When a site is actively under attack, the last thing anyone wants is to call around getting vague quotes before getting help. Pricing for emergency security support is often buried behind “contact us” forms precisely because providers don’t want to commit to a number upfront. Here’s a transparent, actual-numbers breakdown — what emergency response costs, what ongoing protection costs, and how the two relate.
Emergency Response: The One-Time Cost
Tremhost Armor SOS: $150.00, one-time.
This covers the full emergency response — same-day DNS cutover to Cloudflare, Under Attack Mode activation, custom emergency WAF and rate-limiting rules, origin IP rotation if your server’s real address has been exposed, and a post-incident summary once things are stable.
There’s no hidden tiering here — it’s a flat, one-time fee for stabilizing an active incident, not a subscription and not a variable quote based on “severity.”
Why This Number Matters More Than It Looks
To put $150 in context: the cost of downtime for a business relying on its website for sales, bookings, or leads can exceed that within a single hour, depending on the business. This isn’t meant as a scare tactic — it’s simply the actual math worth doing before deciding whether “wait and see” or “call for help now” is the more expensive option.
Ongoing Protection: The Monthly/Annual Cost
Emergency response solves the immediate problem. It doesn’t replace ongoing protection, which is priced separately and works out considerably cheaper per month than a repeated emergency would cost:
| Plan | Price | What’s Included |
|---|---|---|
| Armor Lite | $35.00/month ($30 setup) | DNS/CNAME setup, Universal SSL, proxy protection, baseline firewall rules, cache tuning, unmetered DDoS protection |
| Armor Pro | $3,540.00/year | Everything in Lite, plus full managed WAF, custom rules, rate limiting on login/checkout, image optimization, monthly security report |
| Armor Business | $150.00 (see plan details for billing terms) | Everything in Pro, plus Business-tier WAF, PCI DSS-ready configuration, prioritized support, quarterly reviews |
The Honest Math: Emergency vs. Prevention
Here’s the comparison worth actually sitting with: Armor SOS costs $150 once, for a site that’s already in crisis. Armor Lite costs $35/month — meaning roughly four months of ongoing, proactive protection costs about the same as a single emergency response. The difference is that Lite is working continuously to prevent the emergency from happening at all, while SOS is a reactive fix after the fact.
Neither is “wrong” to choose — a site that’s never had an incident and has low risk exposure may reasonably run without paid protection for a while. But once a site has actually experienced an incident, the math shifts: the emergency has already demonstrated the cost of not having protection, and ongoing coverage at $35/month is the considerably cheaper path compared to the possibility of paying $150 again for the next one.
What Drives Cost Up (and What Doesn’t)
To be transparent about what’s not a hidden fee: Armor SOS is a flat $150 regardless of how complex the specific incident is — a straightforward DDoS versus a more involved compromise requiring origin IP rotation both fall under the same price. What does change the ongoing cost is which tier of continuous protection makes sense afterward, which depends on factors like whether you’re handling payment data directly (pointing toward Business) or just need solid baseline protection (Lite) or tuned application-specific rules (Pro).
A Simple Way to Decide
| Your Situation | Reasonable Starting Point |
|---|---|
| Site is under attack or compromised right now | Armor SOS ($150 one-time) |
| No protection yet, want to prevent future incidents | Armor Lite ($35/month) |
| Running an application with login/checkout worth protecting | Armor Pro ($3,540/year) |
| Handling payment data, need compliance-ready configuration | Armor Business |
The Bottom Line
Emergency security support doesn’t have to be a mystery quote you’re afraid to ask about mid-crisis. $150 gets a full, same-day stabilization. From there, the real decision is whether the monthly cost of not needing that call again is worth it — for most businesses that have already had one incident, it is.
