What this article covers
- What “maintenance” actually involves
- What really differs between plans at ¥3,000, ¥10,000–30,000 and around ¥50,000 a month
- A checklist for comparing providers, and contract terms to watch
- What you can do yourself each month, without a provider
Look up WordPress maintenance prices in Japan and you’ll find plans at ¥3,000 a month and plans above ¥50,000. Both are called “maintenance” (保守), yet one costs more than ten times the other.
The short answer: the difference isn’t so much the amount of work as whether the site can be put back when something goes wrong. This article breaks down what you get in each price range.
Maintenance comes down to six kinds of work
Providers use different names, but the work is roughly these six things:
- Updates: updating WordPress core, plugins, themes and the PHP version
- Backups: saving the data regularly, and restoring it when needed
- Monitoring: checking that the site is up, hasn’t been tampered with, and that no plugin you use has a known vulnerability
- Fixing outages: repairing things when the site won’t load or you can’t log in
- Small edits: replacing text, swapping images and so on
- Reporting: telling you each month what was done
The price difference comes down to how much of this is covered, and how well.
Typical monthly prices, and what each range buys
Looking at the prices providers publish, most plans fall around ¥3,000–10,000 a month for small sites, and ¥10,000–30,000 a month for sites with enquiry forms or booking features. Above that, there are plans at around ¥50,000 a month.
| Price range | Main work | Often left out |
|---|---|---|
| ¥3,000–5,000 a month | Automatic updates, backups stored on the same server | Staging, a visual check after updates, restore tests |
| ¥10,000–30,000 a month | Checks after updates, off-server backups, uptime monitoring, a few small edits a month | Continuous vulnerability monitoring, guaranteed response times |
| Around ¥50,000 a month | Updates tested on staging first, restore tests, vulnerability monitoring, hack response, guaranteed response times (SLA), detailed monthly reports | Very little (check the cap on edit hours) |
Around ¥3,000 a month: automatic updates and automatic backups
At this price, it’s close to impossible for a person to spend real time on your site every month and still make money. The work is mostly bulk updates run by a tool, plus backups from the hosting company’s built-in feature.
For a small, mostly blog-style site, that may be enough. But do check who will notice, and who will fix it, if an update breaks the site.
¥10,000–30,000 a month: a person checks the site
After updating, someone opens the site and checks the pages and forms. Keeping backups off the server also usually starts at this price. If enquiries through your site turn into sales, treat this range as the minimum.
Around ¥50,000 a month: a setup that avoids breakage, and proof you can restore
Updates are tried first on a copy of the live site (staging), and only applied to the live site if nothing breaks. Restore tests, which check that a backup can actually be restored, are done regularly too. This is for online shops, booking sites and others where downtime costs money.
The hidden shortcuts in cheap plans
Cheap isn’t bad in itself. The problem is that you can’t tell from the contract what’s been left out.
- Bulk updates straight on the live site: without staging, your customers are the first to see a broken site.
- Backups only on the same server: if the server is taken over or fails, the backups go with it.
- No restore tests: a backup that can’t be restored is no better than no backup.
- “Updates” means WordPress core only, not PHP: plenty of sites have been left on old PHP for years.
Why does this matter? In IPA’s 2024 survey of information security at small and medium-sized businesses in Japan (2024年度 中小企業における情報セキュリティ対策の実態調査), 48.0% of unauthorised access cases were caused by “vulnerabilities such as unapplied patches”. The average damage per incident was ¥730,000, and recovery took 5.8 days on average. About 70% of affected companies said the incident also affected their business partners.
The risk of skipping updates is growing every year. According to Patchstack’s report “State of WordPress Security in 2026”, 11,334 new WordPress-related vulnerabilities were found in 2025, up 42% on the previous year. 91% of them were in plugins.
A checklist for comparing providers
Once you have quotes, compare them with this table. The more “yes” answers, the more real maintenance you’re getting.
| What to check | How to check it |
|---|---|
| Are updates tested on staging first? | Ask: “Do you update directly on the live site?” |
| Does a person check the site after updates? | Ask which pages they check |
| Are backups also kept off the server? | Ask where they’re stored and for how long |
| Do they run restore tests? | Ask how often, and when they last did one |
| Are PHP updates included? | If not, ask what they cost |
| Do they monitor vulnerabilities in the plugins you use? | Ask what sources they use and what they do when they find one |
| Is there a set response time for outages? | Is “work starts within X hours” in writing? |
| Is there a monthly report? | Ask to see a sample |
| How many small edits, or how many hours, per month? | Ask the rate once you go over |
| Do the domain, hosting and admin accounts stay in your company’s name? | Is it written in the contract? |
| What do they hand over when you cancel? | Which data, logins and documents |
| Minimum term and cancellation terms | Is there a cancellation penalty? |
Contract terms to watch
Before you look at the price, check these points.
Minimum term and cancellation penalties
“Billed monthly, but the contract runs for a year, with a penalty for early cancellation” is a common combination. Even if you’re not happy with the work, you can’t leave right away. Check that you can cancel month to month.
The domain or hosting is in the provider’s name
“We’ll manage it all for you” sounds convenient. But once the domain or hosting is in the provider’s name, you can’t take the site with you when you cancel. The basic rule: contract the domain and hosting in your own company’s name, and give the provider only the access they need to do the work.
No admin access for you
Some contracts won’t let you into the admin at all, “because you might break something”. Then even changing one line of text means sending the provider a request. Always get an admin account for your own company.
The work is described only as “maintenance, all-inclusive”
If the contract doesn’t say what will be done, you have no grounds to complain when it isn’t. Check that the items in the table above are written in the contract or the service specification.
Every edit is “quoted separately”
Some contracts send you a quote for every text change, even though you’re paying monthly. Check exactly what the monthly fee covers.
What you can do yourself each month (about 30 minutes)
Whether or not you use a provider, as the owner you can check these yourself.
| Task | How often | How |
|---|---|---|
| Check for update notices in the admin | Monthly | Open Dashboard → Updates (ダッシュボード → 更新) |
| Check Site Health | Monthly | Under Tools → Site Health (ツール → サイトヘルス), look for critical issues |
| Review the user list | Monthly | Look for former staff or admins you don’t recognise |
| Clear out unused plugins | Every 3 months | Consider deleting any that are deactivated |
| Check where backups are stored | Monthly | Is there a recent one, and is there a copy off the server? |
| Test your forms | Monthly | Send one to yourself and check it arrives |
| Domain and hosting renewal dates | Twice a year | Check the expiry dates and that auto-renew is on |
Once you’re used to it, you can run the updates yourself too. But before bulk-updating the live site or changing the PHP version, make sure you have a way to roll back if something breaks. We’ll cover this in detail in Can you maintain WordPress yourself?
Where to draw the line between doing it yourself and handing it off
Our suggestion is this split: you stay the owner, and hand off the time-consuming work and emergencies.
- Do it yourself: updating text and images, the monthly checks, managing logins
- Hand it off: testing updates on staging, PHP changes, dealing with a hack, restore tests
Set up this way, you can take the site with you if you ever want to switch providers. We plan to cover how to review your contract in WordPress maintenance contracts: what to check.
About maintenance at wpexperts.jp
At wpexperts.jp, we maintain your site with the domain, hosting and admin all kept in your name. Contracts are month to month, and every month we report what we did.
- If you want to see whether your current provider’s maintenance is good enough, starting with what’s visible from outside, try our free security check.
- For help comparing quotes or reading your current contract, get in touch through the contact form or LINE.