Monthly website management packages compared

Monthly website packages fall into three real tiers: £15-£50 for maintenance, £49-£199 for management, and £300 and up for agency retainers. The difficulty in comparing them is that providers use identical language for all three. “Website care plan” describes a £20 hosting package and a £400 marketing retainer equally.

So ignore the names. Compare on what actually happens each month.

The three tiers, side by side

Two useful observations from that table.

The maintenance column is not bad value. It is correctly priced for what it is and every website needs the work. It simply has no effect on whether anyone finds you, and buying it while expecting customers is the most common disappointment in this industry.

The agency column adds an account manager and design capability rather than fundamentally different marketing work. Whether that is worth three to ten times the price depends entirely on your complexity.

The question that exposes any package

Ask every provider the same thing: “What specific actions will happen in month three?”

Month three, not month one, because month one always sounds impressive. Everyone does a setup, an audit, a plan. Month three is where you find out whether anything ongoing actually occurs.

A real answer sounds like: two pages published, four Google profile posts, review requests to every customer, any text changes you send, a check of rankings and enquiries.

A weak answer sounds like: ongoing monitoring, continuous optimisation, monthly reporting, proactive maintenance. Those are words describing an absence of specific work.

What each tier should actually include

Maintenance, £15-£50. Hosting, software and plugin updates, security patching, daily off-server backups that get tested, uptime monitoring, SSL renewal. That is a complete list, and it is enough.

Management, £49-£199. All of the above, plus unlimited or generous content changes, Google Business Profile posts and photos, review requests and replies, a few local or service pages a year, on-page SEO, and someone checking whether enquiries actually moved. The top of that band should also cover ads and email marketing.

Agency, £300+. All of the above with more depth, plus an account manager, strategy work, design capability, and usually ad management with real budget behind it.

If a quote does not map cleanly onto one of those, ask which one it is meant to be.

The traps to watch for

“Unlimited changes” with a catch. Read the definition. Unlimited often means unlimited small text edits, with anything structural billed separately. That is reasonable, and it should be stated.

Setup fees on monthly plans. Sometimes justified for a migration or a build. Frequently just a way of making the monthly number look lower than it is.

Twelve-month terms. Ask what you get for committing. If the answer is nothing, the term exists to protect them rather than serve you.

Ownership. The most important small print. You should own the domain, the site and the content, and be able to leave with all of it. Get this in writing regardless of tier.

Ad spend included? Almost never. Ad budget is paid to Google or Meta directly and is separate from the management fee. Any package implying otherwise is worth reading twice.

Which tier suits you

Maintenance if your work comes entirely from referrals and the website exists to confirm you are real. Genuinely the right answer for some businesses, and cheaper than everything else.

Management if you want the site to bring in work you do not currently get. This covers most single-location small businesses.

Agency if you have multiple locations, serious ad budgets, or need brand and design work alongside the marketing.

Most people comparing packages are in the middle band while being quoted from both sides of it.

What we charge, for comparison

Our tiers are £49 Essentials, £99 Complete and £199 Premier, monthly with no contract, and you own the domain and content throughout. Complete is the one most small businesses need, and if Essentials is genuinely enough for you we will say so rather than upsell.

The pricing page lists what falls into each, itemised, so you can hold it against the questions above like you would any other provider.

Related: what is included in a website care plan and website maintenance service cost.