Website Maintenance Costs in Australia (Hosting, Domain, Updates)

The bill that arrives after the launch

Most quotes cover the build and stop there. Then the domain renews, the host renews, a plugin update breaks the contact form, and someone has to fix it. None of that is a scam — it is just the cost of owning a website, and almost nobody explains it before you sign.

For a typical Australian small business site, ongoing costs land somewhere between $400 and $2,500 a year depending on what is included. Here is what makes up that number.

The unavoidable core

• Domain. $15–$30 a year for a .com.au. Cheap, but miss the renewal and you can lose the name. Put it on auto-renew.
• Hosting. $10–$30 a month for solid shared hosting, $40–$80 for managed WordPress, more for high-traffic stores. This is where cheap hosts hurt: slow servers cost you customers every day.
• SSL certificate. Free on any decent host. If someone is charging you $150 a year for SSL, ask why.

The part people forget

• Updates. WordPress core, themes and plugins need updating monthly. Skipping it is how sites get hacked. Either you do it, or you pay someone $80–$200 a month to.
• Backups. Often bundled with hosting, sometimes $10–$25 a month. Test a restore once — an untested backup is not a backup.
• Security monitoring. Malware scanning and a firewall. Usually $10–$40 a month on WordPress.
• Content changes. New staff, new prices, a new service. If you have no care plan, this is billed hourly — commonly $100–$150 an hour in Australia.
• Business email. Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 runs about $8–$12 per user per month. It is not included in hosting, whatever the sales page implies.

What a fair care plan looks like

A reasonable plan for a small business site in 2026 is $49–$150 a month and should include hosting, SSL, updates, backups, security scanning, uptime monitoring, a small allowance of content edits, and a monthly report. If a plan is $19 a month, something is missing — usually updates or support.

A real-world caution

The ACCI's 2025 Small Business Conditions Report found 47% of small businesses pointing to rising costs as a pressure, with software and marketing among the categories adding to it. Subscription creep is real. The fix is simple: list every recurring website cost in one place, with renewal dates, and review it once a year.

Use the calculator above

Pick your hosting tier, how many domains you hold, whether updates are managed, and how many hours of changes you need. It gives you a monthly and annual figure, plus a three-year total, so you can compare a care plan against paying hourly.