What website maintenance costs
Website maintenance plans
Your website maintenance is one fee and one invoice a month, not four bills from four companies. Hosting is the base price, Tiffin CMS goes on top, and Tiffin Email is an add-on after that. Prices below are for annual billing, which saves about 17%: close to two and a half months of the fee every year.
The base
Hosting and maintenance, $39 a month
Your site gets this whether or not it runs on Tiffin CMS: fast loading from a server near each visitor, a security certificate that renews itself, protection when traffic spikes, backups, security updates, and me when something is wrong. There’s no separate hosting invoice and no domain renewal to forget about.
Edit your own website
You do it on the page itself, not in a separate admin area. Pick a tier by how many people need to edit, and whether they can edit the entire website or a portion of it. See how Tiffin CMS works.
$59/mo
$39 hosting + $20 Tiffin CMS
2 editors
One or two people update your site, and they can all edit everything.
- Edit your website content directly on the live page
- Drag blocks around to build a new page yourself
- Sign in once for your website and everything in it
- Save drafts and publish when you're ready
- See every past version, and restore any of them
- Upload and crop images, with the description screen readers need
- Keep your images and documents in one library any editor can add to
$119/mo
$39 hosting + $80 Tiffin CMS
8 editors
Several people update your site, and not all of them should change everything.
- Everything in Tiffin Site
- Set what each person is allowed to edit
- Stop two people overwriting each other's work
- See who changed what, and when
- Run news, events and other lists your team adds to
$229/mo
$39 hosting + $190 Tiffin CMS
25 editors
Your team is spread across departments or programs, each looking after their own pages.
- Everything in Tiffin Team
- Each person edits only their own section: one department, one program, one profile
- Add as many lists as you need
- Give each group its own library
- Get priority support
- Give your procurement office the accessibility documentation it asks for
Editors beyond what your tier includes are $8 a month each, $6 on Tiffin Institution.
Send to your list from the same place
Build and send emails from the same place you edit your website, with everything you’d expect from a mailing tool. The price depends on how many people are on your list, not on which features you want. See the email work I do.
- Build emails by dragging blocks around, the same way you build a page
- Send to your whole list, or just part of it
- Your list lives with your website, so sign-up forms add to it automatically
- Every email carries an unsubscribe link, handled for you
- Addresses that bounce come off your list automatically
- See opens, clicks and unsubscribes for every send
| Up to 2,000 subscribers | Included | No charge at this size |
| 2,001 to 10,000 | $29/mo | Mailchimp is about $100 here, Kit about $116 |
| 10,001 to 25,000 | $69/mo | |
| 25,001 to 50,000 | $129/mo | |
| Above 50,000 | Quoted |
Those prices assume about two sends per subscriber a month, which covers a monthly newsletter and a reminder. Anything heavier is quoted.
Work it out
Build your own price
Choose what you need and the price updates as you go.
$148/mo
billed annually
- Hosting$39
- Tiffin Team$80
- Tiffin Email$29
That saves $355 a year against paying monthly.
For comparison
What the same things cost elsewhere
| What it does | Squarespace or Wix | Custom site plus Sanity CMS | WordPress plus plugins | This |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roughly, at eight editors and a list of ten thousand | $140 to $190/mo | $260 to $280/mo | $130 to $200/mo | $148/mo |
| A design made for you, not a template | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Edit content directly on the live page Sanity edits in a separate studio. WordPress depends on the theme | Yes | No | Partly | Yes |
| Drafts, publishing and version history | Partly | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Control who can edit what Sanity's free tier makes every editor an administrator | Partly | Partly | Yes | Yes |
| Each person edits only their own section Sanity charges Enterprise for this. WordPress needs a plugin | No | No | Partly | Yes |
| Drag-and-drop page building Sanity reorders sections in a list, not on the page | Yes | Partly | Yes | Yes |
| Email marketing built in Everywhere else it is a separate tool or a plugin | Partly | No | Partly | Yes |
| One login for everything | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Supported by the person who built it | No | Yes | Partly | Yes |
| No charge for each person who edits Editors are included up to each tier here, then $6 to $8 | Partly | No | Yes | Partly |
The most expensive option here gives you the least.
The second column is a custom design with a separate CMS behind it, priced at list with eight paid editors. It costs the most because it is three products: a host, a CMS that charges for every person who edits, and a mailing tool with no connection to the website. That is three invoices and three logins, and letting each person edit only their own section costs more again on top.
WordPress comes closest on features. The difference is that each of its checkmarks is a separate plugin, and somebody has to choose it, pay for it, update it and keep it working with the rest.
These are published prices for the plan most people buy, checked in October 2026. What anyone actually pays depends on the plan and on how many people edit. None of these numbers is a quote from me.
Questions