Website maintenance: the real prices, what it covers, and what happens if you do nothing

Behind the word "maintenance", providers bundle three very different things. Mixing them up is the number one cause of incomprehensible quotes, so let's name them clearly before talking prices.

Corrective maintenance fixes what breaks: a form that stops sending, a page throwing an error, a payment that fails. Preventive maintenance keeps things from breaking: software and plugin updates, regular backups, security and uptime monitoring. Evolutive maintenance, finally, grows the site: new pages, new features, new integrations.

A serious contract spells out which of the three are covered, and within what limits. Many entry-level plans only cover the preventive part: the day a bug shows up, the fix is billed on top.

Pages announcing "from €10 to €5,000/month" don't help you budget. Here are the ranges we actually see on the French market in 2026, by type of site.

What moves the price within each range: the guaranteed response time, the number of hours included, and whether bug fixes are covered or not. A €50/month plan that only covers backups is not comparable to a €150/month plan that includes fixes.

Almost every article about maintenance is written for WordPress: caching, hosting provider, plugins to update every week. On Shopify, that whole layer doesn't exist: hosting, the server, the security certificate and platform backups are handled by Shopify, included in the subscription.

Maintaining a Shopify store is therefore about something else: the theme (the code that piles up with every change), the apps (their compatibility, their cumulative cost, what they leave behind) and the content (product pages, collections, images). It's less "server" maintenance and more storekeeping.

That's also why a well-run migration is a long-term investment: a store that starts clean costs less to maintain afterwards. If you're coming from WooCommerce or PrestaShop, read our guide on migrating to Shopify without losing your search rankings.

No. No rule requires a monthly contract, and for a recent, well-built custom website, paying every month "just in case" isn't always justified. The simplest alternative is per-ticket billing: you list your requests, the provider quotes them, you approve, they handle it.

At Sonho, both approaches coexist: a base maintenance plan that guarantees bug fixes and a site that runs smoothly, a monthly support plan for those who want to keep improving their site continuously (new pages, new features), and tickets for one-off needs. On the sites we hand-code in Next.js, there are no plugins to update and no plugin vulnerabilities to watch: preventive maintenance shrinks accordingly.

Before signing a contract, ask three questions: what happens if a critical bug hits on a Friday evening (response time in writing)? Are unused hours rolled over or lost? And what exactly does the plan cover: fixes only, or improvements too?

The causes of slowness depend almost entirely on the platform. On WordPress, the usual suspects are real: saturated shared hosting, a one-size-fits-all theme that loads everything on every page, and 30 plugins each adding their own code.

On Shopify, that advice is useless: you can't switch hosting providers or install a caching module, and that's a good thing. What slows a Shopify store down is the apps stacked up over the years, code from uninstalled apps left in the theme, a theme bloated with unused features, and oversized images.

On a custom hand-coded website, speed is decided at build time: no plugins, no page builder, only the code that's needed. That's why these sites stay fast over time with very little upkeep.

When we audit a slow Shopify store, we find almost always the same four causes, in this order.

Core Web Vitals are the three metrics Google uses to assess your visitors' real experience. LCP measures how long the largest visible element takes to display (usually your main image): aim for under 2.5 seconds. INP measures the delay between a click and the page's reaction: a site that "lags" when you open a menu has a poor INP. CLS measures layout shifts, when a button moves just as you were about to click it.

Google factors them into its rankings because they reflect what the user experiences, not what the provider promises. A site can be beautiful and have poor Core Web Vitals; the reverse is rarer.

You can measure them yourself, for free, on PageSpeed Insights. If all three indicators are green, there's no point paying to "speed up" your site: your budget is better spent elsewhere.

This is the figure maintenance contracts forget to put a number on: the cost of doing nothing. Studies have converged for years: every extra second of load time costs about 7% in conversion, and 53% of mobile visitors abandon a page that takes more than three seconds to display (source: TwicPics).

Run the numbers on your own figures: a store bringing in €20,000/month whose pages take two seconds too long is leaving, based on these studies, several thousand euros a year on the table. Next to that, upkeep at €100 or €300 per month is a different order of magnitude.

That's the right angle for deciding on a maintenance budget: not "how much does it cost", but "how much does a site that degrades with nobody watching cost".

A visual redesign, a new section, an additional sales page, a structural change: all of that is evolution, not maintenance. It's design and development work, budgeted separately, with a quote. A provider who squeezes a redesign into an €80/month maintenance plan will cut corners somewhere: on quality, or on deadlines.

The distinction protects both sides. You know what your plan covers, and the provider doesn't dilute a three-week project into support hours. To gauge the budget for a new site or a redesign, our guide how much does a website cost gives the full ranges.

If you're unsure which option fits your site (base plan, monthly support or a simple list of tickets), write to us: you'll get a precise quote, not a €10 to €5,000 range.