What is included in website maintenance?

The essentials

• Hosting on a reliable server or CDN.
• Updates to the platform, themes and plugins, tested so they don’t break anything.
• Backups, stored off-site, with restores tested occasionally.
• Security: patches, monitoring and an SSL certificate that renews on time.
• Uptime monitoring, so someone knows when the site is down before customers do.

On builders like Squarespace or Wix, the platform covers most of this. On WordPress or self-hosted sites, someone has to do it on purpose, every month, or it quietly stops happening.

The parts that actually improve things

Keeping a site running is the floor. The useful plans go further: small edits like new staff photos or updated hours, a monthly look at Search Console for errors, a speed check after changes, and suggestions based on what visitors do. That’s the difference between a site that stays the same and one that keeps getting better while you focus on the business.

Ask to see what the provider actually did last month. A short, plain-language summary of changes and checks is a good sign the work is real.

Questions to ask before signing up

• How many content changes are included, and how are extras billed?
• How fast do you respond if the site goes down?
• Where are backups stored, and how often?
• Who owns the hosting account and domain?
• What happens if I cancel? Do I get my files?

The last one matters. A plan should never be the thing that keeps you from leaving. See who owns your website for why.

Also ask whether the plan includes your domain renewal, or whether that stays with you. A lapsed domain can take a site offline as surely as a hack.

My Pulse Plan covers hosting, security, updates, backups and monitoring, plus refinements: small content changes and improvements I suggest when I see something worth doing. Because the sites I build are prerendered static HTML, there’s far less to patch than on a plugin-heavy WordPress install, so more of the time goes into making the site better. If you cancel, you keep your code and domain. That’s non-negotiable for me. Maintenance should be a service you value, not a lock on the door.