tested.
- Malware and security monitoring. Plus a stated position on what happens if you do get hacked — included, discounted, or charged in full.
- Uptime monitoring. Someone should know your site is down before your customer emails you about it.
- A named human and a response time. "Support" that routes to a ticket queue is a different product from a person who knows your site.
- No lock-in. Monthly, cancel any time, is standard in Ireland now. A twelve-month commitment on a maintenance plan is a red flag rather than a discount.
- Your own access retained. You should hold the logins to your domain, hosting and WordPress admin throughout. If a provider won't give you those, that's not a maintenance plan, that's a hostage situation.
Is it worth it? The honest arithmetic
A year of a €49 plan is €588. One emergency is €250 with me, €350 with some Irish providers, and more if a hacked site has been offline for a week and your host has suspended the account. Two incidents in a year and the plan has paid for itself; one bad one and it's close.
But that's only half the case, and it's the half people lead with because it's easy to quantify. The other half is that unmaintained sites fail quietly. An out-of-date form plugin that stops delivering email doesn't produce an error page. A site that drifts onto an unsupported PHP version doesn't warn you. You find out months later, when you wonder why nobody has been in touch.
The honest version: if you'll genuinely take a backup and run updates yourself every month, don't buy a plan. Almost nobody does. The realistic alternative to a plan isn't careful DIY maintenance, it's nothing at all for three years.
What I charge, and what's not in it
My Website Care plan is €49 a month, no contract, cancel any time. It covers WordPress, plugin and theme updates, malware protection, uptime monitoring, backups within your storage allowance, guidance on hosting, PHP and CDN setup, and a direct line to me rather than a ticket form.
What it deliberately doesn't include: hosting (you keep your own, and I'll tell you honestly if it's the problem), unlimited content edits, or new development work. Big jobs are quoted separately — emergency repairs are €250, and a speed tune-up starts at €250. I'd rather price those honestly than fold them into a monthly fee and ration them.
The other question people ask at the same time is what it costs to actually get found: see how much SEO costs in Ireland.
Maintenance questions
Is website maintenance the same as web hosting?
No. Hosting is the server. Maintenance is the software on it and the person watching it. A host keeps the machine on; it doesn't update your plugins or notice when your form stops sending email.
Do I really need a maintenance plan?
You need the work done. If you'll reliably do it yourself, don't pay for it. Most people won't, and the real alternative is nothing at all until something breaks.
How often should plugins be updated?
Security releases within days — published vulnerabilities get scanned for at scale, automatically, within hours. Routine updates weekly or monthly. Always with a backup first and a check afterwards.
What happens if my site gets hacked while on a plan?
Ask every provider this and compare the answers, because they vary a lot. On my plan I clean it as part of the service rather than selling you a second job. Some providers include cleanup only on higher tiers; some charge full price regardless.
Can you maintain a website you didn't build?
Yes, and that's most of my work. I regularly take over WordPress sites built by other developers or agencies, including ones nobody has touched in years.
What if my site is already badly out of date?
Bringing a neglected site current is a one-off job, not a monthly one, because jumping several major versions at once is where things break. I'd quote that separately, then the plan keeps it current afterwards.
Is VAT included in these prices?
Usually not in published Irish prices, including the ones on this page. Check before comparing two quotes.
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