Published
9 MIN READ
Website Maintenance Cost: WordPress vs Framer
How much it costs to maintain a website: on Framer, the cost is the platform subscription, about US$ 30 per month on the plan most projects use. On WordPress, add hosting, a certificate, paid plugins and maintenance hours, and the bill usually starts at US$ 60 and goes past US$ 200 per month.
This is the math almost nobody does before hiring. The project budget gets discussed in detail, and the cost of the following three years is left out of the spreadsheet. But that cost is what decides whether the website was cheap or expensive, and the difference between the two options above tops US$ 6,000 over three years in the heaviest scenario.
How much does it cost to maintain a website per month?
It depends entirely on how many pieces the website has to maintain. A website that runs on a platform with infrastructure included has one cost line. A website that runs on its own server, with installed extensions, has five or six. The table below breaks down what exists in each case.
Cost line | Framer website | WordPress website |
|---|---|---|
Platform subscription | about US$ 30 per month | not applicable |
Hosting | included | from US$ 4 to over US$ 80 per month |
Security certificate | included | from free to US$ 60 per year |
Content delivery network | included | purchased separately |
Paid plugins | do not exist | from US$ 12 to US$ 90 per year |
Security updates | nothing on your end | monthly routine, paid by the hour |
Backups | included | separate service or plugin |
Notice that only one line switches sides. Everything else is either included or does not exist. That is why the comparison is not between two similar monthly fees, but between a subscription and an operation.
What goes into the maintenance bill
Website maintenance is a name that covers three different things, and mixing them up is what produces those absurd ranges you see out there, from US$ 20 to US$ 5,000 per month for supposedly the same service.
Infrastructure. Keeping the website online: server, domain, certificate, backups. It is the bare minimum and improves nothing, it only keeps things from breaking.
Corrective maintenance. Updating versions, applying security patches, fixing whatever stopped working after an update.
Evolution. A new page, a new section, content tweaks, conversion improvements. That is not maintenance, it is a small project, and it should be quoted as one.
When someone charges a single monthly fee for all three, the client usually pays for evolution they do not use or gets maintenance that does not cover them. Separating the three is the first thing to do when reading any monthly contract proposal, and it is one of the questions worth covering in what to ask about support before signing.
How much does it cost to maintain a WordPress website?
Among the clients who came to us from WordPress, the bill ran between US$ 60 and US$ 200 per month, adding up hosting, paid plugins and some contracted maintenance. Surveys published by large website platforms put agency maintenance in a much wider range, from US$ 200 to US$ 5,000 per month, because they include very different services under the same name.
What makes this maintenance mandatory, not optional, is the attack surface. According to Patchstack's State of WordPress Security report, published in February 2026, there were 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the ecosystem during 2025, up 42% from the previous year, and 91% of them were in plugins. Almost half were disclosed with no patch available, and the median time to first exploitation of the most targeted flaws is five hours.
In day-to-day terms: someone has to keep up with this every month. If that person does not exist, the apparent cost drops and the risk goes up. The most common scenario we find is not the website that is expensive to maintain, it is the cheap website with no maintenance at all, running extensions that have been outdated for two years.
And on Framer, what is left of the bill?
The subscription. Hosting, a global content delivery network, the certificate and security updates already come inside the plan, and there are no extensions you installed that need updating. Framer's official pricing page, checked in September 2026, charges US$ 10 per month for the entry plan and US$ 30 for the mid-tier plan, which is what most of our projects use because of redirects, a staging environment and CMS limits.
For a client in Brazil, at the Central Bank of Brazil's PTAX selling rate of September 4, 2026, 5.1253 reais per dollar, the mid-tier plan comes to about US$ 30 per month, or about US$ 360 per year, before IOF (Brazil's tax on foreign currency transactions). The charge is international and in dollars, so the amount on the card varies with the exchange rate and the tax.
There are additional costs when the project calls for them: an extra editor, an additional language, conversion tests. None of them is mandatory on a corporate website, and the details of each are in the plan price that stays on your card every month.
The three-year bill, side by side
Adding up thirty-six months, the difference stops being a detail and becomes a budget decision.
Scenario | Per month | Over 3 years |
|---|---|---|
Framer, mid-tier plan | about US$ 30 | about US$ 1,080 |
WordPress, lean scenario | about US$ 60 | about US$ 2,160 |
WordPress, with contracted maintenance | about US$ 200 | about US$ 7,200 |
The two WordPress lines come from what the clients who migrated here used to pay. The Framer figures follow the official dollar price; for a Brazilian card, the amount also depends on the exchange rate cited above and does not include IOF. None of the lines include evolution, which on any platform is a separate project.
The smallest difference in the table already pays for a meaningful part of a new project. To size it up, put it next to the project's upfront investment: over three years, the recurring savings usually cover a significant share of what was paid for the build.
The invisible cost: the time of whoever looks after it
No table captures the most expensive line, which is someone's attention. On WordPress, there is a question that has to be answered every month: is everything up to date? If the answer depends on a person inside the company, that time is a cost, even without an invoice.
Worse than the cost is the fragility. When that person leaves, changes roles or gets busy, the website stays online looking normal while it piles up pending issues. The problem shows up months later, always all at once. A website nobody needs to maintain is a website that survives team changes, and that is the operational advantage that does not show up in a price comparison.
That is also why continuity matters when choosing a provider. When the people who maintain the website are the ones who built it, things get fixed faster than with someone who has to understand the structure before touching it.
What happens after delivery, in practice
At Wama there is no monthly maintenance contract, and that is a decision, not a gap. On Framer there is nothing to maintain: the client takes over the subscription on their own account and the website stays online without intervention. Charging a monthly fee for work the platform already does would be selling air.
What exists instead are four things. The client's team is trained to use the CMS and publish on their own. There is a warranty period after delivery, during which fixes are free of charge. Small tweaks keep being done as a courtesy after that. And the channel stays open for one-off questions, even without a contract.
When the request is bigger than a tweak, it gets its own quote, with a written scope. That keeps the math honest on both sides: the client does not pay for months when they needed nothing, and real work is paid when it happens. Continuous product evolution is a different category, and continuous evolution is something else, with a different price.
When is a monthly maintenance contract worth it?
It is worth it when there is real recurring work. A website with weekly publishing that nobody on the team wants to touch, an operation that changes campaigns every month, or a platform that truly requires constant updates. In those cases, the monthly fee buys predictability and makes sense.
It is not worth it when the monthly fee only covers keeping the website online on a platform that already does that on its own. If you received a monthly contract proposal, ask for the list of what is included and compare it with what your platform already delivers. The question that separates a useful contract from a useless one is: what do I get in the months when nothing happens?
If the answer is "monitoring and updates" and your website runs on a platform with infrastructure included, the honest answer is that you get very little. If your website runs on WordPress today and that bill is weighing on you, moving off a website that eats up maintenance every month has a project cost and recurring savings that pay for themselves. The platform decision, after all, is what determines this bill: the platform choice decides the cost of the next three years.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to maintain a corporate website per year?
On Framer, about US$ 360 per year on the mid-tier plan, counting only the subscription. On WordPress, the annual bill usually lands between US$ 720 and US$ 2,400 when there is contracted maintenance, adding up hosting, certificate, paid plugins and hours of work.
Do I need to pay for monthly maintenance for the website to work?
It depends entirely on the platform. On tools with infrastructure included, the website stays online without any intervention, because there is no server or extension under your responsibility. On WordPress, someone needs to update versions and extensions regularly, otherwise the website piles up known flaws and becomes an easy target.
What happens if I do not maintain my WordPress website?
The website keeps working for a while and then fails all at once. Almost all vulnerabilities in the ecosystem are in extensions, and exploitation of the most targeted ones starts a few hours after public disclosure. Without updates, the exposure only grows.
Do you offer a monthly maintenance contract?
No, and it is a choice. On Framer there is no infrastructure to maintain on the client's side, so a monthly fee would cover little real work. We deliver with CMS training, a warranty period and an open channel for questions, and bigger requests get their own quote.
Who pays for the platform subscription after delivery?
The client, on their own account. The project is transferred and the subscription stays on the company's card, which becomes the owner of the website, the domain and the account. That lets you switch providers at any time without depending on anyone to stay online.
If you want to know how much your website would cost to maintain over the next three years before choosing the platform, it is worth understanding how Wama's follow-up works. We do this math together with the quote, not after it.
