What website maintenance actually is, and when you do not need it

Somebody quotes you two hundred dollars a month to maintain a five page website. You have no idea whether that is fair, because you have no idea what they would be doing. The site loads. It looks fine. Nothing is obviously wrong with it.

So you either pay it and quietly wonder, or you decline it and quietly worry.

Almost every article about website maintenance is written by a company selling maintenance. This one is going to explain what the work actually is, and be clear about the cases where you do not need to buy it.

First, find out what your site is built on

This changes the answer completely, and most owners do not know.

If your site runs on WordPress, it has a database, a login page, a theme, and probably somewhere between five and thirty plugins. Every one of those is software that gets updated, and plugins are the most common way small business sites get broken into. There is real, ongoing work here. A WordPress site left alone for two years is a genuine risk.

If your site is static, there is no database, no login page, and no plugins. The pages are files sitting on a server. There is nothing to break into and nothing that updates itself into a broken state.

How to tell without asking anyone: try visiting yoursite.com/wp-admin. If you get a login screen, it is WordPress. If you get a page not found, it probably is not.

A lot of the alarming content about maintenance, the hacking and the malware and the plugin vulnerabilities, is written by WordPress agencies about WordPress problems. If your site is static, most of it does not apply to you, and anyone quoting you WordPress prices for a static site is either not paying attention or hoping you are not.

What maintenance actually covers

Setting aside the platform question, the work breaks into two piles.

The invisible pile. Hosting, the SSL certificate that gives you the padlock in the address bar, backups, security updates where relevant, and monitoring so somebody knows if the site goes down. None of this is visible when it is going well, which is exactly why it gets dropped.

The visible pile. Changing your hours. Updating prices. Swapping photos. Adding a staff member, removing one who left. Fixing something that broke.

The second pile is what you notice. The first pile is what stops you noticing anything.

What actually goes wrong on a simple site

Not hacking. In our experience the real failures are duller and more expensive.

The SSL certificate expires. Every visitor gets a full screen browser warning telling them the site is not secure. Most people back out immediately. This one is quiet, sudden, and it makes a perfectly good business look dangerous.

The contact form stops delivering. The form still submits, the thank you message still appears, and the email goes nowhere. You do not get an error. You just stop getting enquiries and assume things went quiet. This is the most expensive failure available and it can run for months.

The domain does not renew. A card expires, the renewal notice goes to an email address nobody checks, and the site simply stops existing.

The information goes stale. Prices from three years ago. A staff member who left. Hours that changed. Nothing is technically broken and it is costing you calls anyway.

Notice that three of those four have nothing to do with security. They are administrative failures, and they happen to businesses whose sites are perfectly well built.

What it should cost

The market ranges in North America, roughly:

• $100 to $250 a month for basic plans. Hosting, backups, security updates, monitoring, minor content changes. Aimed at brochure sites.
• $250 to $500 for standard plans. Adds performance work, reporting, priority support, more content changes.
• $500 and up for anything with e-commerce, user accounts, or a database doing real work.

If you are being quoted the middle range for a five page static site, ask what specifically is being done every month. A straight answer is reasonable to expect.

When you genuinely do not need a plan

Here is the part most articles leave out.

You do not need one if all of the following are true. Your site is simple and static. You are comfortable finding your hosting login when something needs doing. You have your domain in your own name with a card that will not expire. And you are willing to test your own contact form once a month.

That is a real option and it costs you nothing but attention. If that describes you, keep your money.

Where it stops being true is when nobody at the business is going to do any of that. Not because they cannot, but because running the business takes all the hours there are, and checking a contact form is never going to be the most urgent thing on a Tuesday.

That is the honest case for paying somebody. Not fear of hackers. Just that the small invisible tasks are exactly the ones that never get done, and one of them going wrong is expensive.

Test your own form right now

Whatever you decide about a plan, do this today.

Open your website on your phone, on mobile data, not connected to your office wifi and not logged into anything. Fill in your contact form with a real message. Then go check the inbox it is supposed to arrive in, and check the spam folder too.

If it does not arrive, you have found something worth more than any maintenance plan.

Our own plan is $89 a month, which covers hosting, SSL, backups, security updates, monitoring, fixing anything that breaks within one business day, and up to an hour of content changes. It also covers keeping your Google hours current and answering your reviews, because that is where most of your customers actually are.

But if you read the section above and concluded you do not need it, that is a completely reasonable place to land, and we would rather tell you so than sell you something that sits unused.

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Call +1 506-801-9970 or email info@qhike.ca. We serve Fredericton, Moncton, Saint John and all of New Brunswick.