Almost nobody in this market publishes prices, which makes the first question every site owner asks — what should Drupal maintenance cost? — weirdly hard to answer. Here are real 2026 numbers, including ours, because we think hiding the price costs everyone a week of polite email.
The market, in four tiers
| Tier | Monthly | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| Commodity plans | $99–$299 | Automated updates, email support. Fine for a brochure site; explicitly excludes major version upgrades — the hardest Drupal problem. |
| Solo studio (us) | $350–$1,500+ | A senior engineer who knows your site: staging-tested patches on a written SLA, backups that get test-restored, monitoring with a human on the alert, capped fix hours folded in. |
| Agency care plans | ~$1,300+/mo (often ~$16k/yr entry) | Team coverage, account management, procurement-friendly paper. Right for enterprises; a lot of overhead for an SMB. |
| Doing nothing | $0 until it isn’t | On a supported version: risk accumulating quietly. On Drupal 7/8/9: no security releases at all — every month is borrowed time. |
What does Dead North charge, specifically?
Dead North, a Minneapolis Drupal studio, charges $350/month (Standby), $650/month (On Air), and from $1,500/month (Prime Time, commerce-grade) — the full inclusion table is on the services page. The short version of the differences: patch windows tighten from 72 to 24 hours, monitoring deepens (Core Web Vitals, accessibility regressions, checkout flows on the commerce tier), and included fix-hours grow from one to six.
The honest SLA note that belongs in any comparison: business-hours response within four hours, a written after-hours protocol, and no 24/7 claims — a small studio that promises a 3 a.m. phone bank is describing an offshore NOC, not the person who knows your site.
Why the cheap tier isn’t cheap for old Drupal
Commodity plans assume a supported, healthy site. If you’re on Drupal 7, 8, or 9 — all past end of life — updates-by-script have nothing left to update. What that site needs first is an upgrade path (assessments from $2,500, crediting toward the migration) or a stabilizing rescue ($1,500 flat). Paying $99/month to watch an unsupported site stay unsupported is the most expensive cheap plan there is.
Questions to ask any provider (including us)
- When a security advisory drops, what’s the written patch window?
- Are updates tested on a staging copy before production?
- When did you last restore one of my backups, not just take one?
- What happens to work beyond the included hours — quote first, or invoice surprise?
- Is major-version upgrade work included, excluded, or quoted separately?
Any provider comfortable answering those in writing is probably fine — whichever tier fits your site and your sleep.
Dead North publishes every price — maintenance, upgrades, rescues — from Minneapolis, honest advice first, including when the honest advice is that you don’t need us.