Maintenance
A website or piece of software isn't finished at launch — it needs ongoing attention to stay secure, fast and functioning as the web around it changes.
Why 'launch and forget' is a real risk
The technology underneath every website ages — plugins release security patches, browsers change how they render things, dependencies become outdated, and a site that was secure and fast at launch can quietly become neither within a year or two of no attention. Most businesses only notice when something visibly breaks, by which point it's often a bigger, more expensive fix than ongoing maintenance would have prevented.
What ongoing maintenance actually covers
Regular updates to the underlying platform, plugins and dependencies, applied carefully with testing rather than blindly, so a security patch doesn't accidentally break your site. Monitoring for broken links, failed forms and functionality regressions. And a route for small, ongoing content and design changes without needing to re-engage a full project every time something needs updating.
Frequently asked questions
How often does a website actually need maintenance?
Security and dependency updates are best handled on a regular schedule (typically monthly) rather than reactively, with monitoring running continuously in between. Content changes happen as often as your business needs them.
What's the difference between maintenance and ongoing development?
Maintenance keeps what already exists secure, up to date and functioning correctly. Ongoing development (see Ongoing Development) adds new features, pages or functionality. Many clients have both running in parallel — maintenance protecting what's live, development building what's next.
What happens if my site gets hacked or breaks?
Maintenance clients get priority response for urgent issues, and because we already know how the site was built, diagnosis and fixes are typically much faster than starting from scratch with an unfamiliar codebase.