Website maintenance in Canada is usually priced as a monthly retainer, and what you pay reflects how much work the site needs and how fast you need it. A simple marketing site might be a few hundred dollars a month for security and updates; a revenue-critical web application can run several thousand for proactive monitoring, patching, and ongoing changes.
This guide breaks down realistic 2026 retainer bands in Canadian dollars and what each tier typically includes. We maintain sites and applications for Canadian companies with senior engineers on the same business day, invoice in CAD, and keep PIPEDA-aware data handling current as your site evolves.
| Engagement | Range | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| Essential care (marketing site) | C$300–C$900/month | Security patching, dependency and CMS updates, uptime monitoring, backups, and a small allowance of content or minor changes. Keeps a brochure or marketing site safe and current. |
| Active support (growing site) | C$900–C$2,500/month | Everything in essential care plus a larger change budget, performance monitoring, SEO upkeep, and faster response times. Right for a site that's central to lead generation. |
| Managed application support | C$2,500–C$8,000+/month | Proactive monitoring, on-call response, ongoing feature work, and integration upkeep for a web application where downtime costs real money. Effectively a fractional product team. |
Essential care (marketing site)
C$300–C$900/month
Security patching, dependency and CMS updates, uptime monitoring, backups, and a small allowance of content or minor changes. Keeps a brochure or marketing site safe and current.
Active support (growing site)
C$900–C$2,500/month
Everything in essential care plus a larger change budget, performance monitoring, SEO upkeep, and faster response times. Right for a site that's central to lead generation.
Managed application support
C$2,500–C$8,000+/month
Proactive monitoring, on-call response, ongoing feature work, and integration upkeep for a web application where downtime costs real money. Effectively a fractional product team.
A static marketing site needs far less than a web application with logins, payments, and integrations. The more moving parts, the more maintenance — and the higher the cost of neglect.
Faster guaranteed response and resolution times cost more because they reserve capacity for you. A revenue-critical site usually justifies a tighter SLA than a brochure does.
Retainers include an allowance of changes; if you ship updates constantly, you'll want a larger band. Predictable monthly work is cheaper than ad-hoc emergency fixes.
Keeping dependencies patched, monitoring for vulnerabilities, and maintaining PIPEDA-aware handling as the site changes are ongoing tasks. Skipping them is how a healthy site becomes a breach.
Uptime and performance monitoring, automated backups, and tested restore procedures cost a little each month and save you enormously the one time you need them.
Senior engineers on retainer, not on a ticket queue.
We'll send back an itemised proposal in CAD — scope, line items, timeline, and the team that would run it.
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