Corporate website maintenance retainer cost and SLA in Dublin (2026)

The verdict in three sentences

For the corporate website of a mid-sized company in Dublin, a serious maintenance retainer costs between 150 and 900 EUR excl. VAT a month in 2026, the gap coming from the SLA (next business day or 4-hour response) and the volume of included changes. After a breach, the priority is a written scope: weekly security updates, daily off-site backups, 24/7 monitoring and a tested restore plan. An agency retainer usually costs less than an in-house hire and is more reliable than a lone contractor.

What a maintenance contract must cover after a breach

Most incidents on corporate sites come from outdated WordPress plugins, shared admin accounts or shared hosting without isolation. The contract must therefore spell out recurring tasks, response times and what falls outside the retainer. A good contract also includes an exit clause: access to source code, backups and documentation if you switch provider.

For a company that has just been breached, the Advanced plan is the sweet spot: 4-hour business response, backups stored away from the main host, a monthly vulnerability report and 4 to 6 hours to improve the site without a purchase order.

Agency retainer, contractor or in-house: the numbers

A 500 EUR a day contractor still makes sense for one-off projects, but cannot guarantee a 4-hour response on a Friday evening. An in-house hire is justified once you run several sites and more than 15 to 20 days of work a month.

Mini case study

Aoife, head of communications at a 400-employee industrial company in Dublin, saw the corporate site defaced for 3 days after an outdated plugin was exploited. Cost of the incident: 2 days of emergency contractor time at 1,000 EUR a day, 6,000 EUR of clean-up and rebuild, and a hiring campaign put on hold. She signs an Advanced plan at 600 EUR a month, or 7,200 EUR a year, and adds an annual pentest at 2,500 EUR. Total: 9,700 EUR a year. A single avoided incident of that size, about 8,000 EUR of direct costs, already covers over 80 % of the annual budget, and the 5 monthly hours of changes replace roughly 3,000 EUR of small ad hoc requests.

FAQ

What is the difference between a next-day SLA and a 4-hour SLA?

A next-business-day SLA guarantees work starts the following working day, which suits a low-stakes brochure site. A 4-hour SLA costs roughly 2 to 3 times more but caps downtime at half a day.

Do unused hours roll over?

It depends on the contract: common practice is rollover for 1 to 3 months at most. Beyond that, hours expire, so size the retainer on 6 months of request history.

Does the contract cover GDPR compliance?

It covers technical security (updates, encryption, logging), which Article 32 of the GDPR requires. Records of processing and privacy notices remain the company's responsibility, with optional support at 500 to 1,500 EUR.

Should we change hosting after a breach?

Often yes: 10 EUR a month shared hosting is replaced by a managed or dedicated server at 40 to 150 EUR a month, with a web application firewall and isolation.

How long does it take to onboard an existing site?

Plan for 1 to 2 weeks of initial audit billed between 800 and 2,000 EUR, to inventory plugins, patch known flaws and set up backups.

Let's scope your project. Tell us about your site, your hosting and the SLA you need, and we will propose an onboarding audit and a monthly retainer, live within 2 weeks. Detailed quote within 48 h. WhatsApp +221 77 596 93 33.