The question of WordPress maintenance in-house or agency usually comes up when the company already has someone who is good with computers - and the website looks like one more thing they could take on. On paper the math is obvious: that person is on the payroll anyway, while outside care is a new invoice every month. In practice both options cost money, just in a different currency. The employee pays for the site with their time and with knowledge they often do not have, and the company pays for that with downtime risk. Outside care pays for the site with an invoice, but takes on the responsibility and a response time written into the contract.
Most comparisons online put an agency against a freelancer. I want to compare something I see at clients more often: a person inside the company who “handles the website on the side” against someone outside who does it for a living. No salaries pulled out of thin air, because those depend on the city, the role and the scope of duties - instead I will show you how to run the numbers on your own figures.
What WordPress maintenance actually covers
Before you compare costs, you need to agree on what you are paying for. WordPress maintenance is not clicking “Update” once a month. It is a set of recurring tasks, each with its own rhythm:
- Updates of the core, theme and plugins, always with a backup before and a check of the site after, and in a store a test order
- Backups kept off the site’s server, with a few weeks of history and a restore test every so often
- Monitoring of uptime and security, because someone has to learn about an outage before a customer reports it
- Incident response - diagnosis, getting the site back, and fixing the cause, not just the symptom
- Small changes to content and settings, which come up every week in every company
I listed the full scope with frequencies in the article on what WordPress maintenance should actually include. Here one observation is enough: the first four items require technical knowledge, the last one mostly requires time. That distinction decides the whole calculation.
WordPress maintenance in-house or agency - how to count the cost honestly
The most common mistake in this math is assuming the employee does the site “for free” because they get paid anyway. They do not. Every hour spent on plugins is an hour not spent on their actual job - serving customers, sales, accounting, logistics. That is why I count the in-house option like this:
| Item | Employee in the company | Outside care |
|---|---|---|
| Routine (updates, backups, review) | hours per month times the full cost of their working hour | in the monthly fee |
| Learning and looking for solutions | extra hours, usually underestimated | on the provider’s side |
| Outage | as many hours as it takes, plus the time the site is down | response time from the contract |
| Holiday and sick leave | site without care or a break in their own work | cover on the provider’s side |
| Tools (backups, monitoring) | licences bought separately | usually included |
The full cost of an employee’s hour is not their take-home rate, but everything the company pays for them divided by their working hours. Any accountant has that figure. Multiply it by the hours the site really takes each month, add a buffer for outages - and only then compare it with a monthly fee.
Prices for outside care vary widely on the market and go up for stores and short response times, because very different scopes are sold under the same name - so compare the task list first and the amount second. I collected all the maintenance costs, including those that do not depend on who looks after the site, in the article on website maintenance cost.
The risk you do not see in the budget
Counting hours is only half the comparison. The other half is what happens when something goes wrong - and with WordPress sooner or later it will, because updates can clash no matter who clicks them.
An employee who handles the site on the side usually has no procedure. They update everything at once, with no backup before, on the live site. When something breaks, they start searching online for a fix while the site is down. It is not bad will, it is simply not their profession - just as I would not run your accounting.
The second risk is less obvious: knowledge in one head. If only one person knows where the hosting logins are, how backups are set up and which plugin breaks the contact form after an update, then when they leave the company, that knowledge leaves with them. I see it regularly: the next person with access to the site starts by recovering passwords and guessing what is what.
The third risk is rhythm. The employee has their main duties, and those win in a busy week. Updates wait a month, then two, and when someone finally clicks them, the version jump is so big that the site goes down. Safe updating needs regularity - I listed what it takes in the safe WooCommerce updates checklist.
How to choose: site size, downtime risk, knowledge in the company
I am not saying the in-house option is always wrong. There are situations where it makes complete sense. It works well when:
- the site is a simple brochure, where a day of downtime does not cost the company any leads,
- there is a person in the company who really knows WordPress, not just how to log in to it,
- that person has fixed time for the site in their schedule, not “whenever there is a moment”,
- logins, backups and procedures are written down so that someone else can take over in a day.
Outside care wins when the site actually earns money - collects enquiries, sells, serves customers - and every hour of downtime has a price. It also wins when nobody in the company has technical knowledge and there is a store, integrations or payments on top. Then you are not paying for someone to click updates, you are paying for someone who knows what to do when an update breaks something.
Often the best option turns out to be a mix. The employee handles small content changes, because they know the company and the offer. Updates, backups, monitoring and outages go to someone outside. The company does not pay a specialist’s time to swap a photo, and the employee does not have to learn how to repair a site under pressure.
Whichever option you choose, one thing has to be in writing: who is responsible for what and how fast. For an employee that is their job description, for outside care - the contract. What it should contain I covered in the article on the website maintenance contract template.
What I do differently - SLA and priority during an outage
When I take a site under ongoing care, you get a task list with frequencies from day one and an agreed response time for outages, written into the contract as an SLA. That is the main difference from a person who handles the site on the side: I do not promise to take a look when I have a moment, I promise to respond within a set time. What exactly goes into that care for a store, and how to read the plans, is collected in my guide to WooCommerce store care.
With companies that have their own person for the website, I often work in a mixed model. Their employee stays with content and day-to-day changes, and I take updates, backups, monitoring and everything that breaks. That way knowledge about the site does not sit in one head, because logins and procedures are documented on my side, and the employee does not fight fires they were never hired for.
If you are not sure which option fits your company, start with a simple test: count how many hours someone at your company spent on the website last quarter and how many times the site was down. Those two numbers usually settle the question faster than any price comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Does it pay to have your own employee look after the website? It does for a simple site, when the employee knows WordPress and has fixed time for it in their schedule. For a store or a site that collects enquiries, downtime risk and the lack of cover usually outweigh the savings.
How much does WordPress maintenance cost? With me plan prices are on the support page - a company website needs less than a store with short response times. The market range is wide, so compare the task list and the response time, not just the amount.
Agency or freelancer for WordPress care? What the contract says matters more than the form: a task list, response time, where backups live and cover for holidays. A freelancer with no cover carries the same risk as an employee in the company, just outside it.
Who should hold the logins to the company website? The company, not a person. Hosting, domain and admin panel logins should be kept somewhere the owner can reach regardless of who currently looks after the site.
Would rather not watch over it every month yourself? I take sites and stores under ongoing care - backups, updates, monitoring, and priority when something breaks. Tell me what you run and I will send back scope and price.