Web shop maintenance cost: what you pay each month
How much web shop maintenance costs each month: platform and payment fees vs maintenance work, what upkeep should cover, a worked budget and how billing works.
The monthly cost of a web shop is two different bills that often get mixed up: fees you pay to platforms and providers, and work someone does on the shop. A cheap maintenance package can sit next to a large fee bill, and the other way round. This guide separates the two, shows what maintenance should actually cover and gives a worked monthly budget.
Quick answer
- Fees go to the platform, hosting, plugin and app vendors, and payment providers. They grow with your revenue and the apps you install, not with maintenance.
- Maintenance work covers updates, tested backups, monitoring, security and small fixes. Development of new features is a separate line.
- A Croatian agency guide from July 2026 (Oseka Media) puts web shop maintenance at roughly €90-€250 a month and more - a market figure, and it usually excludes hosting.
- What you need depends on the platform: Shopify updates itself, WooCommerce plugins need constant attention, and custom code needs someone who knows that code.
- With us: hourly work at €40-60 (excluding VAT) or a monthly partnership with an amount agreed in writing.
Two bills: fees and work
| Item | Who you pay | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Platform subscription or hosting | Shopify, or your hosting provider | Plan, traffic |
| Apps, plugins, theme licences | Their vendors | How many you install |
| Payment fees | Payment provider (and the platform, in some cases) | Revenue, card mix |
| Domain and email tools | Registrar, email platform | Contacts, sends |
| Maintenance work | Agency, freelancer or your own staff | Platform, plugins, how critical the shop is |
| Development work | Agency, freelancer or your own staff | What sales asks for |
Build prices and the typical fee ranges for each platform are in our web shop cost guide. This post is about what happens after launch.
What maintenance should cover
- Updates of the platform core, plugins and theme - tried on a copy of the shop first, not on the live checkout.
- Backups that restore. A backup nobody has restored is a hope, not a backup.
- Monitoring of uptime and of the checkout itself: a test order after every update.
- Security: admin accounts, two-factor login, removed plugins that nobody uses.
- Fixes to things that break, by priority.
- A short monthly report of what was done.
The platform changes the work. On Shopify the platform updates itself, so maintenance is mostly apps, theme changes and the connections to fiscalisation and accounting - see what a Shopify store in Croatia has to connect. WooCommerce runs on WordPress plugins that update constantly and occasionally break each other. A custom shop has no plugin churn, but it needs a developer who knows the code.
A worked monthly budget
This example is illustrative, not a client case: a WooCommerce shop with 300 products and a steady trickle of change requests.
| Monthly task | Hours |
|---|---|
| Updates tested on a copy, then applied | 2 |
| Test order, monitoring check, backup restore spot check | 1 |
| Fixes and small changes | 2-3 |
| Maintenance total | 5-6 |
At €40-60 an hour that is €200-€360 a month for maintenance work, before fees and before any new features.
Fees can easily outweigh that. Shopify’s pricing page lists a 2% third-party transaction fee on the Basic plan when you take payments through an outside gateway instead of Shopify Payments. On €20,000 of monthly sales that is €400 a month - more than the maintenance above. Shopify Payments is available in Croatia, so check which gateway your shop uses before you cut the maintenance budget.
Maintenance is not development
The common trap is a cheap package that covers updates only. Every new shipping method, filter or landing page then becomes a separate quote, and the shop slowly falls behind what sales needs. Decide up front how many hours a month go to improvements, not just to keeping the lights on.
How we handle it:
- Hourly work at €40-60 excluding VAT, with a monthly breakdown of hours - right for shops that change rarely.
- A monthly partnership for maintenance plus agreed hours for new features, with the amount set in writing up front.
- Fees stay on your accounts and are paid by you directly to the providers.
- Shops built by someone else start with an audit - see web shop maintenance and upgrades.
All four ways of working are on the engagement models page. For maintenance of business software beyond the shop, see software maintenance cost.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is maintenance included in the Shopify subscription? The platform, hosting and security of Shopify itself are. Your theme changes, apps and the connections to fiscalisation, accounting and stock are not.
Can we maintain the shop ourselves? Content - products, prices, banners - yes. Plugin and core updates on WooCommerce are safer with someone who tests them on a copy first.
Does a shop that doesn’t change still need maintenance? Yes. Plugins, payment providers and browsers change even when your shop doesn’t, and security updates don’t wait.
Our previous agency holds the access. What now? Start by getting the domain, hosting and admin accounts into your name. We help with that as part of taking over a shop.
How many hours a month does a small shop need? For maintenance alone, usually 4-8 hours. Add development hours for whatever sales wants to change.
Related Articles
- Web shop cost in Croatia - build prices and platform fees.
- Software maintenance cost - the 15-25% rule and what SLAs cover.
- Payment gateway integration for Croatian web shops - choosing how you take payments.
Is your web shop looked after?
Tell us which platform you run and what keeps breaking. The first call is free, and we will tell you honestly whether you need monthly maintenance or only occasional hours. Reach us at [email protected] or via the form on our homepage.