Paying per fix is cheaper in a year when nothing goes wrong and you do the routine updates yourself. Once you pay someone for those updates, or one update breaks the site, a maintenance plan usually works out cheaper. A hack tips it firmly towards the plan. The worked example below shows where the lines cross, so you can run it with your own numbers.
Key takeaways
- Website repair cost is mostly time: hours at your developer’s rate, often more for urgent work.
- A plan costs more in a quiet year and less in a bad one.
- The routine work (updates, backups, scans) is the part pay-per-fix leaves to you.
- Work out your break-even: the plan’s yearly cost divided by your developer’s hourly rate.
How much does a website repair cost?
Most repairs are charged by time. A broken contact form might take an hour. A plugin clash after an update might take a few. A hacked site can take a day or more, because the clean-up has to find every hidden file and rogue user, then close the hole that let the attacker in.
Rates vary widely between freelancers and agencies, and urgent or after-hours work often costs more. So ask for the hourly rate, the minimum charge and any emergency loading before you need help. Our guide to emergency website support explains what counts as urgent.
What does pay-per-fix leave out?
Pay-per-fix covers the repair. It doesn’t cover the routine work that stops repairs being needed:
- WordPress, theme and plugin updates, ideally with a check afterwards
- off-site backups that someone has confirmed can be restored
- malware scans, uptime monitoring and a firewall
Skipping that work has a cost. Sucuri found that 39.1% of content management systems were out of date when they were infected (Sucuri). Patchstack recorded 11,334 new WordPress vulnerabilities in 2025, 91% of them in plugins (Patchstack). Someone has to apply those fixes, every month.
Pay-per-fix vs a maintenance plan: the 12-month comparison
Here’s a worked example. We’ve assumed ad hoc work at $150 an hour, a round figure rather than anyone’s quote. Plan prices are our own website maintenance plans, plus GST, including the one-off setup fee charged in year one.
| Scenario | Pay per fix | Essentials ($40/month) | Advantage ($80/month) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quiet year: you do the updates, 2 hours of small fixes | $300 | $600 | $1,200 |
| A few problems: updates paid monthly (12 hours), one broken update (3 hours), one form that stopped working after an update (1 hour) | $2,400 | $1,200 (repairs paid separately) | $1,200 (repairs included) |
| Hacked: updates paid monthly (12 hours) and an 8-hour clean-up | $3,000, plus lost sales | $600 | $1,200 |
From year two, there’s no setup fee, so Essentials drops to $480 a year and Advantage to $960. The hack scenario assumes the site was clean when it joined the plan, because sites on Maintain & Protect are hack-free, or we fix them free.
Work out your own break-even
- Find the plan’s yearly cost. For Essentials in year two, that’s $480.
- Divide by your developer’s hourly rate. At $150 an hour, that’s 3.2 hours.
- Estimate your hours. If routine updates and fixes would take more than that in a year, the plan is cheaper.
When is pay-per-fix the better choice?
It suits a simple brochure site with few plugins, where the owner is comfortable running updates, checking backups and testing forms each month. It also suits a site that’s about to be replaced. If that’s you, keep a developer’s details handy and agree their rates in advance.
If you’d like one point of contact without a full plan, our website support covers questions and one-off jobs. For bigger, regular changes, a website support retainer buys a block of hours each month. Our guide to WordPress maintenance plans compares all three models side by side.
What about the costs that aren’t on the invoice?
The repair bill is rarely the whole cost. While a site is down or showing a warning, enquiries and sales stop. Staff time goes into chasing the problem. If customer data is involved, there may be notification duties too.
The ASD reports that the average cost of a cybercrime report for an Australian small business was $56,600 in 2024–25, up 14% (ASD). Not every incident involves a website, but it shows how quickly a bad week adds up.
When something does break, speed matters more than the hourly rate. Our fast WordPress repairs service handles one-off fixes for sites not on a plan.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to fix a hacked website?
It depends on how deep the infection goes and how many sites share the hosting account. A proper clean-up removes malware, backdoors and rogue users, then fixes the weakness. Expect hours of work at least, and ask for a fixed quote before work starts.
Is a website maintenance plan worth it for a small site?
If you do the updates yourself and rarely need help, maybe not. If you’d pay someone for the routine work anyway, or the site brings in leads or sales, a plan usually costs less over a year than paying per fix.
Do maintenance plans include repairs?
Some do, within limits. Our Essentials plan covers the routine work and limited restores. Advantage adds repairs when an update breaks something, plus minor content changes. Elite adds minor repairs and unlimited minor content changes, within fair use.
Why is emergency website help more expensive?
Urgent work often means dropping other jobs or working after hours, and the developer usually has to learn an unfamiliar site under pressure. A plan avoids that, because the provider already knows the site and has recent backups.
Can I join a maintenance plan after my site is hacked?
Yes. The site is cleaned and secured first. With our plans, the one-off setup fee doubles if the site is already compromised, because of that extra clean-up work. Call 0426 833 422 if it’s happening now.
Sources
- 2023 Hacked Website and Malware Threat Report, Sucuri, June 2024
- State of WordPress Security in 2026, Patchstack
- Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024–2025, Australian Signals Directorate, October 2025