Website maintenance costs in Canada typically fall between $50 and $500+ per month, though the actual number depends on your site's complexity, technology stack, and how much you outsource versus handle internally. A basic WordPress brochure site might only need $50–150/month for hosting, security updates, backups, and occasional content changes. Mid-sized business sites with more plugins, custom features, or regular content updates usually run $200–400/month. E-commerce platforms, membership sites, or custom web applications can easily exceed $500–1,000/month when you factor in payment gateway monitoring, inventory sync issues, and feature additions. The core maintenance tasks driving these costs include security patches and plugin updates, malware scanning and removal, database optimization, broken link fixes, uptime monitoring, content updates, and regular backups. If you're paying an agency, you're also covering their overhead and expertise in quickly diagnosing issues before they become outages. DIY maintenance can cut costs to just hosting and tools (maybe $30–80/month), but you're trading money for time and assuming the risk of delayed security patches. What many site owners underestimate is emergency fix costs. A hacked site can cost $500–2,000 to clean and harden if you don't have proactive monitoring. Performance degradation from outdated code can silently kill conversions for months before anyone notices. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we see maintenance as loss prevention, not just a recurring expense. We typically bundle it with hosting and light SEO monitoring so issues get caught in our regular audits rather than becoming weekend emergencies. One-time costs also matter. Annual SSL renewals, domain renewals, and major version upgrades (like WordPress 5.x to 6.x with theme compatibility issues) can add $100–500/year on top of monthly fees. If you're comparing quotes, check whether backups are included, how fast they respond to downtime, and whether they're just running automated updates or actually regression-testing your site afterward. The cheapest option often becomes the most expensive when something breaks.