Maintenance That Is Worth Paying For

What should be included

1. Updates applied weekly and checked afterwards, not applied blindly
2. Backups taken off-site and restored to staging periodically
3. Uptime monitoring with someone actually alerted
4. Security scanning and prompt response to findings
5. A monthly report saying what was done and what needs attention

The word “checked” is the important one. Automatic updates that break a page and nobody notices for three weeks are worse than no updates.

What is usually padding

• Generic SEO reports nobody reads or acts on
• “Performance optimisation” with no specifics
• Included hours that expire unused every month
• Dashboard access presented as a service

What you should still own

Your hosting account, your domain, your database and a copy of your backups. A maintenance provider should hold access, not ownership.

If leaving your provider means losing your site, the arrangement is wrong regardless of the service quality.

Reasonable cost

Stores cost more because updates carry more risk and downtime costs money directly.

Staging is not optional for a store

Updating a live shop and hoping is a strategy that works until it does not, usually in December.

Any plan covering a store should include a staging environment and updates tested there first.

Frequently asked questions