What website maintenance really covers (and why you notice its absence)
Maintenance sounds like a subscription where nothing happens. Here's what actually passes by each month, and what skipping it costs.
Derk Gähler
Maintenance is the easiest line to cut, because when it goes well you see nothing of it. That's exactly what makes it hard to explain, and exactly why we're explaining it here.
Updates are a procedure, not a button
An update can break your site. So it runs in a test environment first, gets checked there, and only then goes live, with a rollback plan ready.
Running updates straight on the live site saves time until the first time it goes wrong. Then the bill is larger than a year of maintenance.
A backup you never tested is not a backup
Almost everyone has backups. Far fewer have ever tried restoring one. An untested backup is an assumption.
Periodically restoring one for real is part of maintenance. Not because it's often needed, but because the one time it is, it decides everything.
A backup you have never restored is not a backup. It is an assumption.
What quietly degrades
Speed drops as images and plugins accumulate. Certificates expire. Forms stop delivering because a mail setting changed, and you find out when a customer calls to say they never heard back.
That form check may be the most underrated part: a silent form costs you revenue directly, and it shows up nowhere in your statistics.
What you get back
A site that is as fast after two years as it was at launch, and a supplier who calls before you notice anything. That's the whole promise.
With us that starts at €42.50 per month on a twelve-month basis. Not because it should be cheap, but because it belongs with any website that's used seriously.
In short
- Updates belong in staging first, with a rollback plan.
- A backup you never restored is an assumption.
- Have forms checked automatically: silent forms cost revenue directly.
- You only notice good maintenance by what doesn't happen.
Written by
Derk Gähler
Co-founder & Digital Expert
Connects positioning, web development and online marketing into one clear digital product that is beautiful, functional and easy to use.
Ask a questionRelated services
