Website maintenance is never finished. Software needs updating, backups need checking, spam and attacks need blocking, and small content changes pile up. When nobody owns the job, sites slow down, break or get hacked, usually at the worst possible moment.
If you pay for website management, or are thinking about it, here is what you should expect to get, what to ask, and the warning signs that the money is not being well spent.
What proper website maintenance covers
Updates, tested before they go live
WordPress core, themes and plugins release updates constantly, many of them security fixes. Leaving them is the most common way sites get compromised. Good management applies updates promptly and checks that the site still works afterwards, rather than updating blind or never updating.
Backups you know will restore
Everyone has backups until the day they need one. Ask three questions: how often, where are they stored (not only on the same server), and when did someone last test a restore? A backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a backup.
Security
This means a firewall, login protection, malware scanning and a plan for when something is found. It also means fewer admin accounts and no old, unused plugins left lying around.
Uptime monitoring
Your site should be checked every minute or so from outside, with an alert the moment it goes down. If your customers tell you first, monitoring is not working.
Speed and caching
Slow pages lose visitors and rankings. Management should include regular performance checks, sensible caching and image handling, and a CDN such as Cloudflare where it helps.
Small changes and support
New opening hours, a changed price, a new staff photo: these should not need a quote every time. A fair plan includes a number of hours of small changes each month, with larger work quoted separately.
DNS and email
Your domain settings decide whether the site loads and whether your email arrives. Good management includes keeping DNS tidy, certificates renewed and email records (SPF, DKIM and DMARC) correct.
What a monthly summary should tell you
- Updates applied and any that were held back, with the reason
- Backup status and the last tested restore
- Security scans and anything found
- Uptime for the month
- Changes made at your request and hours used
Questions to ask any provider
- Who exactly looks after my site, and how do I reach them?
- How quickly do you respond when the site is down?
- Where are the backups kept, and when did you last restore one?
- Do I keep ownership of my domain, hosting account and content?
- Can I cancel with reasonable notice?
Warning signs
- No reporting at all, so you cannot tell what you are paying for.
- They hold the domain or hosting in their own name.
- Updates are applied with nobody checking the result.
- Locked-in contracts with no exit.
What it costs
HoneyBot Labs website and IT management covers updates, backups, security, monitoring and same-day support, with higher plans adding more hours of changes, Cloudflare tuning and priority response. Plans are month to month with 30 days notice, and your site, content and accounts always stay yours. Details are on the website and IT management page.
What a typical month looks like
- Week one. Updates applied and tested, backups checked, uptime and security reviewed.
- Week two. Content changes from your list, plus a performance check on the slowest pages.
- Week three. Broken links, forms and email deliverability checked, and any DNS or certificate renewals confirmed.
- Week four. A short summary to you, with anything that needs a decision.
Between those checks, monitoring runs constantly, so an outage is dealt with the day it happens, not at the end of the month.
Do it yourself, or have it managed?
You can look after a small site yourself if you are comfortable logging in regularly, reading update notes and restoring from a backup under pressure. Most owners find that the work gets dropped the moment the business gets busy, which is exactly when a broken site costs the most. Management is insurance that the routine work happens, plus a person to call.
Hosting matters too
Management works best on hosting that suits the site: reliable servers, a staging copy for testing updates, sensible caching and a CDN. Cheap shared hosting can make a site slow no matter how well it is looked after. A good provider will tell you honestly if your hosting is the real problem.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need management if my site is small?
Small sites are attacked and broken just as often as big ones. The cost of looking after a small site is small, and the cost of a hacked site is not.
Can you look after a site on any host?
Usually, yes. We start with a health check of the site, hosting and access, then agree what is needed.
What happens to my site if my provider disappears?
Nothing, if you hold the accounts. Your domain, hosting login and content should always be in your name, with the provider added as a user. That is how we work, so you can walk away at any time.
Not sure what state your site is in?
We start with a health check and take over sites we did not build. Request a call or email [email protected].
