The question most business owners ask is some version of: what will this cost? When it comes to Craft CMS support, the honest answer is that it depends on factors specific to your site. But there’s enough of a pattern to give you a useful framework.
Support for a Craft CMS site typically works in one of two ways: ad-hoc work billed by the hour or project, or a retainer arrangement where a set amount of support is available each month for a fixed fee.
Ad-hoc is fine for sites that don’t change much and don’t need frequent attention. You pay for work when it’s needed. The downside is that when something urgent comes up, you’re starting from scratch each time in terms of context, which adds time and cost.
A retainer works better for sites that are genuinely business-critical. The developer knows the site, is available when needed, and handles routine maintenance as part of the arrangement. The cost is predictable, and you’re not scrambling to find someone when something breaks.
The complexity of the site. A straightforward Craft CMS site with a handful of sections and a contact form requires far less ongoing work than a site with complex entry types, Matrix fields, multiple user groups, Commerce integration, and several third-party connections.
Plugin maintenance. Craft and its plugins are updated regularly. Keeping everything current, testing updates before applying them to production, and managing the occasional breaking change takes time. This is ongoing work that a retainer typically covers.
How much the site changes. A site that’s updated regularly, whether that’s new content, new features, or design changes, requires more developer time than one that’s essentially static.
The current state of the site. If you’re taking on a site that hasn’t been properly maintained, there’s often remedial work to do before ongoing support makes sense. Getting the site into a maintainable state is a separate cost from the ongoing support itself.
This is the part most business owners don’t account for. A Craft CMS site without active maintenance accumulates risk. Plugins drift out of compatibility. PHP version requirements advance. Security vulnerabilities go unpatched. When those risks materialise, the cost of fixing them is almost always higher than the cost of preventing them would have been.
The question isn’t really whether support costs money. It’s whether you’d rather spend it proactively or reactively.
If you want a clear answer on what ongoing Craft CMS support should cost, get in touch with Karl.
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The question I get asked most often by business owners is some version of: what will this cost? It’s a fair question, and the honest answer is that it depends on things that are specific to your site. But there’s enough of a pattern to give you a useful framework.
Craft CMS has a strong but relatively specialised developer community. The difference between someone who has built seriously with Craft and someone who has touched it once or twice is meaningful. If your site runs on Craft and you need ongoing development or support, knowing what to look for matters.
Most businesses with a Craft CMS site didn’t choose Craft themselves. A web agency built it, recommended the platform, and handled everything from launch onward. That arrangement works well until it doesn’t, and there are several ways it can stop working.
Most clients come to us when their site has started to feel like a risk rather than an asset. Whether the agency relationship has ended, an upgrade has been delayed, or the site has simply grown beyond what it can handle, a conversation costs nothing.
Get in touch with KarlTrusted by established businesses and growing brands across the UK
Expression 37 works with a small number of clients at any one time. These are some of them.
Karl founded Expression 37 in 2007 and has worked exclusively with ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS ever since. He does not take on work in other platforms and does not hand work to other developers. Expression 37 is deliberately small, because the kind of support that matters to clients with business-critical sites is specific to their site, not something that scales in the conventional sense. If you work with Expression 37, you work with Karl.
Find out how we workWe hired Karl @ Expression 37 Ltd. to undertake a complete revamp of the Carers Trust Mid Yorkshire website. We had a lot of issues with our old WordPress site and thanks to Karl he was able to provide us with a complete rebuild in the ExpressionEngine system. We are very pleased with the results and Karl comes highly recommended!
Sandra Phillips - Community Plus Service Manager
Carers Trust Mid Yorkshire