If you're considering outsourcing the management of your website, you're likely asking yourself, what does website maintenance include?
This article outlines some of the basic requirements of an effective website maintenance or management agreement and some more advanced services that could be included. We'll also cover how often your site needs attention and what happens if you neglect it, because those are questions we get asked just as often.
First Off The Basics Of Website Management
The fundamental aspects of a website maintenance service will almost certainly include the following:
Software updates
Regularly updating the software and tools used by the website to ensure they are current and secure. For example, if your site uses WordPress, it requires regular updates to the core platform, your theme and every plugin you're running. If, however, your website is built using the HubSpot CMS, this won't be necessary because HubSpot CMS is a Software as a Service (SaaS) system, so they handle the updates for you.
Security
Implementing and monitoring security measures to protect the website against unauthorised access, hacking, and other malicious activities. This is essential and will protect your website and customer data from bad actors. A good maintenance provider will run regular security scans, keep SSL certificates current, and have a plan for what to do if something does go wrong.
Fixing problems
Identifying and resolving any issues or bugs that affect the functionality or performance of the website. Bugs and issues can be time-consuming to find and fix without in-house expertise, so having a website maintenance contract in place will be worth its weight in gold.
Performance and Core Web Vitals
Monitoring and optimising the website's loading speed and responsiveness to ensure it's accessible and user-friendly. Google measures your site against a set of metrics called Core Web Vitals, which look at things like how quickly the page loads, how fast it responds when someone clicks a button, and whether the layout jumps around while it's loading. Google has rowed back a little on its initial stance concerning website speed and search engine rankings, but providing visitors with a great user experience is always a good idea, and slow, clunky websites lose visitors fast.
Backups
Regularly creating backups of the website's data and content so that it can be quickly restored in case of data loss or a critical error. If your website delivers business enquiries as it should, losing it will cost you thousands of pounds. A backup can have you "back up" and running quickly; see what we did there.
Content changes
Making necessary changes to the website's content, such as updating text, images, and videos. This doesn't have to be part of a website maintenance contract, as most website systems use tools like Joomla CMS, WordPress CMS or HubSpot CMS. Many, many others are available. But suppose you haven't got any internal resources, also known as people, who can do this. In that case, it can be included in a website maintenance agreement.
Monitoring
Constantly checking the website's performance and functionality to ensure it operates effectively. Although there are tools that will automatically monitor your website for downtime, such as UpTimeRobot, they are not much help if you don't know what to do once you realise there's a problem.
Reports
Generating reports that provide insights into the website's performance, traffic, and other relevant statistics. These can all be automated using Google Analytics, but getting some help interpreting what the data actually means might be helpful initially.
Testing
Regularly testing the website's features and functionality to ensure they work as intended. These days, visitors are all too ready to tell you your website has a problem, but it's always better to discover and fix the issues before they do.
Accessibility
Making sure your website is usable by everyone, including people who rely on screen readers or other assistive technology. This means checking things like image alt text, colour contrast, keyboard navigation and form labels. Accessibility isn't just the right thing to do, it's increasingly a legal requirement too, and the number of accessibility-related lawsuits has been climbing sharply in recent years.
So far, we've outlined the essential tasks typically included in website maintenance to keep your site functional, secure, and doing its job properly.
How Often Should Your Website Be Maintained?
This is one of those "how long is a piece of string" questions, but we can give you a sensible framework. The short answer is: different tasks need doing at different intervals.
Daily: Security monitoring and automated backups should be running every day. If something goes wrong, you want to know about it immediately, not next month when you happen to check.
Weekly: Uptime checks, a quick review of any error logs, and making sure nothing has broken since the last round of updates.
Monthly: Software and plugin updates, broken link checks, performance reviews, and a look at your analytics to spot any unusual trends in traffic or user behaviour.
Quarterly: A more thorough review covering your SEO performance, content accuracy, accessibility compliance, and whether your site is still aligned with your business goals. This is also a good time to test your backup restoration process, because a backup you've never tested isn't really a backup.
The more your website contributes to your revenue, the more frequently it needs proper attention. If your site generates enquiries and sales, treating maintenance as an afterthought is a false economy. If you're not sure where to start, our plain English guide to SEO covers a lot of the foundational work that overlaps with good maintenance.
Website Management Optional Extras
But website maintenance could also include other aspects of making your website deliver value. These more advanced services might consist of the following:
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Enhancing the website's structure and content to improve its ranking on search engine results pages. This is a big topic, so we've created dedicated pages that explain SEO, and if you want the short version, our guide on how to find the right keywords is a good starting point.
It's enough to recognise that getting this right can be game-changing, and that's why some of the more advanced website management services, like ours, include SEO.
Conversion rate optimisation (CRO)
Making changes to the website to increase the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as filling in a contact form or requesting a quote. If you want to understand how this fits into the bigger picture, our post on how to build a lead generation website explains the principles.
Investing in conversion rate optimisation can deliver spectacular results because it's all about generating more business from the visitors you're already getting instead of the relentless pursuit of ever more website visitors.
A/B testing
Comparing two or more versions of a web page or element to determine which performs better regarding user engagement or other metrics. Strictly speaking, this falls under the CRO banner, but it's probably worth singling out.
Custom feature development
Designing and integrating custom features or applications specific to the website's objectives or industry. We always look for ready-made, tried, and tested solutions, but sometimes they don't exist. If you have a website management agreement with the right technically capable agency, they can also provide custom development. We do this for some of our customers.
Social media integration
Integrating and optimising the website's connection with social media platforms for sharing content and increasing engagement. Although this is pretty straightforward, if your organisation doesn't have a dedicated resource to handle it, it can be included in a website maintenance package.
Advanced security measures
Implementing sophisticated security solutions, such as Web Application Firewalls, DDoS protection, and intrusion detection systems. Some businesses attract the attention of bad actors; when that's the case, having a sysop who can deal with it is essential. But sysops are expensive to hire full-time, so they can form part of an agreement with a website management company.
Marketing automation
Integrating and managing tools that automate marketing activities like email campaigns and customer relationship management. We're HubSpot partners and use the software for our own marketing activities. A good website partner agency will be able to assist with setting up and operating marketing automation for you, saving you lots of time, and making sure you're making the most of all the valuable contacts you're holding in your CRM. Do you have a CRM? If not, they can help with that too.
Custom reporting and data visualisation
Creating tailored reports with visualisations that provide in-depth analysis of website performance and user metrics. Data is only helpful if you can understand what it's telling you. The thing is, creating reports that visualise data isn't everyone's cup of tea. If that's you, ask about including it in your website management service.
These advanced services are usually aimed at making your website more effective at achieving your business goals, not just keeping it running.
But there's more.
Some Of The Lesser Known Benefits
Answering the question, what does website maintenance include, is easy, and we've covered the nuts and bolts above. However, another aspect of this is not as straightforward to explain, and is often not included in a website maintenance package. It's all about having an expert who's a safe pair of hands looking out for you and providing guidance and help.
Here are some of the less commonly discussed advantages of hiring an expert to manage your website:
Lower stress levels
Having an expert handle your website can alleviate the stress and anxiety that comes with dealing with technical or web-related problems. When something breaks at 9pm on a Sunday, it's nice to know it's someone else's problem.
Training for your internal team
A good web partner can provide training and knowledge transfer to your internal team members, making them more capable of handling day-to-day tasks like content updates and minor fixes. This is something we do regularly with our clients, and it builds confidence across the whole organisation.
Fresh perspectives and creative input
A web expert who works across multiple industries brings a different perspective to your project. They'll have seen what works and what doesn't across dozens of other businesses, and that experience feeds directly into better decisions for your website.
Contingency planning
Apart from disaster recovery, experts can also help formulate contingency plans for different scenarios, such as sudden spikes in traffic, ensuring the site doesn't go down at critical moments. If you're running a campaign or launching a product, that kind of foresight is invaluable.
Freeing up your team
With an expert handling the technicalities of the website, the business owner or the team can focus on what they're actually good at, whether that's developing products, serving customers, or growing the business. It's the same logic behind using a digital marketing agency for any specialist work.
In short, hiring a website maintenance company to look after your website is like having a whole new department of experts on tap when you need them at a fraction of the cost of building your own team.
Get The Website Management Scope In Writing
Finally, although a website maintenance contract can include a range of services, it's always worth establishing what is and isn't included at the start. We've seen it go wrong too many times when the scope is vague.
A clearly defined scope means both you and the service provider understand what's expected, which reduces the chances of misunderstandings and disputes later on. It helps with cost management too, because when both parties know what's included, unexpected expenses are far less likely to crop up.
From a quality perspective, a defined scope lets the provider focus on delivering properly within the agreed parameters instead of stretching themselves thin trying to accommodate things that were never part of the deal. It also gives you something concrete to measure against, so you can assess whether the maintenance is actually delivering results. And if things ever do go sideways, having everything in writing protects both parties. This is why, incidentally, we use a retainer model rather than off-the-shelf packages.
Given all of that, invest the time upfront to thoroughly discuss and document what is and isn't included before any work starts. It's the foundation for a good working relationship, and it'll save you headaches down the line.
Hopefully, we've answered what website maintenance includes, and you're in a great place to find the right partner. If you are in the market, we'd love a chat.
Frequently asked questions
How much does website maintenance cost per month?
Website maintenance costs vary widely depending on what's included. Basic packages covering updates, backups and security monitoring typically start around £50-75 per month. More comprehensive services that include SEO, content changes and performance optimisation can range from £150 to £500+ per month. The cost depends on the complexity of your site, how often it needs updating, and whether you need advanced services like conversion rate optimisation or custom development.
How often should a website be maintained?
Your website should be checked and maintained on a regular schedule. Security monitoring and backups should happen daily. Software updates, broken link checks and performance reviews should be done monthly. A full audit covering SEO, content accuracy, accessibility and overall strategy should happen at least quarterly. The more your website contributes to your business revenue, the more frequently it needs attention.
Can I maintain my own website or do I need a professional?
You can handle basic maintenance yourself if you're comfortable with your CMS, particularly straightforward tasks like content updates and publishing blog posts. However, technical tasks like security monitoring, performance optimisation, server configuration and SEO require specialist knowledge. Most businesses find that a professional maintenance service pays for itself by preventing costly problems and freeing up time to focus on running the business.
What happens if you don't maintain your website?
An unmaintained website becomes vulnerable to security breaches, which can compromise customer data and damage your reputation. Outdated software and plugins create entry points for hackers. Your search engine rankings will decline as Google favours well-maintained, fast-loading sites. Broken links, slow page speeds and outdated content all drive visitors away and reduce the enquiries your website generates.
What is the difference between website maintenance and website management?
Website maintenance focuses on the technical upkeep of your site, covering tasks like software updates, security patches, backups and bug fixes. Website management is a broader service that includes maintenance but also covers strategic activities like SEO, content creation, conversion rate optimisation and ongoing improvements to help your website achieve your business goals. A maintenance contract keeps your site running, while a management service keeps it growing.
