Blog · Maintenance
Website maintenance: what it includes and why it is not optional
A website is not launched and forgotten. Maintenance is the work that keeps it fast, secure and findable after day one. Skipping it is not saving money: it is technical debt that accrues interest.
What maintenance means
Maintenance is everything that keeps the site working after launch: it is not an add-on, it is the continuation of the work.
A website is a living system. It depends on libraries, plugins, certificates, servers, DNS and content that ages. Each of these changes over time, regardless of you. Maintenance is the work that keeps the system aligned with those changes.
Do not confuse maintenance with development. Development adds features; maintenance preserves existing ones. A site that is not maintained does not break on day one: it degrades. Pages become slow, forms stop sending email, certificates expire, Google positions drop. The owner notices when traffic has already fallen.
This article is part of the guide on website design. If you are evaluating a new site, maintenance must be defined before launch, not after.
What it really includes
A serious maintenance contract lists activities, not hours.
- UpdatesCMS, plugins, libraries and dependencies updated in a staging environment before touching the live site. Every update is a risk: it must be tested, not applied blindly.
- BackupsFull copy of the site and database, at a defined frequency, with a restore test at least once a year. A backup that has never been restored is not a backup: it is a hope.
- SecurityMonitoring of known vulnerabilities, application firewall, access control, malware removal if compromised. Security is not a product you buy once.
- MonitoringUptime, response time, 404 and 500 errors, SSL certificate expiry. If the site goes down at 3 a.m., you know at 3:01 a.m., not Monday morning.
- ContentSmall text changes, images, prices, opening hours. New features do not belong here: that is a separate project.
- Technical SEOPeriodic check of indexing, speed, crawl errors and structured data. A site that degrades technically loses positions without anyone touching the content.
What happens without it
The damage from skipped maintenance does not arrive on day one. It arrives months later, when traffic has already fallen.
The first symptom is slowness. Libraries age, images accumulate, the database grows. The site stays online but gets slower with every update not done. Google measures speed and uses it as a ranking signal: a slow site drops in position without anyone having touched the content.
The second symptom is the contact form. A server update, a DNS change or an email provider change can make emails disappear without warning. The owner discovers the problem when they notice enquiries have dropped, and by then the lost requests are already lost.
The third symptom is security. An unupdated plugin is the most common entry point for malware. The site gets compromised, Google flags it as dangerous, traffic drops to zero. Recovery costs more than years of maintenance.
The fourth symptom is the SSL certificate. It expires, the browser warns, the visitor leaves. It happens more often than you think, because nobody set a reminder.
How often to intervene
Not everything has the same cadence. Mixing interventions is how you forget some.
| Activity | Cadence | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Backups | Daily | The cost of one lost day of work exceeds the cost of the backup. |
| Uptime monitoring | Continuous | A down site does not notice itself. |
| Security updates | Within 48 hours of release | Known vulnerabilities are exploited in hours, not weeks. |
| General updates | Monthly | Test in staging before applying to live. |
| Technical SEO check | Quarterly | Indexing, speed, crawl errors, structured data. |
| Backup restore test | Annually | A backup never restored is a hope, not a plan. |
| Content review | Semi-annually | Hours, prices, team, services: what is old costs credibility. |
What drives the cost
We do not publish figures because the cost depends on the site, not on a price list.
The price of maintenance depends on four variables: the complexity of the site (number of plugins, integrations, customisations), the traffic (a site with thousands of daily visits needs tighter monitoring), the volume of content changes requested, and the intervention window (updates during business hours vs. urgent out-of-hours work).
A five-page brochure site with no integrations has different needs from an e-commerce with ERP, payments and warehouse. Publishing a single figure for both would either overcharge the first or underestimate the second.
What matters is defining in writing what is included: updates, backups, monitoring, content, security, technical SEO. A contract that says "maintenance: 2 hours per month" says nothing, because it does not specify what happens when 2 hours are not enough.
Frequently asked questions
Does maintenance include developing new features?
No. Maintenance preserves what exists. New features, pages or integrations are separate projects with their own quote. Mixing the two types of work into a fixed fee is how development gets charged as if it were maintenance.
Can I do maintenance myself?
For a simple site, yes, if you have the time and skill. For a site with integrations, e-commerce or significant traffic, the risk of breaking something during an update exceeds the saving. DIY maintenance has a hidden cost: the time you do not spend on your own work.
What happens if I stop paying for maintenance?
The site stays online but stops being updated. Security patches are not applied, backups are not verified, content ages. The site does not break the next day: it degrades over the following months, until a problem that costs more than a year of maintenance.
Does maintenance include hosting?
It depends on the contract. Some include hosting and domain, others do not. What matters is that the maintenance fee and the hosting fee are separate, legible line items, not a single number that hides both.
A site must be maintained, not just launched
If your site has been online for more than a year without a check, write to us: we run a free review of security, speed and indexing, then you decide whether an intervention is needed.