What do web developers charge for site maintenance (not changes/updates)?

Question

I'm a freelance web developer in the evenings and my framework of choice is Wordpress.org. Wordpress and its community plugins are updated frequently. Wordpress is also a highly targeted framework for hackers since it powers so many sites. I'm sure this question could be applied to other frameworks as well like Drupal, Joomla, etc.

What I'm wondering is what other web developers charge monthly to maintain their websites. By maintain I mean, keep plugins and core up to date, and run backups on theme files and the database. For those that do this, what is a reasonable rate to charge for this kind of monthly upkeep?

My clients are mostly small businesses (such as local restaurants, bars, farms, etc)

Answer 1

Okay, after reading all the answers and comments here, I would like to add a few additional points to my answer.

First off, as freelancers we normally trade our time for money. So it seems natural to base the price of a monthly service off of how much time it takes us to do it. And that might be fine if you're just getting started, but like Joe (OP) said, how should you charge for something that took you time to setup, but doesn't take any time to continue running, like a cron job?

I think the answer (as hinted at in the comments of some of the other answers), is to look at the value you're providing. Or another way of looking at it: what does the client miss out on if they don't buy your service?

• Their site could go down for 24 hours? A week? Forever?
• Total data loss/have to start over from scratch
• Missing out on sales and leads
• Taking time out of their busy schedules to futz around with WordPress

There are plenty more, that's just scratching the surface.

What's not on the list? "Joe must be at his keyboard at least x hours per month"

They could care less about the mechanism of how the benefits are delivered, all that matters is whether they get the benefits.

Okay so what should you charge? That depends on two factors:

1. Your absolute minimum should be based on how much time you think it will take you per month.
2. Beyond that, think about how much value your clients are getting from their website in the first place, and what kind of price they would tolerate. For example, a local quilting club website probably wouldn't pay much, while a t-shirt printing company that primarily sells product through their website would pay quite a bit to make sure their business remained open and profitable.

What I charge and offer in my maintenance service: $150/month for the following:

• Smart updates...the whole backup, test, launch (or restore) routine
• Malware monitoring, protection, and cleanup
• Uptime monitoring
• Daily offsite backups

I chose $150/month because I figured maybe once per year each client would need some extra attention to resolve a plugin conflict, crash, or something similar. So the months where everything went smoothly would help subsidize the one problem per year, and they don't get stuck with a $1000 repair bill.

The last 3 components of my service are mostly automated, but help to round it out and make it look more enticing.

Answer 2

The most experienced web developers will sell you a fixed-price package where they will list what you get for a certain value. They have a lot of experience and they can go with a fixed price without being risk of loss.

But even then, that calculated price is usually based on estimated work hours spent on the tasks listed in the offer. So hourly price is always the basis, and you should start with it.

Since you have some experience, track how much time you need for frequent tasks and you will have your price in a minute.

Determining hourly price is a different story and there are multiple approaches to it.

Answer 3

I'm a strong proponent of hourly billing, as that's what I'm selling (my time).

In your case, adding a retainer may be a good way to keep your clients comfortable with the arrangement (getting generally the same bill each month), while protecting against a major time loss for you.

Take what you think you'll spend (or have found already that you spend) per site to do this maintenance each month. Maybe it's generally an hour, or maybe it's ten. Package that time as a maintenance retainer - with the hours included. If you ever go over those hours, you start billing hourly.

To the client, you're saying that to monitor the status of their site, apply patches, etc - they need to buy a minimum of hours monthly.

If it only takes an hour - you may want to make that retainer for two, if it's not worth the trouble just for an hour a month. If it takes ten, then maybe you want to adjust to retainer fee so the rate is a little less than your normal hourly - as they're constantly buying a chunk of time every month, and some months may not use it all.

[Note: While I don't maintain sites like this, I have some long time clients where I still manage their networks. It's a similar situation, and this is the approach I use.]

Answer 4

It depends on the client.

I charge most clients an hourly rate for this type of work. It often takes a few months before a whole hour is accumulated for a particular website and client. I have an arrangement with clients that anything less than an hour is held over to the next month as it's not worth raising an invoice for less than an hour.

A new client recently put me on a retainer for an hour a month to do this type of work for them as this helps them budget appropriately for this type of work.

When sensible precautions are taken (e.g. see https://stackoverflow.com/a/19139389/1983389), Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal etc are generally quite secure systems and you could charge a monthly fee to guarantee the security of the website. This could include restoring the website as part of the service if it becomes compromised. This gives clients peace of mind and is a service worth paying for.