Website hosting is the computer that keeps your site online; maintenance is the work that keeps it working, safe and current. Between them they cover five things: the domain, the hosting itself, keeping the site secure and updated, backups, and changes when your business changes. A monthly plan is worth paying for when it covers all five and someone actually does the work; it is not when it is hosting alone with a bigger name.
This matters to why your website isn't generating leads because a site nobody maintains drifts: the form breaks, the hours go out of date, and the leads stop without anyone noticing.
The five things
- The domain. Your address, renewed every year. It should be registered in your name, whoever pays for it. A domain held in someone else's account is the most common way a business loses its website.
- Hosting. The server that delivers the site. Good hosting is fast, secure and backed up; cheap hosting can be slow before the page even starts loading.
- Security and updates. The certificate that makes your site load over https, updates to the platform and any plugins, and watching for anything broken. Most site problems start here.
- Backups. A copy of the site from which it can be restored if something goes wrong. Ask how often and how long they are kept.
- Changes. New hours, a new service, a new team member, a seasonal offer. Ask whether you can make small changes yourself, and how changes are handled if you cannot.
What a monthly plan should include
A fair monthly plan covers hosting, the certificate, updates, backups, monitoring that the site and the form are working, and some amount of small changes. What it costs varies; ours is on the pricing page. What matters more than the figure is whether those things are included and who does them.
Questions that tell you what you are paying for
- Is the domain registered in my name?
- If I stop paying, what do I keep?
- How often is the site backed up, and have you ever restored one?
- Who notices if the form stops working, and how?
- How do I ask for a change, and how quickly is it done?
- Can I edit the basics myself?
The answers matter more than the monthly figure. A cheap plan that answers "I do not know" to most of them is the expensive one.
Signs your site is not being maintained
An expired security warning, an out-of-date copyright year, old hours, a form that does not arrive, or a page that looks broken on a phone. Any one of these suggests nobody is looking. Six signs your website is costing you customers covers the ones a visitor notices.
Find out where yours stands
The free website audit checks whether the site is secure, readable by Google, mobile-friendly and contactable, which is what maintenance is meant to protect. Whether it looks looked-after is worth judging yourself, on a phone, as a stranger would. A dental practice or a real estate agent whose details change often feels the cost of an unmaintained site quickly.