How is the website maintenance estimate calculated?

The calculator multiplies estimated implementation hours by published global hourly-rate ranges. Scope hours, design adjustments, hosting, and maintenance hours are planning assumptions you can inspect or change, not market averages.

What does the estimate leave out?

Taxes, your own time, content production, payment processing, transaction commissions, marketing, and specialist legal or compliance work are excluded unless you add a budget under annual extras. Usage-based infrastructure can exceed the starting budget.

Is Superapp a fixed-price substitute for an agency?

No. The comparison shows a Pro subscription budget, not a promise that every scope fits its credits or ships without specialist work. You supply direction, review, testing, and launch decisions. Additional credits, infrastructure, and outside services can cost more.

Are hosting and platform fees counted twice?

No. Hosted WordPress.com and Shopify replace the hosting budget with their platform subscription. Domain renewal and optional extras remain separate. DIY sets paid labor to zero but does not value your own time.

How much does website maintenance cost?

Price your website

Site type

Number of pages

Platform

Custom design

Who builds it?

Features

Yearly running costs view

Domain / year

Custom hosting budget / year

Maintenance hours / year

Other services / year

Free account · Two quick questions · Personalized cost breakdown

What drives the cost?

The yearly view separates your domain, hosting, subscriptions, and maintenance labor from the original build. Maintenance hours cover routine updates and fixes; a redesign or new product feature is a separate project.

Compare build options

Public example using the default preset. Get your free estimate above for a breakdown of your selected scope.

Compare build options
Build option	One-off labor	Recurring budget
DIY builder	$0 paid labor; your time excluded	$140 + your maintenance time
Freelancer	$660–$5,500	$500–$1,340/year
Agency	$1,100–$5,390	$740–$1,316/year
Superapp Pro	You build and review the app	$440/year illustrative budget

Default preset breakdown and assumptions

Estimated effort: 44–110 hours
Delivery effort at 30 productive hours/week: 1.5–3.7 person-weeks
Global agency hourly range: $25–$49
Global freelancer hourly range: $15–$50
Custom design adjustment: Template / standard design
Domain budget: $20/year
Hosting / platform: $120/year
Maintenance labor: $600–$1,176/year
Additional services: $0/year
Apple membership: $0/year

Hours include implementation and testing, not a delivery guarantee. Website scope starts at 12–140 hours plus 2–5 hours for each additional page. App scope starts at 400–5,000 hours depending on complexity. Selected features add the effort below. Annual domain and hosting budgets are placeholders, not provider quotes.

Selected feature assumptions

Incremental engineering hours used by this calculator.

Selected feature assumptions
Feature	Hours
CMS	12–30

A cheaper way to start with Superapp

Build a focused version yourself before commissioning a full custom project. Superapp Pro is $25 a month; the subscription covers its plan allowance, while your time, extra usage, integrations, hosting, and specialist work remain part of the budget. A Superapp site is an alternative implementation, not a guarantee of WordPress or Shopify compatibility.

Compare Superapp plans

Sources and methodology

Rates are global marketplace benchmarks, not US-only agency quotes. Freelancer and agency ranges overlap because they describe different samples. WordPress.com Personal and Shopify Basic use annual billing, exclude introductory promotions and taxes, and replace the hosting budget. Feature hours and recurring budgets are our explicit planning assumptions.