Drupal maintenance cost: what goes into the monthly bill.
A Drupal site keeps costing money after launch. How much depends on five components, only some of which are fixed. Here they are in order, with figures wherever I can give them honestly.
The short answer.
Ongoing maintenance for a Drupal site starts with me at $60 per month. A plan that adds testing updates on a copy of the site and a pool of hours for small tasks is from $130, and the extended one from $260 per month. Hosting and the domain come on top, paid to your provider. The rest of this post explains where those figures come from and what they don't cover.
1. Hosting and domain.
You pay this regardless of who looks after the site. Drupal asks more of a server than a simple static site: a current PHP version, a database, and a sensible amount of memory. The cheapest hosting plans are sometimes not enough — which shows up as a slow admin panel and errors during updates. The price is set by the hosting provider, so I don't quote one here; just check that the plan you choose meets the requirements of your Drupal version.
2. Updates and security.
This is the core of any maintenance plan and the one component you can't safely skip. The Drupal Security Team regularly publishes patches for core and modules; someone has to apply them before a vulnerability gets used. The basic plan (from $60 per month) covers security updates, automated backups, and uptime monitoring. Why it isn't worth putting off is covered in how Drupal security updates protect your site.
3. Testing and small tasks.
The more modules and custom code a site has, the more likely an update is to break something. That's why on the standard plan (from $130 per month) every change goes to a copy of the site first. The price also includes an hour or two of small tasks each month: a form fix, a new field on a content type, a menu change. Without that pool, every small thing becomes a separate job.
4. Repairs and emergencies.
You don't see this component until you need it. A site under ongoing care rarely needs repairs, because problems are caught earlier. A site without it is the opposite: an outage after a failed update, or a hack, is hourly work that is urgent and hard to predict. I also take on Drupal site repair as a one-off job, but the bill for it can be higher than a year of the basic plan.
Maintenance is a cost you can plan. Repair is a cost that arrives on its own, at the worst moment.
5. Major upgrades every few years.
Moving to the next major Drupal version isn't part of the monthly fee — it's a separate, one-off project. Between versions 8, 9, 10, and 11 it's usually moderate work, provided the site has been updated regularly. Drupal 7 is the exception: it needs a full Drupal migration, meaning a rebuild, priced from $1,800. It's worth adding that to a multi-year budget rather than treating it as a surprise.
What it adds up to — three typical cases.
- A small business site, a few content types, no store: the basic plan, from $60 per month plus hosting
- A site with regularly added content, forms, and a few integrations: the standard plan, from $130 per month
- A multilingual site, a store, or custom modules: the extended plan, from $260 per month
The full scope of each plan is on the Drupal maintenance services page.
What makes it cost more.
- The starting point: a site a year behind on updates needs a one-off clean-up first
- The number of modules and the amount of custom code
- The response time you expect — whether an outage can wait until the next business day
- How many changes you request in a month
Frequently asked questions.
How much does Drupal maintenance cost per month? Ongoing maintenance with me starts at $60 per month for security updates, backups, and monitoring. Hosting and the domain come on top, billed separately by your provider.
Is Drupal more expensive to maintain than WordPress? A single hour of work can cost more, because there are fewer Drupal specialists. On the other hand, a typical Drupal site has fewer third-party plugins to keep an eye on. The bill depends more on how complex the site is than on the name of the system. A broader comparison is in how to choose a CMS.
What is not included in the monthly fee? Moving to the next major Drupal version, new features, a redesign, and repairing a site that arrives in poor condition. Those are quoted separately.
Can I update Drupal myself? Yes, if someone on your team has the time and skills to do it regularly, test changes on a copy of the site, and keep a verified backup. The cost doesn't disappear — it turns into that person's time.
Summary.
The cost of maintaining a Drupal site is a small fixed fee for care, hosting from your provider, and a budget set aside over a few years for a major upgrade. The most expensive option is no care at all: you pay rarely, but a lot, and without warning.