What it costs to maintain a website: hosting, domain, maintenance and what nobody puts in the quote
We have already covered how much it costs to build a website in Barcelona. This is the other half of the conversation, the one that rarely comes up until the first renewal: how much it costs to keep it alive. A website is not a brochure you print and file. It is a service running on a server, on software that updates every month, on a domain that expires every year, with content that ages. All of that has a price, and it is better to know it in advance.
You pay for a website once. Keeping it alive costs money every year. The gap between those two figures is what nobody puts in the quote.
The domain: 10 to 20 euros a year, and your most important asset
A .com or .es costs between 10 and 20 euros a year; a .cat or .barcelona a little more. It is the cheapest line and the most important one: if the domain expires, the website disappears, email stops arriving and getting it back can be impossible. Three rules: it is in your name, renewal is automatic, and the expiry warning goes to an inbox someone actually reads.
Hosting: 5 to 250 euros a month
Basic shared hosting costs 5 to 15 euros a month and is fine for a small site with little traffic. It rises to 30 or 60 when you need more resources, and reaches 100 to 250 when what you are paying for is managed hosting: daily backups someone has actually restored, security updates, monitoring, a content delivery network in front and a person who looks when something happens. The difference is not the machine; it is who answers at three on a Sunday afternoon. When your website slows down every time Barça plays, it is the hosting you notice.
Maintenance: what breaks when nobody is looking
WordPress releases updates constantly, and every plugin and theme has its own. A site nobody updates becomes a security problem within months, and one updated without testing breaks just as easily. Maintaining a website well means updating, checking everything still works, fixing what breaks and making the small changes that come up. For a small business, 300 to 3,000 euros a year depending on the size of the site and the bank of hours. Plans usually include a number of changes per month; what matters is that there is a named person on the other end.
Licences and services paid separately
Premium plugins (advanced forms, SEO, translations, backups): 50 to 300 euros a year each. Licensed typefaces. Stock photos. The email marketing tool, which grows with your list. Map keys and other external connections that start charging above a certain usage. None of this is expensive on its own; what is expensive is discovering it once it is already on the site.
Legal
Up-to-date legal texts, a cookie banner that does what it says and a record of processing activities if you collect data. Done properly once, reviewed whenever the law or the website changes. If your cookie banner is a free plugin nobody configured, you are not complying; you are decorating.
Content: the line that dies first
The most expensive website to maintain is the one nobody updates. A blog whose last post is two years old, a “news” section with no news, a team page with people who left. That is maintenance too, and the most forgotten kind. Budget a few hours a month, yours or someone else’s, or do not open sections you will not feed. Your website does not need more sections: it needs fewer, and above all it needs the ones it has to be alive.
Three profiles, three figures
Small site, little traffic, no shop: 300 to 600 euros a year for domain, shared hosting and minimal maintenance. Business site with forms, several languages and campaigns: 900 to 2,500 euros a year, with better hosting and a bank of hours. Online shop or high-traffic site: 2,000 to 6,000 euros a year or more, with managed hosting, monitoring and someone who responds fast, because every hour of downtime is measured in sales.
Maintenance at 0 euros is the most expensive kind
There are offers of “free maintenance” and “hosting included forever”. Either it does not exist, or it is paid for inside another line, or it vanishes when the agency changes strategy. You will pay for it anyway: the day the site goes down, when you want to switch providers and find out you cannot, or when the update pending for a year opens a door that should have stayed shut. Good maintenance costs money and shows in the fact that nothing happens.
How to know what you are paying today
Ask your provider for a list of every line, its price and its renewal date. If they cannot give it to you within a day, you already have an answer. And if you want a second opinion on the real state of your site, speed included, the express audit is free and arrives as a video within 48 working hours.
Frequently asked questions
Can I maintain the website myself?
Yes, if you have time every month and take a backup before each update. Most businesses prefer to pay so they do not have to remember.
What does a normal maintenance plan include?
Tested updates, backups, monitoring, fixes for what breaks and a bank of hours for small changes. What it usually does not include: new content, redesigns and new features.
Shared or managed hosting?
Shared if the site is small and a few hours of downtime cost you nothing. Managed if you sell, run traffic campaigns or cannot afford not to know when something fails.
How often should WordPress be updated?
Security updates as soon as they come out. The rest every few weeks, always with a backup before and a check afterwards.
What happens if I stop paying for maintenance?
Nothing on the first day. Within months the site is outdated and exposed, and any later fix costs more than the maintenance you saved.