Subscribe to our Blog
Stay up to date with the latest resources, tips, and news.
Website maintenance is the ongoing process of keeping your site secure, up to date, and performing smoothly. It covers everything from plugin updates, security updates, content updates, and backups to fixing broken links and improving load speed.
Many teams skip website maintenance, and as a result, pages slow down and small glitches turn into emergencies (and hours of troubleshooting). On the other end of the spectrum are teams that let maintenance eat up hours of their precious time.
So, how long does website maintenance take when it’s done properly?
In this guide, we’ll show you how long it should take, what affects that time, and how to do maintenance without spending hours buried in updates, bug fixes, and error logs.
|
TL;DR – Key takeaways
|
How Long Does Website Maintenance Take? A Clear Answer
Website maintenance typically takes between 3 and 12 hours per month per website – that’s roughly 36 to 144 hours per year.
The exact number depends on your site’s size, complexity, and how often you update content or add new functionality.
A small brochure-style website only needs a few hours a month. Meanwhile, a feature-rich e-Commerce site requires more frequent attention (closer to the full 12 hours a month) because it involves a complex sitemap, product updates, payment gateway integrations, and order management systems.
To help you get a feel for how long typical maintenance tasks take, we’ve pulled together this quick breakdown:
| Type of maintenance | Example tasks | Time estimate | Frequency |
| Basic site care |
|
10–30 minutes | Weekly |
| Routine maintenance |
|
1–3 hours | Monthly |
| Large, scheduled |
|
4–10 hours | Quarterly or Yearly |
| Urgent, unscheduled |
|
1–6 hours | As needed |
5 Factors That Influence How Long Website Maintenance Takes
The time you’ll need to spend on maintenance depends on what your site looks like under the hood, with factors including its size, structure, and technical setup.
In addition, things like content update frequency, key features, and your host can add (or shave off) hours each month.
Let’s examine these factors.
1. Size and complexity of your site
The larger and more complex your website, the longer maintenance takes.
For instance, a five-page service site might only need an hour for updates and checks. However, once you add eCommerce features, hundreds of product pages, and custom integrations, every update demands rigorous testing across devices to ensure nothing breaks.
2. Level of features and functionality
Every extra plugin, form, or feature adds another layer to monitor, update, and secure.
In other words, the more moving parts your site has, the harder it is to keep it fast, functional, and protected.
That’s why managed WordPress care plans are a lifesaver for busy professionals with complex websites. They remove the stress of worrying about what might happen when you add new features or whether your site can handle them. A team of experts takes care of new functionality while also handling backup and recovery, speed tests, and Core Web Vitals.
3. CMS type
The CMS (content management system) your site runs on plays a big role in how much time maintenance takes.
Custom builds and WordPress sites usually require the most maintenance.
WordPress is maintenance-heavy because it relies on regular plugin updates, backups, and security checks to stay stable. Shopify, Wix, Webflow, or Squarespace sites handle most of this work behind the scenes, so maintenance tends to be lighter for website owners.
Regardless of CMS, if your site uses custom code or third-party integrations, expect extra time for compatibility testing after every change or update.
4. Frequency of content publishing and optimization
The more often you publish or update content, the more time you’ll need to spend on maintenance.
Each new blog post, event page, or product listing adds content to monitor, links to check, and media to optimize.
This means you’ll need to run regular updates, database cleanups, content audits, and website health checks to keep your site optimized for relevant search results and AI LLM bots.
5. Hosting quality
Good hosting keeps maintenance predictable and stress-free. Slow, shared servers lead to frequent fixes, downtime, and troubleshooting that can eat into your schedule.
That’s why we provide all our clients with premium hosting for their sites, at $32 per month on our Starter plan or included at no extra cost with our Premium and Elite plans. By using WordPress-optimized servers designed for speed and security, we maximize uptime and minimize host-related issues (like slow response times).
5 Tips to Reduce the Time You Spend on Website Maintenance
Website maintenance shouldn’t be a constant time drain. A few smart habits can keep your site secure, fast, and organized without eating into your workday.
Here’s how to save time while keeping your website in top shape:
1. Commit to regular updates to avoid surprises or hacks
Regular website updates are your first line of defense against online threats. According to Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report, there are over 600 million cyberattacks every single day.
Skipping routine updates might sound like a good idea to save time, but it makes your site an easy target in the long term. That’s because broken plugins, outdated themes, faulty SSL certificates, or missed security patches open the door to malware, data loss, or downtime.
Checking for updates weekly only takes 10 minutes and keeps your software current, your data protected, and your visitors safe without the panic of hacks or last-minute fixes.
2. Take daily backups and store them in multiple places
Website backups are your safety net. If your site crashes or gets hacked, they’re the fastest way to restore everything. Yet many teams only back up weekly, or worse, rely on their host’s default backup settings without realizing how much this limits them.
In comparison, at StateWP, we take daily backups and store them in multiple locations to keep data secure and easy to recover. Those extra steps ensure you’ll never lose critical files, donation data, or customer records – even if your hosting server fails.
3. Use an automated monitoring tool to detect issues early
Plugin conflicts, sudden performance drops, and WordPress errors can appear between updates. Automated monitoring tools catch these issues early, before your visitors notice them.
They work by tracking uptime, security threats, performance reports, and core vitals scores in real time, then alerting you if something goes wrong. That’s the reason we use these tools to scan client sites around the clock, so downtime or suspicious activity never goes unnoticed.
For example, CAL Insurance once faced an unexpected outage when its domain renewal lapsed. Thanks to our 24/7 downtime monitoring, our team caught it immediately and notified the company before the disruption impacted their customer base. It’s a perfect example of how proactive monitoring can prevent a small oversight from turning into costly downtime.
4. Don’t automate plugin updates (it will cost you!)
Automating plugin updates might sound like a way to save time and money, but in reality, they can cause a range of problems and potentially break your site. Each plugin interacts differently with your theme and other tools, and when updates run without testing, things can go wrong quickly.
Lead Liberated learned that lesson after working with a vendor who charged high fees but failed to update its site properly. When the company switched to StateWP, we took over maintenance, fixed the user experience (UX), and started executing updates manually with proper testing.
“Partnering with StateWP for our website maintenance has given us peace of mind. As a small nonprofit, we don’t have the internal resources to devote to technical upkeep. Knowing that StateWP’s team is monitoring our site and handling any necessary updates or security issues allows us to focus on our core mission. Their reliable and expert support is invaluable.”
– John Westerlund, Lead Liberated
5. Hire a professional agency to take care of your maintenance
No matter how efficient you are, managing updates, backups, and security plugins takes time.
That’s why we recommend that businesses partner with a top maintenance agency:
- Infyways (Best for Joomla websites) – Proactive Joomla support that offers real-time threat monitoring, speed optimization, and migration assistance. They also support complex systems, such as a banking app or a client portal requiring high uptime. Pricing is custom, based on site needs.
- StateWP (Best for WordPress maintenance) – We offer 24/7 WordPress support with monitoring, performance boosts, and proactive updates through our Proto client portal. Starts at $99/month, with premium hosting available for $32/month.
- DrupalAid (Best for Drupal websites) – Provides unlimited small-task support and hands-on maintenance from a team with 20+ years of experience. Plans start at $99/month.
On WordPress? Partner with StateWP for Peace of Mind
Our team manages every update, patch, and plugin with care, backed by real-time monitoring and advanced security hardening.
Clients like Lamano Law trust us to keep their high-traffic lead-gen website stable and optimized 365 days a year. After migrating to StateWP, we:
- Improved the website performance from C to A on GTMetrix
- Boosted search traffic and Google PageSpeed Insights from 69 to 91
- Updated over 30 critical plugins and themes
- Saved the team dozens of hours they used to spend on troubleshooting and requests
“It’s nice having experts who can quickly process our requests. Their team […] has made us confident that our site is up to date and performing well. The StateWP team gets to our requests really fast, and with everything in one place, it makes management and communication simple.”
– Givelle Lamano, Lamano Law
If you’re ready for the same peace of mind, start with a free website audit or reach out to Garrett, our CEO, for a friendly, commitment-free chat.
How Long Does Website Maintenance Take?
FAQsHere are answers to common questions we hear about downtime, costs, and keeping your site running smoothly.
How long are websites usually down for maintenance?
Most websites experience minimal downtime (usually a few minutes to an hour) during updates or scheduled maintenance. You can expect:
- 5 to 15 minutes for routine updates
- Up to an hour for major upgrades
At StateWP, we use staging sites on our Elite plan to keep downtime close to zero.
What is the best time to perform maintenance on a website ?
The best time to perform maintenance on websites is during off-peak hours, typically late at night or early in the morning, when your site receives the least traffic.
For most US-based businesses, this means scheduling updates between 12 AM and 4 AM in your local time zone. If your audience is global, weekends often coincide with a lower traffic volume.
Do WordPress websites need regular maintenance?
Yes, WordPress needs ongoing website maintenance to stay secure, fast, and functional.
As an open-source platform, WordPress relies on regular updates to its core software, themes, and plugins. Without routine care, outdated components and poor content structure can cause mobile responsiveness and browser compatibility problems, security vulnerabilities, slow performance, or broken features.
Is putting a WordPress website into maintenance mode a good idea?
Yes, WordPress maintenance mode is useful when making updates, but a staging site is generally the better option. Maintenance mode prevents user access while changes are live, which avoids exposing errors. A staging environment gives you a full working copy to test changes invisibly, then you make them live only when everything works.
How much does professional WordPress maintenance cost?
WordPress maintenance can cost between $10 and $10,000+ per month, depending on your site’s size, complexity, and features. For most small to mid-sized businesses, you can expect to pay $50–$500/month.
StateWP’s plans start at $110/month for basic care and go up to $700/month for advanced websites.
Our Premium plan ($349/month with no extra hosting costs) is the best value for growing businesses, as it includes 24/7 monitoring, speed optimization, dedicated support, mobile testing, premium hosting, Google Analytics and Google Search Console insights, and more.
What happens if you don’t maintain your website?
Neglecting website maintenance leaves your site exposed to attacks, and the damage isn’t cheap. According to IBM’s 2025 report, the average cost of a data breach is $4.4 million. That includes downtime, stolen data, recovery costs, lost trust, and legal trouble. Most breaches stem from unpatched vulnerabilities, outdated plugins, or misconfigurations, which are the things that regular maintenance prevents.
What should be included in a website maintenance plan?
A solid website maintenance plan should include core updates, plugin and theme updates, daily backups, security monitoring, uptime tracking, performance optimization, and regular content or SEO audits. Depending on how complex your site is, maintenance can also include staging environments, analytics setup, latest app version testing, and accessibility improvements.
Want a detailed plan you can use or share with your team? Download our free website maintenance checklist.