Website maintenance cost for a small business in India (2026)
What keeping a small business website online really costs each year — domain, hosting, SSL, updates — with 2026 renewal rates, and when a maintenance contract is worth it.
The website was a one-time bill. Then, a year later, a second bill arrives — "renewal", or "AMC", or "maintenance" — and nobody explained it when you paid the first one.
Some of that bill is unavoidable and some of it is work you may or may not need. This post separates the two, with the real 2026 renewal prices, so you can tell whether what you are being asked to pay is fair.
1. The three bills nobody can avoid
Whoever built your site, and however it was built, keeping it online needs three things. Here is what each costs at renewal, from the vendors' own Indian pricing pages, checked on 3 October 2026.
The domain — your address
| First year | Every year after | |
|---|---|---|
| .in at Hostinger | ₹1 | ₹899 |
| .in at GoDaddy | ₹1 (with a 3-year purchase) | ₹899 |
| .com at Hostinger | ₹1 | ₹1,499 |
| .com at GoDaddy | ₹1 (with a 3-year purchase) | ₹1,599 |
The first-year price is a hook. The renewal price is the real one, and it is the one you will pay for as long as the business has a website.
Hosting — the computer your site lives on
The advertised prices are real, but they come with a condition: you pay several years upfront, and the price goes up when the term ends.
- Hostinger Single: ₹69 a month if you pay for 48 months at once (₹3,312). Renews at ₹289 a month.
- Hostinger Premium: ₹149 a month on the same 48-month term. Renews at ₹449 a month.
- GoDaddy Starter: ₹89 a month for the first three-year term; its regular price is listed as ₹299 a month.
- GoDaddy Economy: ₹219 a month on the same terms; regular price ₹599 a month.
The padlock — SSL
The padlock in the address bar comes from an SSL certificate. A basic one is free. Let's Encrypt issues them at no charge to hundreds of millions of sites, and Hostinger installs a free one automatically on every plan. If someone is charging you separately for "SSL" on a small business site, ask what you are getting that the free one does not give you.
Add 18% GST
Hostinger lists its prices without GST, and the 18% is added at checkout. Put together, at renewal:
That is the honest minimum. With a .com and the next hosting plan up it is closer to ₹8,100. Anything you are paid beyond roughly ₹5,000 – ₹8,000 a year is being paid for work, not for keeping the lights on — which is fine, as long as you know what the work is.
2. The work: what "maintenance" is meant to mean
How much work a site needs depends almost entirely on what it was built with.
If it is WordPress
A great many small business sites are built on WordPress, and WordPress genuinely needs looking after. The reason is plugins — the add-ons that make the contact form, the gallery and the WhatsApp button work.
- Patchstack's 2026 security report counted 11,334 new WordPress vulnerabilities in 2025, up 42% on the year before. 91% were in plugins; only six were in WordPress itself.
- 46% had no fix available at the moment they were made public, and the median time to the first attack was five hours.
- Sucuri's 2023 hacked-website report found 39.1% of the CMS sites it cleaned were running out-of-date software when they were infected.
So "updates" on a WordPress site is real work, and a site nobody updates is a site waiting to be hacked. A fee for keeping plugins current, taking backups, and checking it still works afterwards is a fee for something.
If it is a simple static site
A site built without a content system or plugins — hand-built pages served as files — has almost nothing to update. There is no plugin to go out of date and no login page to attack. Its maintenance is mostly the domain and hosting bills above, plus the occasional text change.
Ask your developer which one you have. The answer changes what a fair maintenance fee looks like by a lot.
3. What maintenance plans charge in India
Published plans, checked 3 October 2026. None of them says whether GST is included.
| Who | Price | What is in it |
|---|---|---|
| W For Web — Essential | ₹7,999 – ₹14,999 a year | hosting, domain, SSL, updates and backups twice a year — only for sites they built |
| W For Web — Managed | ₹1,499 – ₹2,999 a month | monthly updates and backups, malware removal, uptime monitoring |
| Redpulse Software — Basic | ₹1,999 a month | patches, plugin updates, weekly backups, uptime monitoring, monthly malware scan, two content edits |
| Redpulse Software — Standard / Premium | ₹4,999 / ₹12,999 a month | more of the same; Premium is for online stores |
| webdesignerkolkata.in | ₹2,000 a month | security patches, backups, minor updates |
| Nikitha | from ₹15,000 a year, or from ₹6,000 a month | — |
One cost guide (Codingclave) puts the usual range at ₹2,000 – ₹10,000 a month and says most businesses pay ₹3,000 – ₹5,000.
Notice the spread: from ₹7,999 a year to ₹12,999 a month. Those are not the same service at different prices. The cheap end is "we keep it online and update it twice a year". The dear end is a store with somebody watching it every week.
4. Is your maintenance fee fair? Six questions
Send these to whoever is billing you:
- Is the domain and hosting included in this fee, or billed on top? This alone can be a ₹5,000 – ₹8,000 a year difference.
- What exactly happens each month? "Maintenance" should become a list: updates, backups, checks.
- Where are the backups kept, and when did you last test restoring one? A backup nobody has restored is a hope, not a backup.
- How many changes a month are included — new prices, photographs, opening hours?
- Whose name are the domain and hosting in? If it is theirs, the fee is also the price of leaving.
- If I stop paying, what happens to the site?
Then do the arithmetic. If you pay ₹2,000 a month and the domain and hosting are included, about ₹5,000 – ₹8,000 of the ₹24,000 is the unavoidable part. The other ₹16,000 – ₹19,000 is paying for the list in answer 2. Is that list worth that to you? Sometimes it clearly is.
5. When a maintenance contract is worth paying — and when it is not
Worth it if:
- Your site is WordPress or WooCommerce, and nobody in the business will update it.
- It takes orders or payments, so a day offline costs real money.
- You change prices, products or photographs often and do not want to learn how.
Probably not worth it if:
- It is a five-page site that says who you are, where you are and when you are open, and it changes twice a year.
- It is a static site with no plugins to update.
- You are paying for "maintenance" and cannot get an answer to question 2.
In that second case, the honest alternative is to pay the domain and hosting yourself, in your own name, and pay for a change only when you need one.
Where we stand
We do not charge a monthly or yearly fee. The sites we build are simple and fast on purpose, so there is little to maintain. The domain and hosting are registered in your name on day one, and you pay the registrar and host directly at their published rates — we tell you the figures before you commit. If you later want a change you cannot make yourself, it is quoted as a small separate job.
That is not the right model for everyone. A busy online store may well be better off with a good maintenance plan. If you want to see the arithmetic for your own numbers, the retainer or pay-once calculator does it, and should a small shop pay a monthly retainer, or pay once? makes the full argument both ways.
The website itself — what it should cost to build, by price band — is covered in website design cost in Kolkata.
What to do this week
- Find out whose name your domain is registered in. Any domain lookup site will show the registrar; ask the developer for the account.
- Find your renewal date and your renewal price for the domain and the hosting.
- Ask your developer the six questions above, in writing.
- Subtract the domain and hosting from your maintenance fee. Decide whether what is left is worth it.
Not sure what state your site is in? Run the free scan — under a minute, and it tells you in writing what is broken before anybody quotes you anything.
The things people actually ask
Do I have to pay for maintenance at all?
You have to pay for the domain and the hosting, or the site goes offline. You do not have to pay anyone a maintenance fee. Whether you should depends on what the site is built with and whether anyone will look after it otherwise.
My developer says SSL costs ₹3,000 a year. Is that right?
For a basic small business site, a working SSL certificate is free — Let's Encrypt provides them, and most hosts install one automatically. Paid certificates exist for specific needs. Ask what the paid one does that the free one does not.
Why did my hosting bill triple this year?
Almost certainly because the introductory term ended. The low monthly price you were sold was for a fixed term paid upfront; renewal is at the regular price — ₹289 instead of ₹69 a month on Hostinger's cheapest plan, for example.
Can I move my site away from my developer?
If the domain is in your name and you have the logins, yes. If it is in theirs, start by asking them to transfer it to you — politely, and while everyone is still on speaking terms.
Every price in this post comes from the vendor's own Indian pricing page or a published maintenance plan, checked on 3 October 2026: Hostinger India and GoDaddy India for domains and hosting; Let's Encrypt for SSL; W For Web, Redpulse Software, webdesignerkolkata.in, Nikitha and Codingclave for maintenance plans. Security figures are from Patchstack's State of WordPress Security in 2026 and Sucuri's 2023 hacked-website report. Prices change — check the live page before you rely on any one of them.
Questions are free, whether or not you hire anyone. Ask on WhatsApp or write to shyam@orderzone.in.
Written by Shyam Patra, who runs Orderzone from Kolkata. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell me and I will fix it — the date at the top changes when I do.