That’s when it starts to age. Plugins fall behind, forms quietly stop delivering, pages get slower one month at a time. I take care of it — and every month you get a sheet showing exactly what I did.
None of these make any noise. That’s exactly the problem.
An update, a server change, a full mailbox: the form keeps saying «thanks, message sent» and nothing arrives any more. People usually notice months later, counting the customers who never called.
Almost everyone thinks they have one. Many have it set up and it doesn’t work: it runs, copies nothing, and reports that all went well. That’s the worst case, because you feel safe.
Nobody notices, because it gets worse gradually and you open the site from your own computer on fibre. Someone opening it on a phone, out and about, notices very much — and leaves.
Every plugin left un-updated is a door left ajar. Small sites don’t get broken into by someone with a grudge: they get found by programs sweeping half the world looking for old versions.
The site disappears, or the browser shows the red warning that scares anyone away. It always happens on a Friday.
Everyone checks the home page. The other thirty pages — the ones with the services and the prices — go unopened for months.
Not by hand: with tools I wrote myself and already run on every site I look after.
Not just the home page: every page on the site, on desktop and on mobile. Errors, broken links, images that don’t load, text running off the screen. The check is automated, so it costs little to run it often.
Files and database, taken off the site’s own server. And above all the verification that they are really there and really recent: a backup nobody has ever checked isn’t a backup, it’s a hope.
On a copy first, then on the real site. Automatic updates are fine until they break something on a Saturday night, and then nobody notices until Monday.
Loading times taken on a phone, not on my computer. Images that weigh too much, caching, things that slow the site down without doing anything useful.
Up-to-date versions, tidy accounts, a valid certificate and renewals that don’t expire by surprise. I don’t promise a site will never be attacked: I promise it won’t be the easy one.
An opening time that changes, a price, a photo, a new paragraph. The things people put off for months because «you have to call the website guy».
It’s the part that is almost always missing from support subscriptions.
The trouble with a maintenance fee is that work done well is invisible. You pay, nothing bad happens, and after six months you wonder why you’re paying. Then you cancel — and six months later the site is down.
That’s why every month you get a sheet with the real numbers: how many pages I checked, how long they take to load compared with last month, which backups were made and when, what I updated, what I found and how I fixed it. If nothing happened in a given month, that’s written down too.
Often the biggest saving isn’t on the website: it’s next to it.
Orders, bookings, forms, price lists moving from the site to your management software or spreadsheet. If a person does it every day, a script can do it every five minutes, without mistakes.
A Telegram message or an email when a booking comes in, when the site stops responding, when a certificate is about to expire. Better to know beforehand than to find out afterwards.
Quotes, confirmations, summaries: built from data you already have, instead of being retyped every time.
Better said now than discovered later.
I’m one person, not a call centre. If the site goes down I notice and I step in, but I won’t promise you a technician at three in the morning: that would be a promise I can’t keep.
Maintenance keeps what’s there in good order. Rebuilding the site or adding a whole new section is separate work, and I’ll tell you when we get there.
If you have a three-page site that never changes, a monthly fee probably isn’t worth it for you. I’ll tell you so before we start.
Send me the address: I run a full check and send you what I found, with no obligation and nothing for you to decide. If it turns out you need nothing, I’ll say so. I work as an individual, open to projects and collaborations.