What website maintenance should cost.
Maintenance is where good money quietly leaks: retainers priced like engineering that deliver automated plugin updates. This page publishes the real 2026 market bands, what should be inside each one, and how to spot a junk retainer in thirty seconds.
Price a new build instead → Or read the full website cost guideIn 2026, website maintenance in Australia runs A$90–180/month for a brochure site, A$180–380/month for a business site, and A$380–980+/month for e-commerce — with WooCommerce retainers commonly A$500–2,500/month. For web applications, budget 15–20% of the build cost per year. Our published plans: Care A$190/month, Care+ A$390/month, Growth A$990/month — every build includes the first 30 days free, and plans are optional because you own your site outright.
Market bands and our published plans.
The spread is honest — the plans do genuinely different things. The problem is when a plan is priced in one band and delivers another. Both tables below, in the open.
| Site type | 2026 market range (AUD/month) | What that band should include |
|---|---|---|
| Brochure site | A$90–180 | Software updates, backups, uptime monitoring, basic security |
| Business site | A$180–380 | All of the above plus performance checks, small content changes, priority response |
| E-commerce store | A$380–980+ | All of the above plus transaction monitoring, payment/checkout testing, staging updates before production |
| WooCommerce specifically | A$500–2,500 | You own the whole stack, so the retainer carries hosting-level patching, plugin conflicts and store logic — commonly priced accordingly |
| Web application | 15–20% of build cost / year | Dependency and security updates, monitoring, infrastructure, small improvements |
| Plan | Our fixed price | What's inside |
|---|---|---|
| Care | A$190/month | Updates, backups, security, uptime monitoring — the non-negotiables, done properly |
| Care+ | A$390/month | Everything in Care, plus e-commerce and web-app monitoring — built for stores and applications |
| Growth | A$990/month | Everything in Care+, plus GEO/AI-visibility work and conversion-rate optimisation — maintenance that moves revenue, not just uptime |
Every new build includes 30 days of care at A$0 — then you choose. Plans are optional and you own the site either way. Price a build in 2 minutes, care included.
Price my project →What actually moves the price.
What the stack demands. A static brochure site barely needs touching; a WordPress site carries a plugin surface that must be patched forever; a WooCommerce store adds payments, inventory and tax logic on top. The more of the stack you own, the more maintenance you're buying — it's why WooCommerce retainers commonly run A$500–2,500/month while a Shopify store's platform work is inside Shopify's own subscription.
What breaks costs money. E-commerce maintenance is dearer because downtime is revenue: checkout testing, transaction monitoring and staging-first updates are labour, and the A$380–980+ band reflects it.
Whether anything improves. The line between the middle and top of the market is whether the retainer only defends the site or also develops it — content, conversion work, search and AI visibility. That's the honest reason our Growth plan is A$990 while Care is A$190: they are different jobs.
Warning signs of a junk retainer. No monthly report of what was actually done. "Unlimited updates" with no named deliverables — unlimited usually means automated. Hosting, domain and maintenance bundled into one opaque line. A contract but no exit, or worse, a retainer you can't leave because the agency owns your site. And the tell that costs the most: a WooCommerce store on a A$90 brochure-tier plan, which means nobody is testing the checkout.
The ownership question underneath it all. A maintenance plan should be a service, not a hostage arrangement. If cancelling the retainer would cost you your website, the retainer isn't maintenance — it's rent. Every Flagship build ships with 100% IP assignment in plain English precisely so the plans stay optional.
Priced inside the honest bands.
Care at A$190 sits in the business-site band and does business-site work. Care+ at A$390 sits at the floor of the e-commerce band because our builds are custom-coded — no page-builder bloat, a smaller patch surface, less to go wrong — which genuinely costs less to maintain. Growth at A$990 competes with the market's four-figure retainers by including the work most of them don't: GEO/AI-visibility and conversion optimisation with a monthly record of what was done. Every build includes the first 30 days free, cancellation doesn't cost you your site, and if you're weighing up a whole project — build plus running costs — the website cost guide and the 2-minute quote put the full picture in one place.
Straight answers.
What does website maintenance cost in Australia?
What should be included in a maintenance plan?
How do I spot a junk retainer?
Do I have to buy a maintenance plan from you?
Why do WooCommerce stores cost so much more to maintain?
What does web app maintenance cost?
What's in your A$190/month Care plan compared to cheaper options?
Maintenance that isn't a mystery.
Published plans, monthly reports, and a site you own outright either way. Price a build in two minutes — the first 30 days of care are included at A$0.
Price my project →Flagship Web is the web division of Digital One Agency — same company, same ABN, same insurance. Building a mobile app? That's our sibling studio, Flagship Apps.