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If you’re running a business website, but don’t have the time to regularly maintain and keep it updated, there’s bad news just around the corner – it’s at risk of slowing down, developing errors, being an easy target for hackers, and losing you customers.
It’s time to get help from a reliable website maintenance service.
Below, we explore:
- What maintenance services do
- Why it’s best to delegate maintenance
- What support is available
And, if you’re looking for recommendations, check out our review of the best website maintenance companies.
What Are Website Maintenance Services?
Website maintenance services are companies you hire to keep your website well-maintained and protected from external threats. These expert teams of developers regularly manage, update, and secure your website.
For example, they create website backups, ensure you’re up to date with the latest software updates and features, and help you improve your search engine rankings via SEO work.
Maintenance experts also resolve website errors and troubleshoot technical issues. With StateWP’s service, you can even track maintenance reports and raise errors through your user dashboard.
Ultimately, people hire professional maintenance service providers to save time and money and have the peace of mind that their websites are expertly cared for.
Website Maintenance Services vs. Managed Hosting
There’s some confusion over the difference between website maintenance services and managed hosting.
Managed hosts take care of server hosting – they run the technical aspects of your web server for you, typically updating server files, backing up your site occasionally, and managing your website’s server-side health.
Meanwhile, professional maintenance services focus on your customer-facing website. They provide frequent backups and core updates, harden security, offer ongoing development, and act as your emergency hotline for errors. Many also offer custom plan options, such as adding cloud backups.
Although a host covers the basic functions of a maintenance service, the latter goes deeper. They have your back with fixes and troubleshooting, not just preventive server-side measures. You can learn more from our layman’s guide to website hosting.
P.S. This can get a bit more confusing when maintenance services also offer hosting for you by partnering with a hosting company in the background. They do this to offer a more complete service, eliminate the need for you to speak with highly technical developers, and ensure that your site has nearly impeccable, 100% uptime (something only a reliable host can guarantee).
For example, here at StateWP, hosting is included with our Premium and Elite plans, and can be added to the Starter plan for $32/month. It’s a simple way to keep everything in one place while ensuring your website runs on cutting-edge servers with exceptional performance.
Why Use Website Maintenance and Support Services?
Even if you think you know your way around your website, having experts on your side is always good. Here’s why.
1. You save effort
If you make a technical mistake and crash your website, or it gets infected by malware because you forgot to update a plugin or theme, you may not know how to fix it.
Unfortunately, this scenario is pretty common. More than one million WordPress websites were infected by malicious code in a single year.
Calling a support service to repair the fault reduces worry and hassle and ensures potential customers can quickly regain access to your website.
Here’s another scenario: What if you forget to update your core files or accidentally cause an error that locks you out?
There’s a lot of work and dedication to consider! You only need to glance at our website maintenance checklist to see how much of a commitment you’re making.
If you outsource the work to a skilled team of experts, this would never happen and you could keep your focus on your core business!
2. You save time and money
Although it’s easy to think maintaining a website only takes a few hours out of your week, that’s still time you could spend with clients. Consider how much business you’d lose!
Here’s an example:
You spend 1 hour a week maintaining your website, monitoring for performance issues and suspicious activity, and checking out Google Analytics and Google PageSpeed Insights.
That’s roughly 4.5 hours a month. You value your time at $150, your charge-out rate. This means you’re “spending” $675 on maintenance each month by handling upkeep tasks instead of working with your clients.
Even with our most expensive monthly maintenance plan (the Elite at $630), you’d still be saving $45 every month, even before considering:
- The hassle of DIY solutions
- The extra costs when something goes wrong or your site goes down
- The risks of a security breach
To make things worse, data breaches are expensive – US companies pay an average of $9.36 million per breach over time.
When you outsource to a maintenance service, you can outsource the risk to professionals with a 100% hack-free record (that’s us!) and put those cyber threat worries to bed – everything’s taken care of with time to spare.
Your reputation is safe, you don’t have to waste time fixing problems yourself, and you can focus on helping your customers.
Costero Brokers, a StateWP client, works with us to save time and money it’d usually spend on maintenance in-house. The company trusts us to manage its regular updates, edits, and performance optimization so that its IT department can focus on supporting the business elsewhere.
3. You’re always prepared
Even the most impressive websites develop faults. For instance, if you experience an annoying Error 403 message, it’s handy to have a support team you can pass the problem to (and get you back up and running fast).
In addition, the savviest of developers provide search engine optimization (SEO) services. They regularly monitor and perform content edits behind the scenes so you get more relevant organic traffic and rank higher in specific searches. They also support fresh content production by ensuring your site follows the latest technical SEO practices.
Beyond this, how often do you remember when to perform core updates? What about plugin and theme updates? When was the last time you updated your PHP?
Keeping your website and its functions updated ensures it’s safe and easy to use.
But, don’t feel bad. You’re not the only business owner who forgets. Less than two-thirds of WordPress users are running the most recent version. Just don’t add to this statistic.
A maintenance team offers a proactive solution and updates all your essential software for you. It’s yet another potential issue taken off your hands and placed in the care of experts.
What’s Included in Website Maintenance Services?
Not all maintenance tools and services offer the same support, but there are a few common features you should look for when shopping around.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what regular website maintenance should include:
| Maintenance feature | What it does |
| Security updates | Ensures your website is running on the latest software and is protected against hacking and malware |
| Data backups and restoration | Regularly saves your website data and uploads it again if you get hacked or lose access |
| Hack remediation | Helps you bounce back from attacks with malware cleaning and security upgrades |
| Traffic reports and analytics | Gives you insight into who’s visiting your website and where from (great for adjusting digital marketing and content strategy) |
| User dashboard | Provides a complete oversight of your website’s health and connects you to a support team |
| Performance boosts | Maintains peak performance by keeping your pages loading quickly, reducing your bounce rate, and ensuring your website design is fully responsive for mobile users |
| Mobile site testing | Makes sure all your menus, navigation, and features are easy to use on different-size screens |
| Hosting support | Supports you when moving servers to boost performance |
| Content updates and edits | Keeps your content relevant, helpful, and engaging to convert more visitors into customers |
| SEO auditing | Checks your website to make sure it’s built to perform well in relevant search results for your audience |
| Feature testing and staging sites | Allows you to make changes and try new features without affecting your live website (bye-bye maintenance mode!) |
| Quick customer support | Resolves pesky errors quickly and ensures you feel supported at all times |
The Typical Process of a Website Maintenance Service
No two sites are ever the same, but you can usually expect a fairly standard process when setting up with a website maintenance service partner.
Here’s a typical roadmap to expect once you agree to a plan:
| Typical step | What it involves |
| 1. Initial audit and optimization |
Your partner looks at your current site and lays out areas ripe for optimization and performance improvements. For example, they look for design flaws affecting conversion rates and compliance, broken links, and factors negatively affecting your search engine rankings. |
| 2. Continuous monitoring |
The provider installs several optimal performance monitoring tools, plus analytics software. With these powerful tools, they check your site’s health behind the scenes, watching for unusual traffic, keeping software updated, and ensuring a seamless user experience. |
| 3. Daily backups | Experts take daily cloud saves of your website in case of data loss or downtime. |
| 4. Error management | Your maintenance team tracks and remedies site errors you raise, typically through a dashboard. |
| 5. Ongoing reports | The best experts continuously update customers on traffic analytics, error remediation, and performance stats. |
| 6. Monthly discussions | You meet on a monthly basis with your maintenance team to discuss your site’s performance and their support. |
| 7. Ad-hoc requests | You can raise ad-hoc editing and feature requests via your dashboard with developers. |
Remember, even if you already have an in-house IT team, you can still delegate regular maintenance to an outside expert to give your in-house digital marketing services team more freedom to work on other projects.
Take Sun Pacific, another long-standing StateWP client.
This citrus fruit giant delegates regular updates and simple site tasks to our team and relies on us to edit and refresh content and page layouts for several hours each month. Emma Wollenweber, the firm’s marketing manager, is especially pleased with the fact she and the team can check website vitals and raise service requests easily through Proto, our all-in-one user dashboard and command center:
“Proto is amazing because it’s like having an IT department at your disposal. Seeing both SEO and site health in one place is a game-changer, and I can check it whenever I want without being an overbearing client emailing them all the time.”
Website Maintenance Services: We’re in Your Corner
If you’re struggling to manage your online presence and it’s taking your focus away from your customers, it’s time to delegate to a WordPress maintenance provider.
Experts will take the wheel for you in time-consuming and technical areas of website management, giving you more time to develop your business and build client relationships.
If you’re ready to act, take a look at our reliable, secure, and affordable WordPress packages to get started.
Or, if you’d prefer to chat with Garrett, our Managing Partner and maintenance guru, about your options, you should book a commitment-free live demo.
Website Maintenance Service FAQs
Here are some common questions about website maintenance agencies to close our guide.
How do I handle website maintenance?
The best way to start handling website maintenance is to back up your site, use a plugin to make sure it’s clean and secure, and check how your search optimization is performing. You should also update outdated software, make sure you have a custom domain for your CMS login page (not wp-admin), and read the latest trends and resources about website security.
It’s easiest to do this (and avoid critical issues) with the help of an experienced website maintenance team like StateWP because you save considerable effort.
Should I hire a website maintenance agency?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Hiring a maintenance agency offering a website care plan is great value if you run a business. It’s much more cost- and time-effective than managing your website in-house or hiring an internal team to help. Maintenance experts have experience handling security patches, regular backups, updates, and SEO. They’re also skilled at creating a positive user experience, helping you with content management, and eliminating security vulnerabilities.
Plus, always remember that any time spent maintaining and fixing your site is time you could have spent helping customers!
How much does it cost to maintain a WordPress website monthly?
Monthly maintenance costs for a WordPress website may vary depending on the services company and the level of care you need. For example, complete WordPress maintenance and on-demand support from StateWP is available from $99 to $630 per month, paid annually, and is free from the restrictions you typically find with lower-value service providers.
Why do you need a WordPress maintenance service?
A WordPress maintenance service ensures online success – your website is secure, performing at its best, and consistently receiving software updates. You don’t have to worry about managing any security checks, theme or plugin updates, tweaks, or technical aspects yourself – simply ask a developer to manage your site for you. Some services also help host your site and arrange monthly maintenance.
How long does WordPress maintenance take?
Managing a well-maintained website on WordPress on your own usually takes between 5 and 10 hours a month, depending on your knowledge and the tasks you need to complete. With a maintenance service, however, it’s an ongoing process behind the scenes – you always have support, even when you don’t realize you need it.