Everyone discusses what a website costs to build; almost nobody discusses what it costs to keep. And that is the bill that surprises people a year after launch: the domain renewal arrives, a plugin licence expires, and it turns out nobody has been taking backups. Here is every annual line item, plus three realistic scenarios with numbers.
Keeping a simple business website running in Lithuania costs roughly €60–200 per year if you handle it yourself: domain €10–15, hosting €40–120, SSL free. With professional technical maintenance, expect €600–1,500 per year. For an online store, add licences and payment fees: realistically €800–2,500 per year.
Costs split in two. Mandatory ones, without which the site simply stops working: domain, hosting and SSL. And variable ones, which depend on what kind of site it is and how much it matters to you: plugin and theme licences, technical maintenance, backups, content updates. The common mistake is counting only the first group. It is cheap and predictable. The second group is what separates "the site is up" from "the site is working".
The most stable line item. A .lt domain costs roughly €10–15 per year, .com is similar. It is the one cost you cannot skip in any given year: an unrenewed domain returns to the open market within weeks and anyone can buy it, including a competitor who knows exactly what it is worth to you. More important than the price is whose name it is registered under. It must be your company, not your developer. If it is the developer, you are renting your own brand.
Shared hosting for a typical business website runs about €40–120 per year and is entirely sufficient. A VPS or managed WordPress hosting starts around €150–400 per year — needed when traffic grows or when an online store needs stable speed at peak. A static Next.js site is a separate case: it often fits into free or near-free plans, because the server computes nothing, it just serves prepared files. SSL is free these days (Let’s Encrypt) and included almost everywhere; if someone sells it separately for €50 a year, ask why.
This is where the surprises live. Paid WordPress themes and plugins almost always carry an annual licence — not because they stop working without it, but because they stop receiving updates and security fixes. On a simple site this can be €0 if everything is built on free components. On an online store it is realistically €100–400 per year: a payments plugin, a shipping integration, a backup tool, sometimes search or filtering. These licences expire quietly. Nothing breaks immediately — the plugin just stops updating, and six months later it turns out it is no longer compatible with the current WordPress release.
A static site (Next.js with no CMS, for example) can run untouched for years — there is nothing in it to update. WordPress and WooCommerce work the opposite way: a living system of dozens of components, each shipping patches. Most break-ins happen not through a weak password but through an outdated plugin whose vulnerability has been publicly documented for months. Real maintenance means updates, backups, uptime monitoring and verifying that nothing broke after an update. Bought separately this runs about €20–60 per month, or it is included in a support plan.
A brochure site maintained by the owner: domain €12 + shared hosting €60 + free components = roughly €70–90 per year. A business website with technical maintenance: domain €12 + hosting €120 + licences €100 + maintenance €30/month = roughly €600 per year. An online store: domain €12 + better hosting €250 + licences €300 + maintenance and monitoring €50/month = roughly €1,200 per year, plus payment processing fees (typically 1–2% of turnover) and, on Shopify, the platform subscription. So the answer to "what does it cost to keep" starts not with a price list but with the question of what kind of site it is.
A simple threshold: if you need fewer than about five hours of work per year, hourly (€40–60 in Lithuania) is cheaper and more honest. A plan starts to pay off once the site earns money — because what you buy is not hours but the fact that a problem gets noticed before your customer notices it: updates, backups, monitoring and a guaranteed response time. In our case the first 180 days after launch are included in the project price, and after that a support plan starts from €250 per month. Walking away is equally valid: you take the code with its documentation and manage it yourself.
Four questions that separate real maintenance from a line on an invoice. One: whose name are the domain and hosting registered under — it should be your company. Two: where and how often are backups taken, and has anyone ever restored the site from one (an untested backup is just hope). Three: what happens when the contract ends — do you get the code, the access and the backups at no extra charge. Four: what is the response time if the site goes down on a Saturday. If any answer is vague, this is the cheapest possible moment to find out — now, rather than a year from now.
We review what is running on your site, which licences are expiring and whether backups are actually being taken. Then we tell you honestly what is worth fixing and what you can safely leave alone.
A static site (for example Next.js with no CMS) can run untouched for years — there is nothing to update. WordPress or WooCommerce left without updates becomes a security hole: most break-ins happen through outdated plugins, not weak passwords. For an unmaintained online store it is a question of when, not if.
Around €10–15 per year depending on the registrar. It is the most stable line item and the only one you cannot skip: an unrenewed domain becomes available within weeks and anyone can buy it, including a competitor.
If you need fewer than about 5 hours of work per year, hourly (€40–60/hour) is cheaper. A plan pays off once the site earns money: it normally covers updates, backups, monitoring and a guaranteed response time — that is what you are paying for, not the hours.
Three: annual licences for paid plugins and themes (often €100–400 per year for online stores), backup storage, and content updates. The first two expire quietly and disable features; the third simply never makes it into the original budget.