Website maintenance: what it includes, and what you actually need
What a website maintenance plan usually covers, why a hand-coded site needs less of it, what mine includes, and five questions to ask any provider first.
By Drew Palframan, Ucluelet · · 4 min read
Photo: Ucluelet, my own.
The short version
- Most maintenance plans are built for WordPress: plugin and theme updates, backups and security scans.
- A hand-coded site has no plugins or theme to update, so it needs less of that list.
- What it still needs is hosting that watches it, changes when you ask, and someone who knows the code.
- Ask any provider what happens to your site if you stop paying for the plan.
Search for website maintenance and you’ll find plans with long checklists: plugin updates, theme updates, security scans, nightly backups, a monthly report. Most of them are written for WordPress sites, and on a WordPress site most of that list is real work. Whether you need it depends on how your site was built, so before you pay for a plan, it’s worth knowing what each line on the list is actually for.
What website maintenance usually means
Most maintenance plans you’ll find bundle some mix of these:
- Software updates. A WordPress site is WordPress itself, a theme, and a stack of plugins, each written by someone different and each updated on its own schedule. Skipping updates is how most of those sites get broken into, and running them is how most of them break.
- Backups. A copy of the site and its database, so a bad update or a hack can be rolled back.
- Security and uptime. Something watching the site, and someone who hears about it when it goes down.
- Changes. New hours, a new photo, a price on a menu, a staff member who left.
- Reports. A monthly email saying what was done.
Only the last two are about your business. The rest is upkeep on the machinery the site runs on, and how much of it you need depends on how much machinery there is.
Why a hand-coded site needs less of it
A site I build is written by hand. There are no plugins and no theme from someone else to update, so there is no weekly round of updates to run and nothing that breaks because one plugin moved and another didn’t. The site is the code I wrote, and nothing else.
That doesn’t mean it needs nothing. It means the list is shorter, and every line on it is something you’d notice if it stopped.
The maintenance a site needs is the changes you ask for, a routine look over it, and someone who already knows the code when something bigger comes up.
What a site I build still needs
| Need | What covers it | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Staying online | Hosting: the server, the padlock in the address bar, and a check every minute that the site is up, so I know when it's down before you do. | $30 a month, on every site I host |
| Small changes | Acuity Care: new hours, a new photo, a line of text. Plus a routine look over the site and a same-day reply to requests sent during my working hours. | From $89 a month |
| Bigger work | A new page, a new section or a new tool, quoted before I start. | $95 an hour with Care, $125 without |
| Something I built breaking | If a part I built stops working the way the agreed scope describes, I fix it at no charge while I host the site and your account is current. | Nothing |
Hosting and Care are separate on purpose. A site with no care plan is still kept online and watched; Care is for people who’d rather send a change and have it done than think about what it costs each time. In Care’s own words: Small changes to what is already there are simply done — no invoice, nothing to count. Anything that adds a page, a new design or new functionality is quoted before I start.
Starter, my one-page package, has no care plan, because a single page rarely needs one. Changes there are quoted at the hourly rate when you want them. Care is offered on Foundation, Growth and Business.
Do you need a care plan at all?
Probably not, if:
- your site rarely changes, and a few changes a year at an hourly rate is fine with you;
- you’re happy to email a request and wait for a quote each time.
Probably yes, if:
- your hours, prices, menu, staff or photos change through the season;
- you’d rather send a change than decide whether it’s worth paying for;
- your site has a tool, like a booking form or an estimate, that you lean on every week.
Either way, you can add Care later or drop it, and the site stays online with hosting alone.
Five questions to ask any maintenance provider
Whoever you hire, these tell you what the monthly fee actually buys:
- What exactly gets updated, and how often? If the answer is “plugins,” ask how many your site runs, and who fixes it when an update breaks something.
- Where are the backups, and have you ever restored one? A backup nobody has tested is a hope, not a backup.
- How do I find out the site is down? Is it a person watching, or a dashboard nobody opens?
- What counts as a small change? A plan with an hour allowance turns a two-minute phone-number change into something you count.
- What happens to my site if I stop paying for the plan? If the answer is that the site goes with it, the plan is rent, not maintenance.
Where to go from here
Everything Acuity Care covers, and what it costs for each package, is on my website maintenance page. Hosting has its own page. If your site is on a builder or an old WordPress install and you’re weighing up whether to keep maintaining it at all, Stuck on a template website? covers what you can take with you, and a call is the quickest way to find out what yours needs.