Website maintenance cost in Kenya
From KES 8,000 / month
Website maintenance in Kenya starts from KES 8,000 per month, with the plan set by site complexity, e-commerce stores and applications generally need more. This covers security patching, backups, updates, uptime monitoring and small changes. Hosting is separate, typically from KES 3,000 per year.
Contracted response
a real time, by plan tier
Every plan states a response time in writing, not a vague promise.
Tested restores
not just backups
We test restoring backups; ask whoever holds yours today whether they do.
Monthly rolling
30 days' notice to leave
Cancel anytime with notice; Enterprise is the only annual commitment, by choice.
What each level costs
Each level is a fixed price for that scope, cheapest first. The figure shown is the starting point; your own number is fixed after a short scoping call.
Essential care
From KES 8,000per month
Light updates, backups, uptime checks and small support.Lower-risk brochure sites · monthly
Growth care
From KES 25,000per month
More active support with updates, content help and speed checks.Active, content-driven sites · monthly
Most chosenTechnical support retainer
From KES 60,000per month
Priority support for ecommerce, custom sites, integrations and campaigns.Stores and applications · monthly
Not sure which level fits?
Tell us what the site has to do and we will say which level covers it, with a fixed price before any work starts.
What changes by plan
Essential care covers the baseline every site needs: security patching, backups, uptime checks and small support, right for a lower-risk brochure site.
Growth care adds more active support on top, content updates, speed checks and faster issue resolution, for a site that changes and is used regularly.
The technical support retainer is for a store or application that cannot absorb downtime, priority response and contracted support hours, scoped to your specific setup during scoping.
What the Kenyan market charges
| Band | Typical price (KES/month) | What it usually is |
|---|---|---|
| Free or near-free | Often bundled with hosting | Hosting with the word “maintenance” attached. Not a support plan |
| From 3,000 | Freelancer retainer | Plugin updates and occasional fixes, best-effort response |
| From 8,000 | Agency plan | Real patching, monitoring, backups, contracted response times |
| 60,000+ | SLA / enterprise | Guaranteed response, out-of-hours cover, dedicated contact |
How to tell the difference in one question: ask what the response time is when the site goes down on a Saturday. If there is not an answer in the contract, you do not have a maintenance plan.
Hosting is not maintenance
These are separate costs and conflating them is the most common misunderstanding in the Kenyan market.
| Hosting | Maintenance | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The server your site runs on | The work of keeping the site secure and working |
| Typical cost | From KES 3,000/year shared; from KES 30,000/year VPS | From KES 8,000/month |
| Who provides it | A hosting company | Your agency or developer |
| What happens without it | Site goes offline | Site gets slower, breaks, or gets compromised |
A hosting company will keep your server running. It will not notice that your contact form stopped sending, that a dependency has a published vulnerability, or that your page weight has crept past its budget.
What happens if you skip maintenance
This is not a scare section. These are the failure modes we see most often on Kenyan sites brought to us for rescue.
- Compromise through an unpatched dependency. The most common route. Recovery, cleanup, reinstallation, malware removal, Google reindexing, typically costs from KES 60,000 and takes days. That is several years of Essential care fees.
- Silent form failure. The contact form stops delivering and nobody notices for six weeks. There is no way to calculate what that cost you, which is precisely the problem.
- Performance decay. Images uploaded without optimisation, plugins added without review. Twelve months later the site fails Core Web Vitals and rankings have quietly slipped.
- Checkout breakage. For a store, a payment callback failing after a gateway update is revenue leaving in real time. This is why the technical support retainer carries priority response and transaction monitoring.
- No working backup. Everyone has backups. Far fewer have backups anyone has ever restored. We test restores; ask whoever holds yours whether they do.
Should you pay for maintenance?
Honest answer: not always.
- You probably do not need a plan if you have a genuinely static site with no forms, no CMS, no dependencies, and you are comfortable handling an outage yourself.
- You do need one if your site takes payments, generates leads you rely on, runs on a CMS with plugins, or would cost you money by being down for a day.
- A middle option: some Kenyan businesses handle content updates in-house and buy only security and monitoring. We will structure that if it fits, it is usually Essential care with no content-change work included.
Next steps
Pricing questions
How much does website maintenance cost in Kenya?
Starts from KES 8,000 per month depending on complexity. Brochure sites sit at the lower end, e-commerce stores and applications at the upper end. Hosting is a separate annual cost.
Is maintenance included in the build price?
Not in ours, and rarely anywhere. We include 30 days of post-launch monitoring with every build, after which a plan is optional.
Can I maintain the site myself?
Yes, if you are comfortable with updates, backups and monitoring, and you have time to respond when something breaks. Many Kenyan businesses do this successfully for simple sites. It becomes false economy once the site is generating revenue.
Do you maintain sites you didn't build?
Yes, after a paid technical audit. We need to know what we are taking responsibility for. The audit is KES 45,000 and is credited against your first three months if you take a plan.
What's the difference between hosting and maintenance?
Hosting is the server. Maintenance is the work of keeping the site secure, fast and functional. A host will keep the server running; it will not notice your forms have stopped working.
Is there a contract?
Monthly rolling, 30 days' notice. The technical support retainer can be structured as an annual contract with a stated SLA if that suits you better.
What if I only need occasional help?
We work ad hoc at KES 6,500 per hour. For most sites a plan works out cheaper within a few months, but if your needs are genuinely occasional, ad hoc is the honest recommendation.
Do you cover content updates?
Within your plan's included support, yes. Beyond that, at the hourly rate. Higher plans include more active support; we confirm exactly what's included for your site during scoping.
Get a fixed quote for this.
Send your requirements. You'll get a scope and a number, with no back-and-forth.
Prefer to talk now?
Message us on WhatsApp or call. We reply within one working day.
No obligation. Fixed scope and price before any work starts.
