Posted by: Adam Weston
08 January 2024
If you run a serious website or digital platform, maintenance isn’t optional. Uptime, security and performance need attention every week – often every day. This guide explains realistic UK price ranges, what’s included in a proper maintenance plan, and when 24/7 support is worth it. It also shows a simple way to estimate the cost of downtime so you can set the right budget.
Growcreate supports Umbraco, Optimizely and custom .NET platforms with SLA‑backed support, Azure‑based monitoring and incident response. If you need an expert view on your site, book a Support Assessment at the end.
The quick answer
Independent UK guides regularly place core website maintenance for small to mid‑size sites in the £50–£500 per month range, depending on complexity and support depth (basic updates at the low end, broader maintenance and content help at the higher end). For larger e‑commerce or custom applications, monthly maintenance often sits in the £600–£2,000+ range, with some providers charging from £1,500/month for high‑touch service.
If your platform is mission‑critical and needs guaranteed response at any hour, the budget shifts. True 24/7 coverage, proactive monitoring and defined SLAs add cost but reduce outage risk. As a reference point, Umbraco support retainers with SLA commitments typically start around four figures per month in the UK.
Typical monthly ranges in the UK
| Website type | 9–5 support | 24/7 SLA‑backed support |
|---|---|---|
| Small business brochure site | £50 – £300 | £300 – £900 |
| Mid‑size or content‑rich site | £200 – £750 | £750 – £1,500 |
| E‑commerce | £300 – £1,200 | £1,200 – £2,500+ |
| Custom application or portal | £400 – £1,500 | £1,500 – £3,500+ |
These are common UK bands from public sources and market norms. Your platform, traffic risk and compliance needs will move the number up or down.
What a website maintenance plan should include
A credible plan covers prevention, detection and response. At a minimum you should expect:
- Software updates – CMS core, packages, libraries
- Security monitoring – vulnerability checks, WAF rules, certificate renewal
- Backups and restore – automated, tested and retained to policy
- Uptime and performance monitoring – with alerting and runbooks
- Incident response – triage, escalation and post‑incident review
- Content and minor enhancements – agreed hours for changes
If you process personal data, security is a legal duty. UK GDPR requires “appropriate” technical and organisational measures to protect personal data, including against accidental loss or damage. Maintenance, patching and monitoring support that duty. (Source: ICO – Integrity and confidentiality)
At Growcreate, onboarding includes a SupportCheck with 60+ diagnostics across code, hosting and operations. That creates a clear runbook and avoids surprises later.
Hosting and infrastructure – why it changes the price
Some providers bundle hosting with maintenance. Others keep it separate. Either way, cloud choices and SLAs shape risk and spend.
- Shared or basic VPS hosting is cheap but offers limited isolation and lighter SLAs. Many small businesses pay £10–£100 per month for hosting and apps, then add maintenance on top. (Source: Forbes Advisor UK)
- Azure services introduce stronger SLAs and resilience patterns. For example, Azure App Service includes a 99.95% uptime SLA on paid tiers, while availability zones support 99.99% VM uptime architectures. Free or shared tiers carry no SLA. (Source: Azure App Service pricing, Azure availability zones)
If your site genuinely needs to be always on, platform and architecture decisions are as important as the support hours.
Growcreate runs 24/7 support and monitoring for Umbraco and .NET workloads, with SLA commitments, priority handling and Azure‑based alerting and recovery.
How to calculate the cost of downtime
Here’s a simple method you can adapt in minutes.
Estimate revenue per minute
- Annual online revenue ÷ 365 ÷ 24 ÷ 60 = revenue per minute
This is the quick‑calc approach used by incident management teams. (Source: Atlassian – Cost of downtime)
Estimate impact factor
- Not every outage stops all revenue. If 40% of transactions route online, use 0.4. If people can still browse but not pay, use an informed fraction.
Add staff and recovery costs
- Include overtime, third‑party fees and SLA penalties if they apply.
Multiply by minutes of downtime
- Minutes of downtime × (revenue per minute × impact) + staff & recovery cost
Worked example
- Annual online revenue: £12,000,000
- Revenue per minute: £22.83
- Impact factor: 0.7 (70% of sales depend on the site working end‑to‑end)
- Staff & recovery per incident: £2,000
- Downtime minutes: compare 99.9% vs 99.95% uptime
Reference minutes per year: 99.9% equals about 525.6 minutes and 99.95% about 262.8 minutes, so the gap is roughly 262.8 minutes saved across a year. (Source: Uptrends downtime calculator)
- Annualised loss at 99.9%: 525.6 × (£22.83 × 0.7) + incidents’ fixed costs
- Annualised loss at 99.95%: 262.8 × (£22.83 × 0.7) + incidents’ fixed costs
Even with conservative inputs, pushing uptime from 99.9% to 99.95% can pay for a stronger support plan.
Benchmark context: in recent surveys, more than half of operators said their last serious outage cost over $100,000. Use your own numbers, but it shows how quickly costs can escalate.
What affects maintenance cost the most
- Platform and codebase – Umbraco or Optimizely on modern .NET is easier to secure than a legacy stack
- Risk tolerance – 9–5 vs 24/7 response, defined SLAs and escalation
- Hosting – shared hosting vs Azure architectures with availability zones and database SLAs (Source: Azure App Service pricing, Azure availability zones)
- Compliance – regulated sectors will expect patching discipline and audit trails aligned with UK GDPR’s security principle (Source: ICO – Integrity and confidentiality)
- Scope – just monitoring, or monitoring plus enhancements, performance tuning and DevOps
SEO and performance impact you can measure
- Availability affects crawling. If Google can’t reach your site during crawl windows, indexing can lag. Prolonged errors can also reduce indexed pages until recovery.
- Speed now feeds ranking systems through Core Web Vitals. Strong LCP, INP and CLS scores support visibility, especially on mobile.
A maintenance plan that includes performance work, regression testing and monitoring will protect rankings and conversions, not just uptime.
Umbraco, Optimizely and Azure specifics to plan for
- Umbraco 17 is the current LTS release as of 27 November 2025, which reduces upgrade churn for the next three years. If you’re starting fresh or planning an upgrade, targeting LTS brings stability.
- Azure App Service and zone‑redundant patterns are a proven route to higher availability for .NET and Umbraco sites, with SLAs stated publicly for paid tiers.
- Growcreate’s support for Umbraco, Optimizely and .NET combines 24/7 monitoring, defined response and resolution targets, and Azure‑based recovery.
Transparent pricing bands to benchmark against
These bands help you compare proposals on a like‑for‑like basis. They assume a modern .NET CMS and UK hosting.
| Band | Summary | What you get | Typical monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials (9–5) | Lower‑risk marketing site | Updates, backups, monitoring, small changes queue | £150 – £450 |
| Growth (9–5) | Content‑rich or multi‑market | Above plus performance work, monthly QA, regression checks | £450 – £900 |
| Always‑on (24/7) | Revenue‑critical or global | 24/7 monitoring, P1 acknowledgement in minutes, on‑call engineering, runbooks | £1,200 – £2,500+ |
| Enterprise SLA | Regulated, portals, complex integrations | Multi‑region Azure patterns, formal SLAs, change control, quarterly drills | £2,500 – £5,000+ |
For Umbraco specifically, UK retainers with SLA commitments commonly start around four figures per month. Use this as an anchor when assessing offers that claim 24/7 coverage.
What to look for in a support partner
- Defined SLAs – response and resolution targets by priority, with real escalation
- Clear runbooks – so engineers know your stack and integrations
- Proactive monitoring – real‑time alerts for uptime, performance and security
- Security practice – patch windows, vulnerability management, incident reporting aligned to UK GDPR’s security principle (Source: ICO – Security outcomes)
- Platform expertise – Umbraco, Optimizely, Azure and .NET
Growcreate provides 24/7 coverage, defined response windows and 99.95% uptime targets on Azure‑based architectures for enterprise Umbraco sites.
Example scopes
- Monitoring and response – uptime, performance, security alerts with on‑call engineering
- Preventive maintenance – monthly updates, certificate renewals, package hygiene
- Backups and DR – retention, restore tests, recovery drills
- Performance and SEO – Core Web Vitals, database tuning, caching, image optimisation
- Change requests – content updates and minor enhancements agreed in hours
Get a support assessment
Want to know what support your platform needs and what it should cost? Growcreate offers tailored assessments for Umbraco, Optimizely and Azure-hosted platforms.
We'll identify what matters, what's missing and how to get the best value from your support budget.
Let's talk Umbraco Support Assessment
FAQs about website maintenance
If downtime outside office hours hurts revenue, reputation or compliance, yes. E‑commerce, portals and regulated sectors usually need 24/7. Outage costs are rising and SLAs reduce risk. (Source: Uptime Institute 2024–2025 analysis via DCD)
For small to mid‑size sites, £50–£500 per month is common for maintenance depending on needs. Complex or revenue‑critical platforms raise that to £600–£2,000+, with some providers starting from £1,500 for hands‑on service.
Website maintenance is the ongoing process of keeping your website secure, up to date and performing as expected. It includes tasks like applying software updates, monitoring uptime, fixing errors and protecting against security threats. Regular maintenance helps ensure your site stays online, loads quickly and supports business goals, especially on platforms like Umbraco. Ongoing work to keep your site secure, fast and available. Includes updates, backups, monitoring and fixes.
Typical services include CMS updates, uptime monitoring, backup and restore, SSL certificates, performance fixes, and technical support. Growcreate also includes 60+ diagnostics as part of onboarding.
Without proactive maintenance, you risk outages, security breaches, poor performance and compliance issues, especially on platforms like Umbraco.
In-house teams can manage light content updates or plugin installs. But for 24/7 monitoring, performance tuning, and secure backups, most firms rely on specialist support like Growcreate's.
We recommend monthly core updates, weekly uptime and performance checks, and immediate patching for critical vulnerabilities.
Yes, indirectly. Availability and speed influence crawling and ranking systems. Core Web Vitals feed Google’s ranking systems, and extended downtime can delay indexing. (Source: Search Engine Journal – Core Web Vitals in ranking systems, Google Search Central – Crawling & indexing FAQ)
We specialise in .NET, Umbraco, Optimizely, and Azure-hosted CMS platforms, including complex multi-site and regulated environments.
Basic shared or VPS hosting is cheap but carries lighter SLAs. Azure’s paid tiers publish SLAs and offer higher‑availability patterns for .NET and Umbraco. (Source: Forbes Advisor UK, Azure App Service pricing, Azure availability zones)