Website maintenance cost in India in 2026: 14 sellers' public prices, from ₹500 a month to ₹99,000 a year, the hosting and plugin bills on top, and GST and TDS.
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Drafted with AI tools; researched, edited and approved by Althameem Ali. Our editorial policy
On this page · 10 sections
- How much does website maintenance cost in India in 2026?
- What does website maintenance actually include?
- WordPress, Shopify or a custom Next.js site: how do running costs differ?
- What does it take to run our own site?
- An AMC or pay as you go?
- What should a maintenance contract say?
- How are GST, SAC and TDS handled on maintenance invoices?
- Frequently asked questions
- Budget for the whole year
- Changelog
Full disclosure: we are a web team in Calicut that builds websites and offers optional care plans for them as part of our web design and development work, so the sellers quoted below include firms we compete with. The businesses are listed alphabetically, with the two individuals last; every figure is one they published, with the date we read it, and nobody paid to appear. Our own care plan starts from ₹3,000 a month before GST, billed yearly, as our pricing page shows. We also publish what it takes to run our own site, marketlube.in, at each vendor's public list price.
"Maintenance" covers anything from a monthly backup to a developer on call. The price only makes sense once you know which of those you are buying, so this guide starts with what sellers publish, then breaks the bill into its parts.
How much does website maintenance cost in India in 2026?#
We searched for Indian web agencies, hosting companies and freelancers that publish rupee prices for website maintenance, read each page on 7 October 2026, and kept the 14 that met the method below. Their figures, as published:
All read on 7 October 2026, from Calicut. Method: a web search for Indian maintenance price pages. We kept sellers whose pages print rupee maintenance prices with a period, readable without a login, and left out pages with dollar prices only, prices with no period, maintenance bundled into other services, or conflicting price lists on one site. Two sellers are individuals working under their own names, so we describe them instead of naming them. It is a sample, not a census. Only four of the 14 pages say whether tax is included (all four add it on top), so read the rest as before tax unless the seller confirms otherwise.
Our arithmetic on those figures: across the 11 sellers that price by the month, the cheapest plan ran from ₹500 to ₹8,000, with a median of ₹3,500, about ₹42,000 a year. The three that price by the year asked ₹5,000 to ₹99,000. That puts the planning range in our guide to website development costs in Kerala, ₹10,000 to ₹40,000 a year for a typical business site, in the lower half of what sellers publish.
What does website maintenance actually include?#
The plans above sell some mix of the same jobs. The differences are in how often each happens and how fast someone answers.
What usually isn't in a maintenance fee: new pages or features, a redesign, writing content, photography, and the third-party bills below. Ask for those in writing.
WordPress, Shopify or a custom Next.js site: how do running costs differ?#
The platform decides which bills arrive and how much work the updates take. These are the vendors' own list prices, read on 7 October 2026.
One trap on the custom side: Vercel's free Hobby plan is, in its own fair use guidelines (opens in a new tab), "restricted to non-commercial personal use only". A business website is commercial, so plan on a paid tier. For the full fee maths on stores, our Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison works through payment fees and cash on delivery.
What does it take to run our own site?#
marketlube.in is a custom Next.js site, relaunched on 2 October 2026. Here is everything it runs on, with each vendor's public list price on 7 October 2026. These are list prices, not our invoices: a list price is the fair comparison for your own budget.
One more line belongs on every site's list, whatever it runs on: an uptime monitor that alerts a phone when the site stops answering. UptimeRobot's free plan (opens in a new tab) checks up to 50 monitors every 5 minutes, and its terms (opens in a new tab) say it "is available for any use, including commercial and business use".
The work matters more than the bills. This is the routine our own operations plan sets, with the time it budgets where it sets one:
A custom build moves the work, it doesn't remove it. There are no plugins to patch, but the framework and its packages still need updating, and those updates go through the same checks before release.
An AMC or pay as you go?#
An annual maintenance contract (AMC) buys a promise: someone watches the site, keeps it updated and answers within a set time. Pay as you go buys hours when you need them; in our survey, Index Solutions listed ₹500 an hour and Digital Hive ₹1,800 an hour plus GST.
What should a maintenance contract say?#
Before you sign, check that it spells out:
- Scope: which sites, how many pages, and how many edits or hours a month, and whether unused ones carry over.
- Updates: how often, and whether they are tested on a copy of the site before going live.
- Backups: how often, where they are kept, for how long, and when a restore was last tested.
- Security: what scanning is included, and whether cleaning up after a hack is covered or billed.
- Response times: for urgent problems and for routine requests, in hours.
- Extras: the hourly rate for work outside the plan.
- Ownership: the domain, hosting, email and licences in your company's name, with the maintainer given access, not ownership.
- Exit: notice period, and the handover of credentials, backups and code when the contract ends.
- Tax: whether prices include GST.
The ownership and exit lines matter most on the day a relationship ends. Our IT support team keeps a written list of every account, domain and renewal for the businesses it looks after for the same reason.
How are GST, SAC and TDS handled on maintenance invoices?#
GST. IT services fall under heading 9983, which the services rate notification, No. 11/2017-Central Tax (Rate), taxes at 9% central GST in entry 21 (see the GST Council's consolidated copy (opens in a new tab)), matched by 9% state GST: 18% in all, or 18% integrated GST across states. The GST Council's FAQ (opens in a new tab) of 3 September 2025, on the rate changes that took effect on 22 September 2025, still describes 18% as the standard rate.
SAC. There is no single code called "website maintenance". The official explanatory notes (opens in a new tab) to the services classification point to three, depending on what the invoice covers:
Updates and support read as 998313, page changes as 998314, and hosting sold together with management as 998315. Your accountant should confirm the code for your contract.
TDS. Since 1 April 2026, tax deducted at source sits in section 393 of the Income-tax Act, 2025. The income tax e-filing portal's TDS FAQ (opens in a new tab) gives payments to contractors as section 393(1), table serial 6(i), in place of section 194C, and says the rates and thresholds "have been retained as they are under the Income Tax Act, 1961". Whether a maintenance contract is treated as a contract for work or as fees for technical services decides which entry applies, and with it the rate and the threshold, so that call belongs to your chartered accountant, not your web developer.
Frequently asked questions#
How much is a website AMC per year in India?#
In our check of public price pages on 7 October 2026, sellers who price by the year asked ₹5,000 to ₹99,000, and the median of the cheapest monthly plans, ₹3,500, comes to about ₹42,000 a year. Hosting, the domain, plugin or app renewals and GST usually come on top.
Do I need maintenance for a small static site?#
Less than for a WordPress site, because there are no plugins to update. You still need the domain and hosting renewed, the security certificate working, a backup of the content, an uptime monitor and someone to make the occasional edit, which pay as you go usually covers.
Who should own the hosting account?#
You should. Keep the domain, hosting, email and analytics accounts in your company's name and give the maintainer access, so a change of developer never puts the site at risk.
What happens if I stop paying for maintenance?#
The site keeps running as long as the hosting and domain are paid, but WordPress plugins and themes stop being updated, so their security fixes stop arriving, and nobody is watching for downtime. If the maintainer holds the hosting or domain, the site can go offline, so collect the logins, backups and code before a contract ends.
What is the SAC code for website maintenance?#
It depends on what is billed. The GST explanatory notes put support, patches and updates under 998313, the design and coding of web pages under 998314, and hosting bundled with management of the website under 998315. All three carry 18% GST.
Budget for the whole year#
A fair maintenance budget has three lines: the running bills, the maintenance plan, and a small reserve for changes the plan doesn't cover. If you'd like help sizing yours, or a care plan for a site we build, tell us what your site runs on, or see how care plans fit into our web development work.
Changelog#
- 2026-10-09: our own starting prices are now public on marketlube.in/pricing, so this line gives them.
- 2026-10-10: The disclosure now says we are a web team in Calicut, with a link to our page on web design for Calicut businesses.
Written by
Co-founder, Marketlube
Althameem Ali researched, edited and approved this post. Marketlube is a growth partner in Calicut building brands, websites, CRMs and campaigns for businesses across Kerala, India and the Gulf.
