Once a new website launches, the invoices change. The big project fee is replaced by smaller, regular charges for hosting and maintenance. It’s easy to wonder what they’re for, especially when the site seems to just sit there working.
The honest answer is that a well maintained website seems to just sit there working precisely because someone is looking after it. Here’s what hosting and maintenance involve, so you can judge whether you’re getting value and what to ask if you’re not sure.
It’s also a good thing to review in September. With the end of the year approaching, it’s better to know your site is in good shape before your busiest months, rather than finding out during them.
What hosting is
Hosting is the space on a server where your website lives, and the connection that delivers it to visitors. Think of it as the rent for your site’s premises. Good hosting keeps your site fast, available and secure. Poor hosting can make even a well built site slow or unreliable.
Hosting quality varies a lot. Cheap shared hosting puts your site on a server with many others, which can be fine for a small site but can suffer when a neighbour gets busy. Managed hosting usually costs more but includes things like performance tuning, security monitoring, daily backups and support from people who know the platform.
If your site runs on a hosted platform such as Shopify or Squarespace, hosting is included in the subscription. The questions below still apply, but some of the responsibility sits with the platform.
What maintenance should cover
Maintenance is the ongoing care that keeps a website healthy. For a self-hosted site such as WordPress, it typically includes:
- Software updates. The core software, theme and plugins release updates regularly, many of them security fixes. They need applying, and testing, so an update doesn’t break something.
- Backups. Regular copies of your site and its content, stored somewhere separate, so it can be restored if something goes wrong.
- Security monitoring. Watching for malware, suspicious logins and vulnerabilities.
- Uptime monitoring. Being alerted if the site goes down, ideally before you or your customers notice.
- Performance checks. Making sure the site stays quick as content and plugins are added.
- Small content changes. Many plans include a set amount of time for edits each month.
Maintenance is a bit like servicing a van. You don’t notice the benefit when it’s done, but you definitely notice the cost when it isn’t.
What goes wrong without it
Unmaintained websites tend to fail slowly, then suddenly. Out-of-date plugins are a common way for sites to be compromised. A hacked site might show spam, redirect visitors elsewhere, or be flagged by browsers as unsafe. Recovery without a clean backup can be slow and expensive.
Less dramatically, sites drift. Forms stop sending because an email setting changed. A plugin conflicts with an update. Pages slow down. None of these announce themselves, and all of them cost enquiries.
Questions to ask about hosting and maintenance
- Where exactly is our site hosted, and what type of hosting is it?
- How often are backups taken, where are they stored, and have you tested restoring one?
- How often are updates applied, and are they tested first?
- What security measures are in place, and what happens if the site is hacked?
- How do you monitor uptime, and how quickly do you respond to problems?
- How much content editing time is included, and what’s charged extra?
- Do we have our own login to the hosting account and the domain registrar?
If your current provider can’t answer these clearly, or you don’t know who your provider is, that’s worth sorting out soon.
Doing it yourself
Some businesses handle maintenance in-house, and that can work if someone has the time and knowledge. The risk is that it becomes nobody’s job. If you go this route, write down what needs doing, how often, and who is responsible, and make sure backups are automatic rather than relying on memory.
Your September check
Find your latest hosting and maintenance invoices and match them against the list above. Log in to your site and see when things were last updated. If you can’t find the answers, ask your provider this month.
If you’d rather hand it over, our website hosting and maintenance and support pages explain what we look after, and we’re happy to answer every question on the list above.
