WordPress maintenance cost is the monthly fee for keeping a healthy site healthy. It is not a blank cheque for new features, and it is not the same invoice as a malware cleanup. If those are mixed, the month either overcharges or under-delivers.
What the month should name
A backup stored somewhere other than only on the same server. Updates for WordPress, the theme, and the plugins, tried with care when the site is easy to break. A check that the form or the checkout still arrives. A short note of what changed. A few content edits: a price, a photo, a paragraph.
Security hygiene belongs here: old users removed, and admin addresses that are not guesses. A site that is already hacked is an incident. See what to do when a WordPress site was hacked.
How the studio bills care
The month is described before it starts. You can stop. Critical failures are still picked up the same day, because the team is available 24 hours, and that repair is a milestone of its own if it is larger than the month. WordPress maintenance is the service. The checklist version is daily, weekly, and monthly tasks.
Questions
What is inside a monthly maintenance fee?
A backup you can restore, updates checked before they hit the live site when the site is fragile, a look at the form or checkout, and a small pool of content edits.
Does maintenance include new pages?
No. A new page set, a shop, or a redesign is a separate milestone.
Is there a fee to ask about a site that is down?
No advance. A critical repair is its own milestone, billed when the broken path works.