Website maintenance & support
Someone keeping an eye on the website so you don't have to.
Websites don't fail dramatically. A plugin update breaks a layout, a form stops emailing, a certificate expires, and nobody notices for six weeks because the owner has a business to run. That's what this is for.
In short
We look after existing websites for UK small businesses: updates, offsite backups, uptime and certificate monitoring, form and email testing, speed checks, broken link fixes and the small content changes you'd otherwise put off. Quoted per site as a fixed monthly figure or an hourly rate, cancellable with a month's notice.
What's covered
Software, plugin and dependency updates
Offsite backups you can actually restore from
Uptime and SSL certificate monitoring
Security checks and spam protection on forms
Enquiry form and email delivery testing
Broken link and error page checks
Speed and mobile performance checks
Small content, price and photo changes
Search Console error monitoring
A plain-English note of what was done
The four failures we see most
Nearly every emergency call about an existing website is one of these, and all four are cheap to prevent and expensive to discover late.
The contact form stopped sending. Usually a hosting change, an expired mail setting or a spam filter. The site looks perfectly fine, so nobody suspects anything — the owner just thinks it's gone quiet. We test form delivery to a real inbox on a schedule, because "it looks fine" isn't a test.
An update broke a page. Software has to be kept current or it becomes a security problem, but updates occasionally break layouts. Doing them deliberately, with a backup taken first and the key pages checked after, is the whole difference between routine and disaster.
The certificate expired. Visitors get a browser warning telling them your site isn't safe. It takes minutes to fix and costs you every enquiry that saw the warning.
The site got slower and slower. Photos uploaded straight off a phone, plugins stacking up, caching switched off during some long-forgotten fix. It creeps, so you get used to it — and phone visitors, who don't have your patience, leave. That's the work described on our website speed page.
Maintenance protects rankings, it doesn't build them
Worth being clear, because plenty of "care plans" blur this on purpose. Maintenance is defensive. It stops the things that lose you visibility: pages erroring, the site being down when Google crawls, load times sliding, forms silently failing, broken internal links, a certificate lapsing.
Getting found for more searches than you are today is a different job with different work in it — content, keyword targeting, internal linking, local visibility. That's our monthly SEO from £199, and you don't need both. Plenty of clients have one or the other.
If your site is old enough that maintaining it means propping up something built on outdated foundations, we'll say so rather than take a monthly fee to keep it upright. In that case a rebuild is cheaper over two years, and we'll show you the maths rather than just assert it.
How it works
No lock-in, no bundled hours you lose at the end of the month.
We look at the site and tell you what state it's in, free
You get a fixed monthly figure, or an hourly rate for ad-hoc work
Updates and backups run on a schedule, not when something breaks
You email changes when you need them — prices, photos, opening times
You get a short note each month saying what was done and what we spotted
Cancel with a month's notice; you keep every login
Common questions
What does website maintenance actually involve?
Keeping the software and plugins current, taking backups you can restore from, watching uptime, fixing broken links and forms, checking the site still loads fast on a phone, and making the small content changes you ask for. Unglamorous, and it's the difference between a site that keeps working and one that quietly stops.
How much does website maintenance cost in the UK?
It's quoted per site because a five-page brochure site and a shop with a thousand products are not the same job. Tell us what the site is built on and roughly how often you need changes and you'll get a fixed monthly figure, or an hourly rate if you'd rather only pay when something needs doing.
Do I need it if you built my site?
Not necessarily. Sites we build are handed over working, with a walkthrough so you can make your own changes. Maintenance is for owners who don't want to think about it, or who need someone to answer when a form stops sending on a Friday afternoon.
Can you maintain a site somebody else built?
Usually yes. We start with a look at what it's built on, what's out of date, and whether anything is actively broken, then tell you honestly whether it's worth maintaining or whether the money is better spent rebuilding it.
How often are backups taken?
Daily for anything taking orders or bookings, weekly for a brochure site, and always stored away from the hosting itself. A backup that lives on the same server as the site isn't a backup.
What happens if my site goes down?
Monitoring means we usually know before you do. You get told what happened and what's being done, in English. Most outages are hosting-side and short; the ones that aren't are why the backups exist.
Does maintenance include SEO?
No, and we're deliberate about that. Maintenance keeps the site healthy — which protects the rankings you have. Growing rankings is separate monthly SEO work starting at £199.
Can I cancel?
Any time, with a month's notice. You own the site, the domain and the hosting account, so leaving means telling us to stop, not untangling yourself from anything.
Not sure what state your website is in?
Send us the address. You'll get an honest note back on what's out of date, what's broken and whether it's worth maintaining or rebuilding — no charge, no sales call.