The site is handed over, the launch gets celebrated, and then nobody opens the admin dashboard for a year. One day a customer calls to say their browser shows a security warning when they open the site, or it turns out the contact form hasn't sent anything in months and nobody noticed. Many failures like these build up slowly before they show.
Why does a website break if it's left without maintenance?
Because everything around it keeps changing. The hosting company upgrades PHP and drops support for the old version, browsers update, plugins and themes get security updates, and the SSL certificate or the domain expires if renewal isn't automatic. Outside services such as maps, payment gateways and tracking tools change how they work too. A site nobody has touched for a year is running on assumptions that are no longer true.
What does website maintenance include?
| Task | How often | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Updating the core system, theme and plugins | Weekly or monthly, depending on the site | Closes known security holes before someone exploits them |
| Backups | Daily or weekly, with a test restore every few months | A backup you've never tried restoring may not work when you need it |
| Downtime monitoring | Continuously | You learn the site is down before a customer tells you |
| Checking forms and email | Monthly | A broken form loses requests you never know existed |
| Reviewing speed and Search Console | Monthly | Indexing errors and slowdowns show up there first |
| Renewing the domain and SSL | Yearly, ideally on auto-renew | If either one expires, the site goes down |
| Updating content | As needed | Old prices and figures weaken visitors' trust |
If your budget is limited, start with backups and downtime monitoring. They're the cheapest items on the list and the most useful on the day something goes wrong. Uptime monitoring services send you an alert if the site stops responding for a few minutes, and some are free for a small number of sites. Store the backup somewhere separate from the server, because a backup sitting on a broken or hacked server can be lost along with it.
What are the signs of a neglected website?
- The admin dashboard shows dozens of pending updates.
- The latest news item or article was published years ago, and the copyright year in the footer is out of date.
- Nobody in the company knows the hosting password, or whose name the domain is registered in.
- The form brings in lots of spam, or no messages at all.
- A warning appears next to the site in search results, or the browser says the connection isn't secure.
That last sign can mean the site has been hacked. The steps for dealing with it are in recovering a hacked website.
Do all websites need the same maintenance?
It varies a lot depending on how the site was built. A WordPress site with twenty plugins needs frequent updates, since every plugin is a possible way in for an attacker. A static site built from HTML files has no database and no admin panel on the server, so its maintenance is lighter: backups, monitoring, renewals and content updates. An online store or a site with customer accounts and payments needs more than either. We compared the two approaches in WordPress or a custom-built website?
Should you handle maintenance yourself or hire a specialist?
Someone on your team can update content and test the form every month, as long as you give them a clear checklist. Technical updates, backups and security monitoring need someone who knows what to do when an update breaks something, and who tries updates on a staging copy before the live site. Whoever takes it on, ask for a short monthly log of what was done.
Before anything else, make sure the domain and hosting are registered in your company's name and that you keep the passwords yourselves. Many problems start on the day the employee or developer who was the only one who knew them leaves.
What determines the cost of website maintenance?
First, the size of the site and how it was built. A ten-page static site needs a few hours a month, while a WordPress site with lots of plugins or a store with daily orders needs far more. Then the response time you ask for: a guaranteed reply within hours on any day of the week needs a team on standby and raises the price. Then whether content edits and small development jobs are part of the maintenance.
Weigh the cost against what you could lose without it: a day of downtime for your store, weeks of lost requests because the form was broken, or cleaning up a hacked site. To see what drives the cost of the build itself, read How much does a company website cost?
What should you ask before signing a website maintenance contract?
- Which tasks are covered, and how often is each one done?
- Where are backups stored, and when was a restore last tested?
- How many hours until you respond if the site goes down?
- Are content edits and small development jobs included in the contract, or priced separately?
- Will I get regular reports, and what's in them?
We maintain the sites we build as well as existing ones, and we host them if the client wants, as part of our website design and development service. Send us your website link and we'll tell you what we can see from the outside and what needs checking from the inside.
Questions our partners ask
How often should a WordPress site be updated?
Apply security updates as soon as they're released, and the rest on a regular schedule, weekly or monthly depending on how many plugins you have. Take a backup before every update.
Does my hosting include website maintenance?
Usually not. Most hosting companies look after the server, while updating the site itself and its plugins is your job or the job of whoever maintains it. Read exactly what your plan includes.
Written by the Visual Innovate team, the people who build, host and follow up systems, websites and apps for our clients in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt.
