Website maintenance cost in India usually runs from about ₹1,500 to ₹3,000 a month for a small brochure site, ₹3,000 to ₹7,000 for a typical business website, and ₹7,000 to ₹15,000 or more for an ecommerce store or web app. Paid yearly as an AMC, that is roughly ₹18,000 to ₹1,80,000. On top of the maintenance fee you pay for hosting, domain, email and any paid plugins, plus 18% GST on most of it.
Those ranges come from published Indian price guides, and they disagree with each other more than you might expect. Below we explain why, what each tier should include, what renews every year regardless of who maintains the site, and how to compare DIY, freelancer and agency options. There are two worked budgets, a maintenance task checklist, and the questions to ask before you sign an AMC.
Website maintenance cost in India: quick price table
This table combines the tiers published by Redpulse Software's 2026 pricing guide (last reviewed August 2026) and ARE InfoTech's maintenance guide. These are market ranges, not Webhorse prices, and they exclude GST and renewals unless a provider says otherwise.
| Website type | Monthly maintenance | Yearly (AMC) | Typical scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal site, portfolio, landing page | ₹1,500 to ₹3,000 | ₹18,000 to ₹36,000 | Updates, backups, basic security, small text and image edits |
| Small business or service website, blog | ₹3,000 to ₹7,000 | ₹36,000 to ₹84,000 | The above plus more frequent backups, malware scans, speed checks, regular content edits |
| Ecommerce store, web app, high-traffic site | ₹7,000 to ₹15,000 | ₹84,000 to ₹1,80,000 | The above plus checkout and payment testing, database clean-up, faster response |
| Enterprise, multi-site or complex custom build | ₹15,000+ | ₹1,80,000+ | Custom SLA, staging environments, priority or 24/7 support |
ARE InfoTech's table starts lower, at ₹1,000 to ₹2,500 a month for a small business site, and goes up to ₹10,000 to ₹50,000 for marketplace or aggregator sites. MilesWeb puts the average between ₹2,000 and ₹25,000 a month. If a quote falls inside these bands, it is normal for the Indian market. What matters more is what the fee covers.
Why maintenance quotes vary so much
Two agencies can quote ₹1,500 and ₹8,000 for the same website and both be fair. Even the published guides are inconsistent. GoDaddy's India cost guide (updated 2026) gives website maintenance as "INR 500 to INR 1000 on average" in one section, "INR 40,000 to INR 80,000" in its FAQ, and monthly figures from ₹2,000 to ₹1,20,000 elsewhere on the same page.
The gap usually comes down to six things:
- Platform. A WordPress site with 25 plugins needs weekly attention. A Shopify store needs much less technical work because Shopify runs the servers.
- What counts as "maintenance". Some quotes cover only updates and backups. Others include content changes, SEO reports or small design work.
- Hours included. A ₹2,000 plan might include one hour of changes a month; a ₹7,000 plan might include five.
- Response time. Fixing a broken checkout within two hours costs more than replying within two working days.
- Whether hosting is bundled. Some agencies include hosting in the fee, others bill it separately.
- Who built the site. Taking over a site someone else built, with no documentation, usually costs more at the start.
Redpulse also gives a rule of thumb many agencies use: yearly maintenance at around 15% to 20% of the original build cost. If you paid ₹1,00,000 for the site, expect ₹15,000 to ₹20,000 a year for basic upkeep. Our guide to website development cost in India covers build prices if you need the starting figure.
What is included at each maintenance tier
Use this to compare quotes line by line. If a task you need is missing from a plan, ask whether it is billed per hour.
| Task | Basic | Standard | Premium / ecommerce |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMS, theme and plugin updates | Monthly | Weekly | Weekly, tested on staging first |
| Backups | Weekly | Daily | Daily or real-time, stored off-site |
| Malware scan and firewall | Basic scan | Regular scans, firewall rules | Continuous monitoring, clean-up included |
| Uptime monitoring | Sometimes | Yes | Yes, with alerts to the team |
| Content and image changes | Small edits, about 1 hour | A few hours a month | More hours, new pages or banners |
| Speed and Core Web Vitals checks | Rarely | Monthly or quarterly | Monthly, with fixes |
| Checkout, payment and form testing | No | Forms only | Checkout and gateway tested after every update |
| Monthly report | Short email | Report with updates done | Report plus uptime, speed and security summary |
| Response time | 1 to 3 working days | Same or next working day | Hours, sometimes 24/7 for outages |
SEO and content marketing are separate services in most agencies. If a "maintenance" quote looks expensive, check whether it quietly includes SEO work.
Monthly plan vs annual maintenance contract (AMC)
In India most agencies offer both. The work is the same; the difference is how you pay and how easy it is to leave.
| Monthly plan | Annual AMC | |
|---|---|---|
| Payment | Every month | Once a year, sometimes quarterly |
| Price | List price | Often a small discount for paying upfront |
| Exit | Usually with notice of a few weeks | Locked in for the year unless the contract allows exit |
| Unused hours | Usually lost at month end | Sometimes pooled across the year, so ask |
| Best for | New relationships, sites that change often | Stable sites with a provider you already trust |
If you are trying a new provider, start monthly for three months, then move to an AMC once you have seen their work. Redpulse's own published plans, for example, are priced yearly at ₹23,988, ₹59,988 and ₹1,55,988, which works out to about ₹1,999, ₹4,999 and ₹12,999 a month.
Renewal costs you pay every year (on top of maintenance)
This is the part most maintenance articles skip. Even if nobody touches your website, these bills arrive every year. A maintenance agency may pay them for you and pass them on, but they are not part of the labour fee.
Hosting: the renewal price is the real price
Indian hosting is sold with large first-term discounts. The renewal rate is what you pay from the second term onwards. Here are Hostinger India's shared hosting prices as listed on 16 October 2026, for the 48-month term, before GST:
| Plan | Intro price | Renewal price | Renewal per year | Renewal vs intro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single | ₹69/month | ₹289/month | ₹3,468 | 4.2x |
| Premium | ₹149/month | ₹449/month | ₹5,388 | 3.0x |
| Unlimited | ₹249/month | ₹649/month | ₹7,788 | 2.6x |
| Cloud Startup | ₹599/month | ₹1,599/month | ₹19,188 | 2.7x |
Other hosts follow the same pattern. GoDaddy's guide puts shared hosting at ₹1,000 to ₹3,000 a year, VPS at roughly ₹16,000 to ₹30,000 a year, and cloud hosting from ₹30,000 to ₹1,00,000. A busy WooCommerce store usually needs VPS or cloud, which is a big jump from a ₹69 starter plan.
Domain name
GoDaddy's guide says a domain in India can cost anything from ₹100 to ₹6,000 a year. The first-year price is often a promotion, so check the renewal price before you buy, turn on auto-renew, and keep the domain in your own name and account. If your developer registered it under their account, ask them to transfer it to you.
SSL certificate
For most business sites, SSL is free. Hostinger says free SSL is built into every plan, and Let's Encrypt issues free certificates that last 90 days by default, with plans to cut its maximum to 45 days by February 2028. Short certificates need automatic renewal, so make sure your host or maintenance provider has it switched on. Paid certificates (GoDaddy quotes about ₹5,000 a year) only make sense if you have a specific reason for one.
Business email
Email is billed per mailbox. Hostinger's business email renews at ₹69, ₹119 or ₹179 per mailbox per month depending on the plan, before GST. A team of five on the Starter plan pays ₹4,140 a year at renewal. If your team uses Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 instead, check their per-user price at renewal too.
Platform subscriptions, plugins and apps
If your site runs on Shopify, the plan is your hosting. Shopify India's pricing page lists Basic at ₹1,499 a month billed yearly (₹1,994 monthly), Grow at ₹5,599 (₹7,447 monthly) and Advanced at ₹22,680 (₹30,164 monthly). Stores that use a third-party gateway such as Razorpay also pay Shopify's transaction fee of 2%, 1% or 0.6% depending on the plan. On WordPress, premium themes, page builders, security and backup plugins are usually yearly licences billed in US dollars, so add them up before you compare quotes. Our Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison goes through these running costs in detail.
Maintenance cost by platform
Redpulse's 2026 guide gives these monthly ranges by platform. They are a useful sense check against any quote you receive.
| Platform | Monthly range | Why |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | ₹2,000 to ₹8,000 | Core, theme and plugin updates are frequent; plugin conflicts need testing |
| Custom build (React, Next.js, Laravel) | ₹3,000 to ₹12,000 | Needs a developer who knows the codebase; dependency updates and server patches |
| Ecommerce (WooCommerce, Shopify, custom) | ₹5,000 to ₹15,000+ | Orders, payments, stock and checkout testing; downtime costs sales |
Two platform details affect cost in 2026. First, server software has end-of-life dates. According to php.net, PHP 8.2 stops receiving security fixes on 31 December 2026. If your WordPress site still runs on PHP 8.2 or older, budget a few hours for testing and upgrading. Second, hosted platforms like Shopify and Wix handle server updates and SSL themselves, so maintenance there is mostly content, apps and checking that nothing breaks after an app update.
DIY vs freelancer vs agency
| DIY | Freelancer | Agency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash cost | Hosting, domain, plugins only | Usually the lower end of the market ranges | Usually mid to upper end |
| Time from you | A few hours a month (Redpulse estimates 2 to 3), more when something breaks | Low | Low |
| Response when the site is down | Depends on you | Depends on one person's availability | Team cover, SLA in writing |
| Backups and security | Your setup | Varies | Usually part of the process |
| Good fit | Simple sites on Shopify, Wix or managed WordPress, owners comfortable with tech | Small sites with a reliable person you know | Lead-generating or ecommerce sites where downtime costs money |
DIY is realistic for a five-page site on a hosted builder. It becomes risky on WordPress or a custom build, because the expensive problems (a hacked site, a broken update, an expired domain) happen without warning. Redpulse estimates cleaning up a hacked site at ₹20,000 to ₹50,000 or more, before counting lost enquiries or sales. A year of basic maintenance often costs less than one clean-up.
GST on website maintenance
Website services in India attract 18% GST. IndiaFilings lists website development under SAC 998314 and IT support services under SAC 998313, both at 18%. A GST-registered agency should show this on the invoice.
- Ask whether a quote is "plus GST" or "inclusive". On a ₹5,000 monthly plan the difference is ₹900 a month, or ₹10,800 a year.
- Hosting and email prices from Hostinger are listed without GST, so add 18% to those as well.
- If your business is GST-registered, you can usually claim input tax credit on these invoices. Confirm with your CA.
- A freelancer below the GST registration threshold may not charge GST at all, which is one reason their quotes look cheaper.
Worked examples: what a year of upkeep really costs
These two examples are illustrative, not quotes. We picked figures inside the cited market ranges and show the maths so you can swap in your own numbers.
Example 1: 8-page WordPress business website
| Item | Assumption | Yearly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Hostinger Premium at renewal, ₹449 x 12 = ₹5,388 + 18% GST | ₹6,358 |
| Domain | Assumed ₹1,000 a year (within GoDaddy's ₹100 to ₹6,000 range) | ₹1,000 |
| SSL | Free, included with hosting | ₹0 |
| 3 mailboxes, Hostinger Starter at renewal, ₹69 x 3 x 12 = ₹2,484 + 18% GST | ₹2,931 | |
| Maintenance | Standard tier, assumed ₹4,000 a month x 12 = ₹48,000 + 18% GST | ₹56,640 |
| Total | About ₹5,577 a month | ₹66,929 |
Maintenance labour is about 85% of the bill. If you chose a basic tier at ₹2,000 a month instead, the total would drop by ₹28,320 including GST, but you would get fewer edits and slower responses.
Example 2: Shopify store on the Basic plan
| Item | Assumption | Yearly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify plan | Basic billed yearly, ₹1,499 x 12 (any applicable tax extra) | ₹17,988 |
| Domain | Assumed ₹1,000 a year | ₹1,000 |
| Maintenance | Ecommerce tier, assumed ₹6,000 a month x 12 = ₹72,000 + 18% GST | ₹84,960 |
| Total | About ₹8,662 a month, before apps and sales fees | ₹1,03,948 |
Paid apps are extra, and if you take payments through a third-party gateway, Shopify's 2% Basic-plan fee applies on top of the gateway's own fee.
Website maintenance checklist
Whether you do it yourself or hire someone, these are the tasks a maintained site gets. Use it to check what a provider is actually doing each month.
| How often | Task |
|---|---|
| Daily (automated) | Backup of files and database, stored off the hosting server; uptime monitor; malware scan |
| Weekly | Update CMS core, theme and plugins; check contact forms and checkout still work; review security alerts |
| Monthly | Check Google Search Console for errors and security issues; test page speed on mobile; fix broken links; delete spam and unused accounts |
| Quarterly | Restore a backup to a test copy to prove it works; review user accounts and remove leavers; remove unused plugins; check PHP or runtime version is supported |
| Yearly | Confirm domain, hosting, email and licence renewal dates and prices; review privacy policy; review the maintenance contract and hours used |
For the security side in more depth, see our 20-point website security checklist.
What to ask before you sign a maintenance contract
- Exactly which tasks are included, and how often?
- How many hours of changes are included each month, what is the rate for extra hours, and do unused hours carry over?
- What is the response time for an outage, a broken form or checkout, and a normal change request?
- Where are backups stored, how many copies are kept, and when did you last test a restore?
- Is hacked-site clean-up included, or billed separately?
- Are hosting, domain, email and plugin licences included, and in whose name are they registered?
- Is the price inclusive of GST?
- What is the notice period, and what do I receive when I leave (logins, files, documentation)?
The last question matters most. You should always own the domain, hosting account and admin logins, even if the agency manages them day to day.
Maintenance and Indian compliance
Two sets of rules make basic upkeep more than a nice-to-have. The CERT-In directions of April 2022 list website defacement and intrusion as reportable incidents, to be reported within 6 hours of noticing them, and require ICT logs to be kept for a rolling 180 days. The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules were notified on 14 November 2025 with an 18-month phased compliance period, and the government's PIB note says failing to keep reasonable security safeguards can attract a penalty of up to ₹250 crore. If your site collects names, phone numbers or emails through forms, include log retention and backups in the maintenance contract. This is a summary, not legal advice.
Frequently asked questions
How much is website maintenance cost in India per month?
Most published Indian price guides put it between ₹1,500 and ₹15,000 a month. A small brochure site sits at ₹1,500 to ₹3,000, a typical business site at ₹3,000 to ₹7,000, and ecommerce stores or web apps at ₹7,000 to ₹15,000 or more. GST at 18% is usually extra.
What is a website AMC?
An AMC (annual maintenance contract) is a yearly agreement where a provider maintains your website for a fixed fee, usually paid upfront. It typically covers updates, backups, security monitoring and a set number of content changes. For a business website, AMCs commonly fall between ₹36,000 and ₹84,000 a year.
How much does it cost to host a website for 1 year?
Basic shared hosting in India costs roughly ₹1,000 to ₹8,000 a year depending on the plan and whether you are on an introductory or renewal price. Hostinger's shared plans renew at ₹3,468 to ₹7,788 a year before GST. VPS and cloud hosting for busier sites cost ₹16,000 to ₹1,00,000 a year.
What is the cheapest web hosting per year in India?
Entry-level shared plans start under ₹100 a month on long introductory terms; Hostinger's Single plan is listed at ₹69 a month on a 48-month term. Check the renewal rate before buying, because that plan renews at ₹289 a month. Cheap shared hosting suits small, low-traffic sites, not busy online stores.
Is hosting included in website maintenance?
Sometimes. Some agencies bundle hosting into the maintenance fee and others bill it separately, so ask for each item to be listed. Whichever way it is billed, the hosting account should be in your name.
Can I maintain my website myself?
Yes, for a simple site on Shopify, Wix or managed WordPress hosting, if you can spend a few hours a month on updates, backups and checks. For WordPress sites with many plugins, custom builds and online stores, a professional plan is usually cheaper than fixing a hacked or broken site after the fact.
Get your website maintained properly
If you want a maintenance plan with clear tasks, response times and no surprises at renewal, our website development and maintenance team can review your current site, hosting and renewals and tell you what it needs. Contact Webhorse Studio to talk it through.
