What you're paying for is reliability: keeping the software current so it stays secure, catching and fixing breakages quickly, and making the small edits a living site always needs. Skipping it saves money right up until something breaks or gets compromised.
Decide upfront who handles maintenance: you, an in-house person, or a support arrangement with whoever built it. An unmaintained site slowly loses security and search performance, so this is a cost worth planning, not deferring.
Updated July 2026
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