Quick answer: Over 3 years, a maintained WordPress business site typically costs $1,800–$10,800 in maintenance and security alone — before a single incident, and each malware cleanup adds $150–500 plus downtime. A one-time migration to a modern platform replaces most of that recurring cost with $0–35/month hosting. If you've had one incident or pay for ongoing maintenance, migration usually pays for itself within 2–3 years — and removes the risk premium entirely.
Nobody disputes that cleanup is cheaper today. A malware removal service costs a few hundred dollars; a migration costs thousands. The question a business owner actually faces is different: what does each path cost over the next three years? Let's do the math honestly, including the case where staying is the right call.
What staying on WordPress actually costs
The recurring costs of a responsibly maintained WordPress business site:
| Line item | Typical range / month |
|---|---|
| Managed WordPress hosting | $20–60 |
| Maintenance (updates, backups, monitoring — DIY time or a service) | $50–300 |
| Premium plugin & theme licenses | $10–50 |
| Security plugin / firewall service | $10–30 |
That's roughly $90–440/month, or $3,200–$15,800 over 3 years, for a site that is being looked after properly. Cheaper is possible — but "nobody maintains it" is exactly the profile of the sites that end up in our hacked-site triage guide.
Then the incident math. With 11,334 new vulnerabilities disclosed in 2025 (91% in plugins) and roughly half of the high-impact ones exploited within 24 hours of disclosure, incidents aren't a tail risk on plugin-heavy sites — they're a rate. Each one costs $150–500 in professional cleanup, plus downtime, plus the unquantifiable: a "deceptive site" warning shown to your customers. And cleanup doesn't shrink the attack surface, which is why reinfection is common enough that cleanup vendors sell subscriptions.
What migrating actually costs
One-time: agencies quote WordPress-to-modern-stack migrations anywhere from $10,000 to $75,000 with open-ended timelines; productized services (ours included) start meaningfully lower with fixed pricing — see our pricing. What you're buying is the content migration, the design port or refresh, and — critically — the SEO redirect map that preserves your rankings.
Ongoing, this is where the structure flips:
| Line item | After migration / month |
|---|---|
| Hosting (static/modern platforms) | $0–35 |
| Security patching | $0 — there is no plugin layer to patch |
| Maintenance retainer | $0 for showcase sites; optional for evolving sites |
| Incident cleanup | n/a — no admin panel or database exposed to attack |
The 3-year comparison
For a typical business site currently paying ~$150/month in combined maintenance, hosting, and licenses, with one incident along the way:
- Stay: ~$5,400 maintenance + ~$350 cleanup + your hours + the ongoing risk ≈ $5,750+, and you still own the risk at year 3
- Migrate: one-time migration fee + ~$400 hosting over 3 years ≈ the migration fee + $400, risk retired, and the cost curve stays flat from year 3 onward
The break-even depends on your migration quote — which is exactly why we publish "from" prices and put an exact number in writing after a 20-minute call.
When staying is the right answer
Honesty cuts both ways. Staying on WordPress is defensible when: your site runs 3–5 plugins from major vendors on managed hosting with automatic updates; your team depends on a specific WordPress-only workflow; or the site is near end-of-life anyway. In those cases the maintenance bill is small and the exposure is modest — harden it, monitor it, and spend the migration money elsewhere. We say this on calls regularly.
FAQ
Is malware cleanup ever the right choice? Yes — for a first incident on an otherwise well-maintained site, cleanup plus hardening is the proportionate response. It becomes the wrong choice when it's recurring: the second cleanup is the signal that the attack surface, not bad luck, is the problem.
Why is post-migration maintenance near zero? Because the things that need patching don't exist: no plugin layer, no exposed admin login, no server-side database on public routes. The entire vulnerability class that produced 11,334 disclosures in 2025 doesn't apply.
What does a migration cost for my site? It depends on size and complexity — tell us about your site in 60 seconds and book a free 20-minute call; you'll get a fixed price in writing, or an honest "stay and harden" if that's the right answer.
Sources: vulnerability and exploitation figures from Patchstack — State of WordPress Security in 2026; agency migration pricing benchmarks from DevCritters (2026). Maintenance ranges reflect typical published rates for managed WP care plans as of August 2026.