Website maintenance: what it includes, and is it worth it?

A website is not a brochure you print once and forget. It runs on software, sits on a server, depends on a domain and a certificate, and talks to other services that change without telling you. “Website maintenance” is the work of keeping all of that running. This post explains what that work actually is, what a care plan should include, what it usually does not, and when you are better off doing it yourself.

What breaks on a site nobody looks after

The frustrating thing about neglected websites is that they rarely fall over on day one. They decay. In our experience these are the usual ways it goes wrong, roughly in the order owners notice them.

• Updates pile up. WordPress core, themes and plugins release fixes constantly, many of them security patches. Leave them a year and you have both known holes and a backlog of updates that may not apply cleanly any more.
• The SSL certificate expires. Visitors get a full-page browser warning telling them the site is not safe. Most leave. Common where the certificate was set up by hand and nobody set up renewal.
• The domain expires. The renewal email went to an old address, or to the designer who built the site. The site vanishes, email stops, and if nobody acts within the grace period the name can be bought by someone else. We cover who should control this in do you own your website?
• Forms fail silently. The contact form still looks fine. It just stopped sending, because the mail service changed its rules or a plugin update broke it. Owners find out when a customer says “I messaged you weeks ago”.
• Plugins conflict. One update changes something another plugin relied on. The booking calendar stops loading, the gallery goes blank, or the whole admin area throws an error.
• The site gets hacked. Nobody targets a village plumber specifically. Automated scripts scan for known vulnerabilities in out-of-date software and inject spam links, redirects or malware. Google then flags the site, and your name sits next to a red warning in search results.
• Links rot. The supplier you linked to changed their URL. The embedded map or video stopped working. Your own old pages were renamed and nobody added redirects. Together they make a site feel abandoned.

None of these need a villain. They need time and nobody watching.

Hosting, maintenance and support are three different things

These words get blurred together on pricing pages, so it is worth separating them.

Hosting is the server your site lives on. It is the building. A basic hosting plan keeps the lights on and nothing more. If you want to understand the hosting side properly, read our small business web hosting guide.

Maintenance is looking after the site that runs in that building: applying updates, running and testing backups, watching for downtime and intrusions, fixing what breaks. It is proactive. It happens whether or not you have asked for anything.

Support is reactive. You have a problem or a question, you ask, someone answers. A support promise with no maintenance behind it means you will be the one noticing problems, often after your customers have.

A good care plan bundles all three. A cheap hosting plan usually gives you only the first, with “support” meaning a help centre full of articles. Compare like with like.

What a good care plan includes

The specifics vary, but the following should be on the list. If any are missing, ask why.

Updates, applied and checked

Core, theme and plugin updates on WordPress; server software (PHP, web server, operating system) on any site. The important half is the checking: someone confirms the site still works afterwards, and rolls back if it does not.

Backups, and test restores

Daily at minimum, stored off the server, kept for at least 30 days. And restored periodically to prove they work. A backup nobody has ever restored is an assumption.

Uptime monitoring

An automated check, every few minutes, that the site is reachable, with an alert to a human when it is not. You should never be the one who discovers the site is down.

Security scanning

Regular scans for malware, changed files and known vulnerabilities, plus basic hardening (firewall, login protection, limiting what can be uploaded). Our website security basics post goes into what this looks like in practice.

Small content changes

A new phone number, an updated opening-hours table, a swapped team photo, a price change. A good plan includes a sensible amount of this each month so you are not paying an hourly rate to change a postcode.

Speed checks

Sites slow down as images and plugins accumulate. An occasional look at load times and Core Web Vitals (Google’s thresholds are LCP of 2.5 seconds or less, INP of 200 milliseconds or less, CLS of 0.1 or less) catches the drift before it hurts rankings.

A human to email

A named person or small team, with a stated response time, who knows your site. Not a ticket queue in another time zone.

What a care plan usually does not include

Being clear about this avoids awkward conversations later. A maintenance plan keeps what you have working. It does not normally cover:

• Redesigns. A new look, a new layout, a rebrand. That is a project with its own quote.
• New features. Adding online booking, a shop, a members area or a new integration.
• Copywriting. Writing new pages or blog posts. Updating a sentence is maintenance; writing a 1,000-word service page is not.
• SEO campaigns. Ongoing keyword work, link building and monthly reporting is a separate service, such as our SEO service.

The line is “keeping it working” versus “making it do more”. A good provider will say which side a request falls on before doing it.

DIY or a plan? An honest answer

You can maintain a small site yourself. We would be lying if we said otherwise. If your site is a simple brochure, you are comfortable logging in, and you will genuinely spend an hour on it every month, DIY is fine. The checklist at the end of this post is everything you need.

The problem is the word “genuinely”. In our experience, owners who take on maintenance themselves do it diligently for two or three months, then skip one because the shop was busy, then skip the next, and a year later the site has 40 pending updates and a certificate that expired in March. The risk is not that DIY is hard. It is that it is boring, and boring things get dropped.

A rough way to decide:

• DIY makes sense if the site is simple, downtime costs you almost nothing, and you are the sort of person who already keeps up with the van’s MOT a month early.
• A plan makes sense if the site brings in enquiries or bookings, you would not know how to fix a broken form, or your time is worth more than the monthly fee. At £20 a month, the plan costs less than an hour of most tradespeople’s time.

Warning signs of a bad care plan

Not every plan is worth the money. Walk away if you see these.

• No backups, or backups as an add-on. Backups are the whole point. If they are extra, the base plan is not a care plan.
• No named person. If you cannot find out who actually looks after your site, nobody does.
• Lock-in contracts. Twelve or twenty-four months upfront, with awkward cancellation and vague answers about taking your files if you leave. Good providers keep clients by being good.
• “Updates” with no checking. Automatic updates switched on and nobody looking at the site afterwards. That is how a plugin update takes your checkout down on a Saturday.
• No stated response time. “We’re always here for you” is not a number.
• They own your domain or hosting account. The site, the domain and the data should be in your name, with the provider as a delegated user, not the other way round.

What WebProud’s care plans include

We offer two plans, with no add-ons and no contract longer than a month. Both include hosting, maintenance and support in the sense described above.

Standard covers most trades, salons, clinics and local services. If we built your site on our Standard package, hosting and care together is £35 a month. Premium is for sites where an hour offline costs real money: online shops, booking systems, anything taking payments. If you are weighing the whole cost of a site, how much does a website cost in the UK? puts the monthly figure in context.

Whichever plan, you own the site, the domain and the data, and you can leave with all of it.

A monthly checklist if you go DIY

Put a recurring reminder in your calendar. This takes about an hour on a simple site.

1. Open the site in a private browser window. Check the padlock shows and note the certificate expiry date.
2. Check the domain renewal date and that the renewal email address is one you actually read.
3. Log in and apply pending updates (core, theme, plugins), one batch at a time. After each batch, load the home page, a service page and the contact form.
4. Send yourself a test message through every form on the site. Confirm it arrives.
5. Confirm a backup ran in the last 24 hours and that it is stored somewhere other than the site’s own server. Once a quarter, restore one to a test location.
6. Run a security scan (most security plugins include one) and review any admin accounts you do not recognise.
7. Click through your main navigation and any external links on key pages. Fix or remove anything broken.
8. Check Google Search Console for errors or security warnings.
9. Run a speed test on the home page and one busy page. If it has got noticeably slower since last month, find out why.
10. Make any small content changes that have built up: prices, hours, phone numbers, team.

Where to start

Whether you go DIY or pick a plan, start with the same three questions: who has the logins, when was the site last backed up, and when does the domain and certificate expire. If you cannot answer all three today, that is the first job.

If you would rather hand the whole thing over, our pricing page sets out both plans, or get in touch for a free 20-minute scoping call. We reply within one working day, and we are happy to look after sites we did not build.