Quick Summary of Website Maintenance Services: There are three types of website maintenance service offerings including: Core Service Offerings that include automated backups, software upgrades, uptime monitoring and security scans; Specialized Service Offerings which may be speed optimization, security hardening, malware cleanup and/or search engine optimization (SEO) support; Support Service Offerings which will include bug fixes, content updates, troubleshooting and emergency assistance.
“Website Maintenance” is an umbrella of many categories of work and therefore has a variety of meanings depending on how you ask. The “maintenance plan,” which can be as simple or complex as desired by the provider, may simply offer to update, backup, provide some level of security, optimize performance and manage content. By understanding what each service includes will allow you to determine if your website actually needs it and therefore whether you are getting value from your investment in maintaining that website.
Website Maintenance Services
Core maintenance services provide the base for all maintenance plans. All websites require these.
All software updates maintain WordPress core, theme and plugin versions. Software updates typically resolve security issues, bug fixes as well as sometimes feature additions. A professional will test software updates in a development/staging environment prior to updating the production/live site – simply because it is cheaper to spend the time to verify updates do not break your checkout page compared to repairing a broken checkout page due to an unverified software update.
Automated Backups create a recoverable copy of all content (files/database) of your website. These are then securely backed up remotely. If something happens to your website (a hacker gains access, you accidentally delete a critical file, etc.) a previous version of your website from a recent automated backup can restore your website to a previously good state in just a few minutes rather than potentially days/weeks.
Monitoring Uptime continually monitors your website and alerts your maintenance team immediately if your website experiences an outage. The professional monitoring service checks every 1-5 minutes around the clock. Due to lack of uptime monitoring; there is potential for your website to be down for several hours before someone even realizes your website has gone offline – resulting in lost customers, lost leads and lost sales during this time.
Specialized Services
Specialized Services are Specialized Services that go above and beyond what normal site maintenance entails.
Speed optimization will identify and fix performance issues on your website. These can include; database bloat, poorly optimized images, excessive plugin overhead, poor caching configuration or server level inefficiency. Speed optimization usually results in measurable improvement in your site’s performance as measured by google’s core web vital metrics & page load time. For more information about our speed optimization service.
Security hardening goes well beyond basic scanning of your website to secure it against potential threats. It includes implementing a waf (web application firewall) , configuring security headers, implementing two factor authentication for login security , limiting failed logins, removing known attack vectors. Our security hardening service provides comprehensive protection for your site.
Malware removal is the emergency service you hope you never need. If your site has been compromised malware removal will identify all infected files, remove the malware, patch the vulnerability that was exploited to enter your site and return your site back to a clean state. We offer complete recovery services through our malware removal service.
SEO maintenance ensures that the technical components of search visibility remain intact. This includes monitoring crawl errors, maintaining schema markup, checking broken links, verifying meta data & tracking core web vital metrics. We offer ongoing SEO service to ensure your site remains technically optimize for search engines.
Support Services
Maintenance support involves the people side of maintenance; if you have an issue while using the application, there will be someone available to assist.
The Bug Fix service addresses issues created as a result of plugin conflicts, issues caused by themes or other non-expected behaviors due to upgrades. If your company has a maintenance contract with defined support hours (or some type of guarantee), then any bugs found in your application will be addressed by trained professionals versus being assigned to a technician to solve.
Changes made to your website content such as changing text, replacing graphics, adding new web pages, or modifying pre-existing layouts fall into this category. The amount of time allocated for Content Updates varies depending on your selected maintenance plan.
Troubleshooting is the process of identifying what causes errors. Anytime an error occurs (display issue, form malfunction, etc.) troubleshooting must occur prior to fixing it.
A company’s Emergency Response Plan defines their level of commitment in providing priority assistance for any issue(s) which may occur outside regular working hours. In most cases, when a hacker compromises your website or your application stops functioning completely, or the shopping cart function breaks down – it cannot be put off until Monday.
How Maintenance Providers Offer Their Services
Maintenance providers have historically offered their services to clients via One of three models.
Monthly/annual subscription plans – (bundled core services) – these are recurring subscriptions of core services at tiered pricing levels; basic / standard / premium. The pricing levels increase based upon the amount of service included within the subscription along with increasing response times. These types of plans are the least expensive way to maintain your website and should be considered by any business that relies on it.
One-time projects (e.g., speed optimization project, security audit, malware removal engagement), are individual purchases for identified needs. Each of these One-time projects is scoped, priced and delivered independently. They work well for identifying solutions to issues; however they do not include the regular maintenance needed to prevent future issues from occurring.
Retainers (blocks of hours per month): clients purchase an established number of hours per month to use toward a variety of services. While this option offers greater flexibility to clients with fluctuating requirements for services, they often are less cost effective than defined Monthly plans when hours go unused.
What Deutrix Care Offers
Deutrix Care’s Maintenance Plans are based on the idea that your website should receive the same long-term professional care as any other significant business system.
The Standard Plan includes all of the basic needs to maintain a solid foundation – regular WordPress updates, daily backup services, uptime monitoring, security scans, and an end-of-month report. This is the most suitable choice for those using their website simply to present information about themselves or their company (brochures or informational sites).
In addition to the standard plan, the Plus Plan offers many options to improve site performance — including speed optimizations, security hardening (to make it harder for hackers), support hours for modifying content and troubleshooting issues, and increased priority for time-sensitive matters. The Plus Plan will be ideal for companies with websites used primarily to generate new business leads or revenue.
Included in the Premium Plan is virtually every service we offer; everything included in the plus plan and additional support hours per month, along with monitoring for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and improved performance. The Premium Plan is specifically designed for e-commerce sites and/or high-revenue generating websites.
Each plan links to the specialized services described above — speed optimization, security hardening, malware removal, SEO, and general support.
See what each plan includes. View Deutrix Care plans →
For the complete guide, read our Website Maintenance Ultimate Guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
All websites require the core services – updates, backup, monitoring and security scan. The other service will be based upon how complex your website is as well as how important the site is to your overall business. For example an e-commerce store would have speed optimizations for its checkout process (a high risk area) along with security hardening to protect against potential attacks. A brochure site will probably have none of this.
Maintaining is keeping what you currently have working. It involves ensuring that it remains secure, functioning properly, etc. Developing is building something that didn’t exist before. This can include adding new functionality to your current website, updating the design/layout of your current website, creating a brand new website from scratch. If your website requires a major addition of new functionality or if your website needs a complete make-over then that is typically considered a development project. Please visit deutrix.com to learn about the different ways you could go about creating this type of project.
Consider how much of a financial impact losing time due to downtime or slowness has on your company’s bottom line. If lost time impacts your revenue directly; i.e., sales are lost because your customers cannot access your products/services quickly enough…then consider investing in a plan with speed optimization and priority support. If your website is very important but does not lose you money when down….i.e. Just informational…then the standard plan should provide everything you need to ensure your website remains safe.
