Quick Summary:
Your website will be treated like a vehicle with an ongoing maintenance plan when you sign up for a website maintenance plan. It’s about getting proactive and regular (on a set schedule) professional care for your website instead of waiting until there is a problem to get the help you need. The same way you would keep your vehicle running well by maintaining it regularly — updating software, monitoring security, verifying back-ups, etc., so too can you maintain your website on a schedule and budget.
Think of this as the difference in taking care of your vehicle by changing its oil every 5000 miles versus waiting until the engine dies.
A website maintenance plan is a subscription-based service that provides regular, professional care for your website. Instead of waiting for something to break and then scrambling to find help, a plan ensures your site receives consistent attention — updates applied, security monitored, backups verified, and performance maintained — on a predictable schedule at a predictable cost.
Think of it as the difference between changing your car’s oil every 5,000 miles and waiting until the engine seizes.
What a Maintenance Plan Is
A maintenance plan is an arrangement that provides for your website’s continued technical well-being through regularly scheduled service(s) by a professional provider. A typical plan outlines which services will be provided; at what frequency those services will be provided; the expected time frame for responses to support inquiries; and the cost associated with these services.
Most providers offer tiered plans based upon various aspects including the type of site you have and your budget. For example, a “basic” level plan generally includes the minimum requirements necessary to ensure your website continues to operate properly – such as, but not limited to, routine update(s), backup(s), and monitoring.
In contrast, a higher-tier plan may include additional features such as security enhancements to make it harder for malicious users to access your site, performance enhancement(s) to improve site loading speeds; extended support hours; and detailed report(s).
What Is Typically Included
Basic tier
- Testing for WordPress core, themes and plugins updates on your staging site
- Daily or Weekly Backups
- Monitoring Your Site’s Status 24/7
- Running a Basic Security Scan
- A Monthly Summary Report
The Standard Level — Everything included at the Basic level, plus…
- Hardening Your Security Settings and Configuring Web Application Firewall (WAF) settings
- Performing Performance Monitoring and some Optimization
- Providing you with a set number of Support Hours each Month (usually 30 to 60 minutes)
- Offering Email Support with Defined Response Times
- Providing you with detailed Monthly Reporting
The Premium Level — Everything in the Standard level, plus…
- Further Advanced Speed Optimization
- Continuous Health Checks on Your SEO
- Extended Support Hours (usually 1 to 3 hours per Month)
- “Emergency” Priority Response when needed
- Assistance with Updating Content
- Regular Strategy Reviews every Quarter
A Preventative Approach to Website Issues vs. Waiting Until It Breaks
This comparison couldn’t be much clearer; preventative measures (a website with regular updates) compared to a “wait till it breaks” method.
A preventative measure (having a website maintenance plan), all monthly software upgrades will be installed & tested each month. Your security will always be actively being monitored. All aspects of your website’s performance will be maintained & tracked. All backups will be checked on a routine basis. Therefore, when an issue does arise at your website, they already know how your site works and therefore can get the problem resolved ASAP. The monthly cost associated with having a maintenance plan could range from $50 to $500.
No preventative measure in place (an ad hoc method), updates build up to the point where one of them fails. All potential security threats remain un-detected until some form of unauthorized access takes place. As time goes by, performance issues will build until customers begin complaining about your websites poor performance. When there is a disaster, you will have to locate a provider that has never worked with your company, explain what type of configuration exists for your site and then pay emergency prices. An average emergency repair fee is anywhere from $200 to $5,000.
There is no mathematical advantage in doing things reactively. The yearly cost of a $200/month maintenance agreement would equal out to $2,400. One hack can run as high as $1,000 to $5,000. If a site generates revenue and was down for even one full day, this can equal out to many hundred or thousand dollars. There is enough money saved from preventing just one incident to cover the cost of the maintenance contract for an entire year.
Who Needs a Maintenance Plan?
There are many businesses that use websites — and they all benefit from some form of professional website maintenance; however, there may be varying levels of urgency for each.
A business will require a maintenance plan if: the business generates income from its website (ecommerce, lead generation, booking systems) — the reputation of the business relies heavily on their website’s performance — there is no internal it/technical support to update/monitor security — the business has previously been breached/hacked — and wants to take steps to avoid another incident — or if the business uses WordPress as their content management system (cms); as well as using multiple add-on plugins (this is likely the largest challenge to maintaining a website).
A business can get by with minimal maintenance plans if: the business maintains an extremely basic personal blog with absolutely no business related content — if the business owner/web developer is capable of doing web development work themselves; and they also have enough hours in the day to perform routine maintenance tasks to keep their website running efficiently. — the potential ramifications of downtime/security breaches would be negligible to the overall success of the business.
The above scenario will apply to virtually every single business that is reading this.
How to Choose the Right Plan
Choose a plan based on your website’s function within your business. For example, if you have an e-commerce site that is receiving hundreds of hits each day for online sales, it would be unwise to choose a low-cost maintenance option as this could result in lost sales due to downtime or other issues. On the other hand, a brochure-style website with only five pages that is viewed by only a few hundred visitors per month can probably afford a lower-cost maintenance solution.
Compare Response Time Guarantees. Basic plans usually provide a response guarantee of “next-business-day” while premium plans offer a 1-4 hour emergency response. If your site fails at 9PM Saturday night and no one responds until Monday morning, then you have a bad plan. If you cannot afford to lose money when your site is unavailable due to maintenance issues, than you want to select a plan with emergency response.
Identify what’s being excluded. Common exclusions include content creation (newly created content for blogs or web pages), visual or aesthetic changes to your website, adding new features or functions that did not previously exist, and/or technical difficulties with third party services such as hosting companies, registrars etc. Knowing what is included/excluded can prevent a misaligned expectation.
Determine how you will get reports. You should have a monthly report from your provider summarizing what was done, what was identified and the present status of your site. A company that does not provide this type of reporting is probably not working on your behalf.
Confirm whether your provider uses a staging environment. Reputable providers test updates to your site on an exact replica of your site called a “staging” site prior to making those same updates to your live site. This process eliminates the risk associated with updating your live site without testing first.
Find the right plan for your site. View Deutrix Care maintenance plans →
For the complete guide, read our Website Maintenance Ultimate Guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most monthly plans are cancel-anytime as long as you give 30-days’ written notice. Monthly plans can be canceled at anytime after giving 30-days’ written notice. Most annual plans require a 12-month commitment in order to take advantage of discounts associated with an annual contract. Many hosting companies offer a money-back-guarantee within the first thirty (30) days to help alleviate some of the risks involved with signing up with a new company.
Yes. The web site belongs to you. Your hosting provider should provide you with full access to your web site along with all other login information. They should also make it easy for you to transition to another service provider if needed. In fact, they should make this process as seamless as possible. Any time a provider has made it difficult for you to leave them it usually indicates that the relationship was very poor from the beginning.
The majority of vendors will charge on an hourly basis or project-based rate for services performed outside the defined parameters of the original contract. When performing non-contractual services, it is best for vendors to communicate with clients early in their relationship regarding which contractual services will be provided versus those that will incur an added cost.
Yes. Although managed hosting provides support for issues related to servers, a maintenance agreement supports issues that pertain to applications (i.e., WordPress) including but not limited to; installed themes, plugins, user created content, form creation and custom coding. These two items are designed to provide complementary services and are therefore not redundant.
