What does a website maintenance plan include?

A website maintenance plan should include five things: hosting, updates with a backup someone has actually restored, monitoring with a person who answers when it fires, a monthly check of the whole site with a report sent to you, and a set number of hours for small edits. A plan that leaves one of those out is a hosting bill with a nicer name. Here is what each part is for, what ours includes, and the questions to ask anyone selling you one.

The five parts

1. Hosting, with a certificate that renews. The site has to live somewhere, and that somewhere has to keep the padlock working. A common issuer is Let's Encrypt, whose default certificates "are valid for 90 days" (Source: Let's Encrypt FAQ). Renewal is automatic on a well-run host and silent until the day it is not; an expired certificate means visitors get a browser warning page instead of your home page. Part of hosting is making sure that renewal keeps happening.

2. Updates, and a backup you have restored. Whatever the site runs on gets updates, and every update is a chance to break something. The backup is the answer to that, and a backup nobody has restored is a hope, not a backup. Ask when the last restore test was and what it took.

3. Monitoring, with a person. A monitor that notices the site is down at 2 a.m. is a start. The plan is the person who sees the alert and does something. Ask who that is.

4. A monthly check of the whole site, with a report. Sites do not break loudly. A link dies, a form stops delivering, a photo goes missing from a page nobody opens. The only way to know is to check every page against the same list every month and send the result to the owner. If the plan does not put a report in your inbox, nobody is checking.

5. A set number of edit hours. Hours change, a price changes, someone joins the crew. A plan with an hour or three of edits a month means those changes happen the week you ask instead of the quarter you get around to it.

Two things that are not maintenance

Be clear about the line, because every provider draws it somewhere. New pages, a redesign, and recovering from changes made by someone other than the provider are projects, quoted separately; that is how our terms put it (Source: DarkTiger Studios terms, section 9).

The domain is the other one. Your domain should be registered in your name, and the renewal notices go to the email on that registration. ICANN requires every registrar to send at least two notices before expiry, about a month and about a week ahead, and at least one more within five days after (Source: ICANN, Expired Registration Recovery Policy). A maintenance plan can remind you, but the registration and the email it notifies are yours to keep current. Check them.

What ours includes

The Care Plan is $95 a month (Source: DarkTiger Studios Care Plan page):

• Hosting on a global edge network, updates, and a backup we test restoring
• Uptime monitoring, with a person who responds when it fires
• The full gate re-run every month, report emailed to you
• Up to one hour of small edits each month: hours, a photo, a price, a new team member
• Security headers and dependencies kept current
• Leave any time; the hosting project, the code and a full copy of the site are transferred to you free within five business days

Care Plan Plus is $175 a month and adds (Source: DarkTiger Studios Care Plan page):

• A monthly report from Google: impressions, clicks, calls and direction requests, with the month before for comparison
• One new answer page every month, written from real customer questions and published
• Structured data and your Google Business Profile kept current as the business changes
• Up to three hours of edits each month
• A quarterly review call, twenty minutes

Both are month to month with no contract. If we built your site, the first month is included and billing starts 30 days after launch. Cancel at the billing page, or by text or email, and you are not charged again; within five business days we hand over a full copy of the site and every account we were invited into (Source: DarkTiger Studios refunds page). Six months paid up front runs seven.

Questions to ask anyone selling a plan

1. Who holds the domain, and whose email gets the renewal notices?
2. When was the last time you restored a backup, and how long did it take?
3. Who answers when the site goes down, and how do I reach them?
4. Will I get a written report every month? Can I see last month's for another client, with the name removed?
5. What exactly happens when I leave? How many days, and what do I get?

A good provider answers all five without checking. The last question is the one that separates maintenance from a lease.

Check your current site tonight

Open your site from your phone and tap the padlock in the address bar; it will show who issued the certificate and when it expires. Then open your contact form and send yourself a message. If the padlock is fine and the message arrives, you are ahead of most. If either fails, that is what a plan is for. The Care Plan and what it covers are at /care-plan.