Published website maintenance plans in Canada cost between CA$49 and CA$650 a month, and most of them bill hosting on top. The cheapest plans apply updates and take backups. Plans that also write for you start lower than you might expect: WHC's CA$143 tier includes one article a month.
We read these prices on the sellers' own pages on 8 November 2026. If your site runs on WordPress and all you want is updates, a care plan near the bottom of the table, plus hosting, will cost you less than anything we sell. If you are pricing a new build rather than upkeep, start with what a website costs in Toronto.
What does website maintenance cost per month in Canada?
"Maintenance" is used for three different things, and the price depends on which ones a plan includes:
- Hosting is the server your site runs on, plus the security certificate. Without it the site is offline.
- Care is the upkeep: applying updates, taking backups, scanning for malware and watching for downtime.
- Content and local search is anything that adds to the site: new pages, posts, edits, and work on your Google Business Profile.
The table shows which plans include what, as each seller describes it. Many sellers publish no prices, so read it as a sample of the visible market, not a survey.
| Seller | Plan | Monthly price | Hosting included? | What the plan covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SDO Custom Softwares, Toronto | Basic Care | CA$49 | Not stated | Monthly updates, weekly backups, uptime monitoring, a basic security scan |
| SDO Custom Softwares | WordPress and CMS Care | CA$129 | Not stated | Adds malware scanning and removal, daily backups, 1 hour of content edits |
| SDO Custom Softwares | Business Pro | CA$249 | Not stated | 3 hours of edits, SEO health monitoring |
| WHC, Canadian host | WP Care | from CA$58, promotional and billed yearly (regular CA$69) | Not stated | Updates and care; a setup fee on the first invoice, amount not stated |
| WHC | WP Care Pro | from CA$143 | Not stated | 2 development hours and one article of up to 1,500 words a month |
| SatelliteWP, Laval | Essential | CA$175 | No | Care plan; malware removal optional |
| SatelliteWP | Growth | CA$350 | No | Care plan with malware removal included |
| SatelliteWP | Professional | CA$650 | No | Adds a web application firewall and software licences |
| Right Design, Calgary | Care plan | from CA$100, before tax | Not stated | Care plan, plus a one-time CA$50 setup |
| Elevate Web Design, Toronto | Starter | CA$69, with a build from CA$599 | Yes | Hosting and SSL |
| Elevate Web Design | Professional | CA$129, with a build from CA$1,995 | Yes | Hosting, SSL and "monthly minor updates"; major updates at CA$100 an hour |
| Space and Story, Toronto | Local | CA$300, plus HST, with a build from CA$5,000 | Yes | Hosting, security updates, Google Business Profile management, one post a month |
Webbies published its own sample of five Canadian plans in August 2026, from CA$79 to CA$1,000 a month, which is in the same broad range.
Three questions sort any quote. Does the price include the server? Does a person apply the updates, check the site afterwards and restore a backup when something breaks? Does anyone add or change anything on the site each month? SDO's CA$49 plan covers part of the second: it applies updates and takes backups, and the listing doesn't say whether a person tests afterwards or whether a restore is included. Content starts at WHC's CA$143 tier. Hosting comes with the plan only at Elevate and with us.
Compare a quote with plans that answer the three questions the same way. A care plan at CA$58 plus hosting is the fair match for a care plan at CA$129. A plan that includes a monthly post should be set against a care plan plus what a writer would charge you.
What does it cost to keep a WordPress site running in 2026?
The Canadian guides that rank for this question assume a WordPress site, so here are its parts, from the vendors' own price pages on 8 November 2026. One licence each from the plugins below comes to about US$517 a year in the vendors' listed dollars, and several of those prices are first-year or sale prices, so the renewal is what to budget for.
| Line item | Example and list price | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Managed WordPress hosting | HostPapa Managed WordPress Start, CA$24.95 a month on a one-year term, CA$39.95 month to month | HostPapa's shared WordPress plan is CA$10.99 a month on a one-year term |
| .ca domain renewal | Rebel, CA$20.99 a year | Check that the registrant on the record is your business |
| SEO plugin | Yoast SEO Premium, US$118.80 a year | A free version exists |
| Page builder | Elementor Pro Essential, $60 a year | Elementor's page names no currency |
| Caching | WP Rocket Single, $5 a month billed yearly | List price; the page names no currency |
| Forms | Gravity Forms Basic, $59 a year | The page names no currency |
| Backups | UpdraftPlus Premium Personal, US$70 a year | Covers up to 2 sites; includes 1 GB of off-site storage, more is extra |
| Security | Wordfence Premium, $149 a year | Does not include cleanup |
| Malware cleanup, if you're hacked | Sucuri one-time cleanup, US$98 per site; Wordfence Care, $590 a year | Per incident or by subscription |
Few sites run every one of these, and some care plans bundle a few. WHC's Care Plus includes an Elementor Pro licence, for example. A bundled licence belongs to the agency, though, so it goes when you leave the plan.
What happens when a licence lapses depends on what it pays for. Plugins that run on your own server, such as Elementor Pro and UpdraftPlus, keep working, and the updates and support stop. That leaves the plugin running with every flaw found in it afterwards. Licences that pay for a live service behave differently. Sucuri's firewall sits in front of your site, and its own cancellation guide warns that afterwards "your DNS records will still point to your firewall IP instead of your server", so point them back before the subscription ends. UpdraftPlus Premium includes 1 GB of UpdraftVault storage; if you cancel the Vault quota, backups stored there are purged after two weeks.
How often does a WordPress site need patching?
More often than once a month. Patchstack's annual security report counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities across WordPress plugins, themes and core in 2025, 42% more than in 2024. Plugins accounted for 91% of them, themes for 9%, and WordPress core for 6 in total. For 46%, no fix existed when the flaw was made public, and the heavily exploited ones were first exploited a weighted median of 5 hours after disclosure.
So a plan that updates on the first of each month can leave a known hole open for weeks. The questions that matter are how fast a critical security update goes out between scheduled runs, and what protects the site against a flaw that has no fix yet. A firewall with rules for specific flaws, such as Wordfence's or Patchstack's, is the usual answer to the second.
Paying for a plugin doesn't make it safer. Patchstack found that premium components had three times as many known exploited vulnerabilities as free ones. Paid code gets less outside scrutiny, and its fixes arrive only while the licence is active.
Some of this already happens on its own. WordPress installs its own minor and security releases automatically, sites first installed on version 5.6 or later get major versions automatically too, and you can switch on automatic updates for each plugin from the dashboard. Premium plugins, and major versions on older installs, need someone to apply them. WordPress released 7.0 on 20 May and 7.1 on 19 August, with minor and security releases on 13 separate days in 2026 up to 28 October.
Underneath WordPress, the PHP language has its own clock. PHP 8.2 stops getting security fixes on 31 December 2026, and 8.1 already has. Ask whoever runs your site which version it uses and who will move it to a supported one before the deadline, because the hosting company and the developer each tend to assume it's the other's job. Our post on whether WordPress is safe after PHP2Shell covers the PHP flaw patched in October.
What the plan pays for is the check after each update and the way back when one breaks the page builder. That way back depends on a backup or staging copy taken just before the update. A weekly backup from five days earlier means restoring it loses five days of enquiries.
Does a custom site with no plugins still need maintenance?
Yes, though the work is different. A site built without WordPress has no plugin or theme licences, no plugin conflicts and no public admin login page for bots to probe. It swaps the WordPress plugin world for the JavaScript one, which has serious flaws of its own: in December 2025, React's server components had a critical one. Fewer moving parts and no licences make a custom site simpler to keep current, not exempt from it. The server, the security certificate, the domain renewal and the backups all stay, and so do the open-source libraries the site is built on, which publish security releases of their own.
Our Local plan lists this work as "monthly dependency and security updates". Whoever you hire, us included, ask how fast a critical fix goes out between the monthly runs. Less of the fee goes on upkeep than on a WordPress site, so more of it can go to posts, local search and the Business Profile.
Is HST charged on website maintenance in Ontario?
Usually. For most services, a GST/HST-registered Canadian seller charges a business with an Ontario address 13% HST, wherever in Canada the seller is based. A small Canadian freelancer who isn't registered charges none, and foreign vendors often charge none. Most Canadian sellers quote before tax; in the table, Right Design and we say so. With HST, a CA$300 plan costs CA$339 a month, a CA$700 plan CA$791, and a CA$49 plan CA$55.37.
Whether the 13% is a real cost depends on your business. If you are registered, use the regular method, and sell taxable goods or services, the CRA's guide RC4022 says you recover the tax on business purchases as input tax credits, so compare plans on the before-tax price. Treat the 13% as part of the cost if you sell exempt services (most health care and residential rent, for example), use the quick method, or aren't registered. To claim the credit on a purchase of CA$100 or more, the invoice has to show the seller's GST/HST number, so a foreign invoice with no Canadian number gives you nothing to claim. A bookkeeper can tell you which case you're in.
Some sellers name no currency. Footbridge Media, a US firm that builds and hosts sites for contractors, lists $249 a month, and Green Lotus lists its AEO plan from $2,990 a month, both without a currency, as do several of the plugin prices above. Before you compare, ask "Is this CAD or USD, and is tax added?"
Should you rent a website monthly or own it?
There are three ways to pay for a small-business site, and they differ most on the day you stop paying.
Rent. The provider owns the site and you pay a monthly fee for as long as you use it. Northwoods Web Designs, a US agency, publishes its terms in full, which few Canadian sellers do: its pay-monthly plans list the Business plan at $169 a month with a 12-month minimum, 20 days' notice to cancel, a pro-rated lump sum of $2,000 to leave early, and a $30 fee to transfer the domain. The firm keeps ownership, and the site is deactivated when you cancel. Renting suits a new business that has no budget for a build and little to put on the site yet.
Platform. You build on Wix or Squarespace and pay the platform. You keep most of your words, but not a site you can move. When a Wix premium plan ends, the site stays live on a free Wix address with Wix ads. Squarespace exports some content as a WordPress-format XML file, without your styles or custom CSS.
Own. You pay for a build once, hold the code and content, and pay separately or by plan for hosting and upkeep. If you change providers, the site goes with you, though you still need someone who can run it. Read what "own" means in the contract. Some care plans leave you with less than you'd expect: SatelliteWP's terms say it will "erase your data from our systems" on cancellation and that "We do not hand over a backup copy of your site when cancelling a plan", so download your own backup before you leave.
The three can overlap. Scorpion's page says you own the site once the contract term is complete, so a rental can end in ownership. And an owned WordPress site can still sit on hosting and licences in an agency's name. The contract and the names on the accounts decide it. Our post on contractor marketing prices and contracts goes through those clauses, and who owns my website in Canada covers the law.
How do you compare five years of website maintenance costs?
Put each component in its own column and add them yourself. A build's cost is visible on day one, while a monthly fee is spread over years, so set them side by side over the same period. The table shows five years of the components, before tax, from the prices above.
| Option | Up front | 60 months of the monthly fee | Other costs over 5 years | Ownership, as each seller's page states it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rent: Northwoods Business (US firm, US example) | none stated | $10,140 (169 × 60), currency not named | $30 domain transfer fee if you leave | The firm keeps ownership |
| Build plus monthly: Elevate Professional | from CA$1,995 | CA$7,740 (129 × 60) | Major updates at CA$100 an hour | "You own everything", per its comparison table |
| WordPress you already have, with a care plan | none; assumes an existing site | CA$3,480 at WHC WP Care's promotional rate (58 × 60), CA$4,140 at its regular rate (69 × 60), plus the setup fee | Hosting, for example HostPapa at CA$1,497 (299.40 × 5) if the care plan accepts outside hosting; .ca domain CA$104.95 (20.99 × 5); plugin licences the care plan doesn't cover, up to about US$2,584 (516.80 × 5) | Yours, if the hosting and licences are in your name |
| Build plus monthly: Space and Story Story build with the Local plan | CA$5,000 | CA$18,000 (300 × 60) | None: hosting and domain renewal are in the plan | Yours: code, content and domain, handed over on 30 days' notice |
The rows buy different things. The WordPress row has no build cost because it assumes you already have a site, and it includes no content or local search work. Our row includes a post a month and Business Profile management. Elevate's describes hosting and minor updates. None of the rows includes HST, a malware cleanup or the developer time for a major upgrade, and any of those is likely within five years. Use the table to see the components, then ask each provider what the fifth year buys you that the first didn't.
What does Space and Story charge for maintenance?
Our builds are sold with a monthly plan, which includes the hosting and the upkeep: a Story build is CA$5,000, then CA$300 a month. Prices are in Canadian dollars, plus HST, month to month, with no setup fee.
- Local, CA$300 a month. Hosting, domain renewal and uptime monitoring, monthly dependency updates, security patches applied as soon as a fix is identified rather than waiting for the monthly run, Google Business Profile management, listings on local directories, page-by-page search fixes for 5 pages, one post a month, and a monthly report.
- Growth, CA$700 a month. Everything in Local, plus four posts a month, link building, competitor tracking and a monthly strategy call.
- Authority, from CA$2,000 a month. Everything in Growth, plus off-site work, digital PR and an original research piece each quarter.
You own the code, the content and the domain, and we hand them over on 30 days' notice. Our sites aren't WordPress, so running one elsewhere takes a developer who can host a modern JavaScript site. The full list of what each plan includes is on our pricing page.
What should you ask before you sign a website maintenance plan?
- CAD or USD, and before or after HST?
- Is hosting included? If it is, whose name is on the hosting account, and can it be moved to you?
- Who is the registrant on the domain?
- What is the minimum term, the notice period and any fee for leaving early?
- How fast do you apply a critical security update outside the normal schedule, and what covers a flaw that has no fix yet?
- On the day you cancel, what do you receive: files, database, design and images, or content only?
- Are premium plugin licences in your name or the provider's?
- How many hours of edits are included each month, and do unused hours roll over?
- When did you last restore a backup, rather than just take one?
If you want a second opinion on what your current site costs to keep running, our free audit looks at it and comes back within 24 hours.