What any maintenance plan should include
It doesn't matter who does it: if you pay a monthly fee, this is what you should be getting. If something on the list is missing from your contract, ask why.
| What | What it's for | Question to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting and HTTPS | Keeping the site online, with the padlock | Where is it hosted? In Europe? |
| Backups | Getting it back if something goes wrong | How often are they made? Have you ever restored one? |
| Updates | Keeping it secure | Who updates it, and what happens if something breaks? |
| Monitoring | Knowing it's down before your customers do | How often do you check it? |
| Response when it breaks | Someone fixing it | How quickly will you get back to me? |
| Report | Knowing what's been done and that it works | Do you send me anything each month? |
Ours, for example: hosting in Europe, backups, updates, checks every 5 minutes, replies within 48 working hours and a monthly report with uptime, visits and the work done.
What it doesn't include (and that's fine)
Maintenance looks after what already exists. It doesn't include:
- New features. Adding bookings, a shop or a language is a project, with its own quote.
- Redesigns. Changing how the site looks isn't maintaining it.
- Third-party services you pay for directly, like Stripe or Google Workspace.
Small changes, like opening hours, a price or a photo, can be included if you sign up for a few hours a month. We charge those 15% less than one-off hours, but unused hours don't roll over. If you hardly ever change anything, you don't need them: ask for the change when you need it and pay by the hour.
How much does website maintenance cost?
It depends on what it is and how much it's used. Our prices, for reference (excl. VAT):
| Type | Price |
|---|---|
| Website you don't edit yourself | €15/month |
| Website you edit yourself | €25/month |
| App | from €60/month |
| Domain | €2/month |
| Mailbox | €4/month per mailbox |
| SEO report | €20/month |
A landing page with its domain comes to €17/month. A five-page business site with a domain and a couple of mailboxes, about €25/month. A site with bookings, payments and two languages, about €80/month, because you edit it yourself and it has more visits, more mailboxes and an hour of changes a month. Pay for the whole year and you pay for 10 months: two free.
Signs you're paying too much
- You pay every month and don't know what gets done. If nobody sends you anything, you've no way of knowing whether anything happens.
- You pay for licences nobody uses. Paid plugins or themes that renew themselves every year.
- Every update is billed separately. Updating is the basic part of maintenance.
- There's a minimum contract of a year or more. If the service is good, there's no need to tie you in.
Signs you're paying too little
This happens too, and it usually ends up costing more:
- The price covers "everything" but nobody answers. If it takes a week to hear back when your site is down, that isn't maintenance.
- There are no backups, or nobody has ever tried restoring one. A backup you can't restore is useless.
- It's just hosting. Cheap hosting is fine, but it doesn't update or monitor anything. Someone has to do that.
- Someone you know does it "when they can". Until one summer they can't.
Do you maintain websites you didn't build?
Sometimes. It depends on how it's built: some sites can be looked after without any trouble, and others have so many patches that it makes more sense to rebuild them. That's why we check it first.