A website is never finished. Content goes out of date, links break, software releases updates and small problems pile up until something visibly stops working. A website maintenance plan is how a business makes sure someone is looking after all of that, every month, without hiring a full-time webmaster.
What is a website maintenance plan?
A website maintenance plan is a monthly service in which a web team keeps your site accurate, working and up to date. Instead of calling a developer each time something needs changing, you send your updates and fixes as requests, and the team completes them within an agreed turnaround time. Regular backups, repairs and help with email, domain and hosting problems are usually part of the service.
Most plans are sold in tiers. The tiers differ in how many requests you can send each month, how quickly they are completed, how often your site is backed up, and whether more technical work such as CMS updates, ecommerce support or SEO is included.
What should be included in a website maintenance plan?
Whatever you pay, a plan should cover the basics that stop a website from decaying. Busier websites need more on top.
The essentials, for every website
- Content updates: changing text, prices, images and contact details when your business changes.
- Page and link repairs: fixing damaged pages and links that lead nowhere.
- Backups: a recent copy of the site, so a mistake or a failed update can be undone.
- Email, domain and hosting help: someone to call when email stops arriving or a domain is about to expire.
For websites built on a CMS such as WordPress
- Core, theme and plugin updates, applied and checked, with fixes when an update breaks something.
- Forms and scripts: building contact forms and installing scripts.
- Developer help for custom themes and PHP code.
For online stores and busy websites
- Ecommerce support: products, orders and the checkout.
- Server support for sites that run on their own server.
- On-site SEO, graphic design and coding as part of the monthly allowance.
A monthly website maintenance checklist
If you look after your website yourself, this is the routine a maintenance team follows. Some tasks are weekly, some monthly.
- Check that a recent backup exists and could be restored.
- Apply software updates (for WordPress: core, theme and plugins), then check the key pages and forms still work.
- Test every contact and quote form by sending a real message.
- Look for broken links and pages that return errors, and repair them.
- Review prices, opening hours, staff and contact details for anything out of date.
- Check the site on a phone as well as a desktop.
- Look at Google Search Console for new errors and pages that have dropped out of the index.
- Confirm the domain name and SSL certificate are not close to expiring.
How much does a website maintenance plan cost?
Cost depends mostly on how much work your site needs each month and how fast you need it done. As an example, FMEOS website maintenance packages are priced like this:
- Basic, $49 a month billed annually ($59 month to month): 1 to 3 service requests, 2 support hours, a 2 to 5 day turnaround and monthly backups.
- Pro, $149 a month billed annually ($175 month to month): up to 10 requests, 6 support hours, a 1 to 4 day turnaround, weekly backups, forms, script installations and CMS and WordPress support.
- Premium, $590 a month billed annually ($690 month to month): unlimited requests, 30 support hours, a 0 to 3 day turnaround, daily backups, server and ecommerce support, on-site SEO, graphic design and coding.
All three run month to month, so they can be changed or cancelled at any time. You can compare every feature of the maintenance packages side by side.
Which plan is right for a small business?
Match the plan to how often your website changes, not to the size of your business.
- If your site is a brochure that changes a few times a year, a basic plan covering content updates, repairs and backups is usually enough.
- If you publish news or blog posts, run WordPress or rely on forms for enquiries, choose a plan that includes CMS support and more monthly requests. See our WordPress maintenance packages for what that covers.
- If you sell online, you need ecommerce support and daily backups, because a broken checkout costs sales every hour it is down.
Doing it yourself versus a maintenance plan
Maintaining a site yourself costs nothing but time, and it works well for simple sites and confident owners. The risk is that maintenance is easy to postpone, and problems tend to be found by customers first. A plan costs less than hiring a webmaster, puts a named team in charge, and means updates are applied by people who can fix what they break.
