How much does website maintenance cost per year?

Annual website maintenance costs $2,000-$15,000 depending on the platform, complexity, and how much changes.

For a custom Next.js site hosted on Vercel: hosting $0-$240/year (free tier covers most marketing sites, Pro is $20/month), domain renewal $12-$50/year, security monitoring $0 (HTTPS is free, platform handles infrastructure security), content updates depend on your CMS — if you can do it yourself, $0. Total: $200-$500/year for a well-built custom site with in-house content management.

For a WordPress site: hosting $300-$1,200/year (managed WordPress hosting), plugin licenses $200-$2,000/year (premium themes, SEO plugins, form builders, security plugins), security patches and updates $500-$3,000/year (someone needs to test and apply updates monthly), performance optimization $500-$2,000/year (plugins degrade performance over time), SSL certificate $0-$100/year. Total: $1,500-$8,000/year.

Additional costs regardless of platform: content creation ($1,000-$10,000/year if outsourced), SEO monitoring tools ($100-$400/month), analytics tools (free to $150/month), and developer time for new features ($100-$200/hour).

The hidden cost: opportunity cost. A slow, outdated site loses visitors to competitors with better experience. That's hard to quantify but often the largest cost.