Everyone Should Have Web Maintenance

You’ve done it! You finally launched that new WordPress website—and it’s everything you hoped it would be. Design, functionality, the whole package. Cool. Now that it’s live, you can go back to what you actually get paid to do at your day job.

Wait! Not so fast.

Getting the site live is a big milestone, but the job isn’t done. Websites are living entities in a constantly changing environment. They can be attacked, run into new rules, need updates, best practices change—there’s a lot.

And how are you supposed to keep up with it all? You’ve got a day job, and you’re not a developer.

That’s where having a web maintenance plan becomes crucial.

In this post, we’ll break down what maintenance is, why it’s necessary, and what a good plan actually looks like.

Web Maintenance? Websites need to be “maintained”?

As was mentioned in the intro, websites are living things that live in a dynamic environment. That being the case, what a website needs today may be different than what a website needs months from now. So along the way, websites need to be cared for and supervised. 

Think of a website like owning a car. A car needs tune-ups, oil changes, tire rotations, inspections, and all types of preventative maintenance. Websites are no different. To protect a website from security breaches, everything about a website needs to stay updated – from plugins to core updates. 

A good web maintenance plan means someone (usually a developer) is consistently monitoring your site, running updates, scanning for vulnerabilities, and catching potential issues before they become big problems. It’s like having a trusted mechanic keeping your website functioning properly. 

So what exactly gets done in a maintenance plan? Let’s dive in.

Web Maintenance Functions

Every maintenance plan is going to have their own flavor, but there are some fundamental things that every maintenance plan should be providing for your WordPress website. This section will help you be able to properly read through a web maintenance agreement to make sure you are getting everything you need. I will categorize the functions into tiers, so you can see what really matters.

Tier 1A – Bare minimum, Non-negotiable. If you don’t get this move one. 

Premium Hosting

In a previous blog post, I talked about the perils of going cheap on your hosting and what hosting providers you can look at. With a web maintenance plan, at the very least, even if you get nothing else, you should get premium hosting. Premium hosting will directly and indirectly help with the rest of the functions on this list. 

Usually agencies, or anyone who offers web maintenance, will have a bulk plan of sorts with either WP Engine, Flywheel, Siteground, Kinsta, or any of the other premium WordPress hosts. It then becomes a little cheaper if you factor in the hosting and all the other functions a web maintenance plan should give you. If you are looking at a web maintenance plan, and all they offer is premium hosting (with no plugin updates and such), I would consider setting up your own hosting with a premium host. If you don’t know how to do that, usually a developer (or me!) can help you do that for a one time fee.

Tier 1B – Standard, essential absolute musts. If you don’t get this, move on. 

Plugin Updates

Every WordPress site has plugins that support it. And keeping those plugins up-to-date is the equivalent of regular oil changes to a car. If left ignored, it can lead to serious security issues. And if left ignored for a prolonged period, the only solution sometimes ends up being getting a new site. 

I discuss more about plugins here, but essentially plugins are external code that is brought into your site to make it function. Similar to a group project, you always have to keep tabs on your group members to make sure everything is on the right track.

Regular Website Backups

Website backups are what they sounds like. It is a copy of your website in a moment of time. They are essential if something major was to ever go wrong with your site. If your site was to crash and couldn’t be brought back to life, having a backup immediately available to restore to an older version is a lifesaver. It is similar to if you drop your phone in the ocean and get a new phone, you can still get all the data from your previous phone from the cloud and don’t have to start over. 

Most premium hosting plans have this as part of their offering, so if a web maintenance provider is using one of the premium hosts, this should be covered. However, it is always good to ask. All you have to say is “does your plan include website backups”. If they flounder, say no, don’t understand what you are asking, or tell you that is extra and in another tier, LOOK ELSEWHERE, because this should be baseline web maintenance standards. 

Tier 2 – Lower than absolute must haves, but still must haves. 

WordPress and PHP updates

WordPress is the CMS and product that your WordPress site is built on (duh I know). But WordPress itself has code and that code needs to stay updated. Similarly, PHP is the language that WordPress is written in and like any language, has updates (think about how we are continually adding words to the dictionary). 

Keeping these up-to-date is important, but the updates happen less often than plugins. And really it only becomes a massive problem when you fall many versions behind. In the same way your iPhone is always asking for software updates, this is essentially what WordPress and PHP updates are. Sure you can skip some updates, but at a certain point, like after years of staying on the same version, the functionality of your phone gets compromised. Most premium hosting providers will handle it for you, but it is the job of the maintenance provider to make sure everything has been updated safely. 

Security Scans

Security scans are like regular health checkups for your website—they look for vulnerabilities, malware, and suspicious activity before it becomes a real problem. If your plugins, WordPress core, and PHP are kept up to date, security scans become more of a safety net than a first line of defense. Still, they’re worth having for peace of mind, especially for higher-traffic or e-commerce sites. Many hosting providers bundle this in, but your maintenance provider should ensure scans are run regularly and that any flagged issues are handled quickly.

Nice to Have – Not necessary but really nice if they include it. 

Site Speed Checks and Improvements

The Internet and websites in general are ever-changing. And that usually means the things that keep your site fast either may not work as well or need to be updated. At one point in time, Olympic swimmers didn’t wear caps, but technology changes and now we have swim caps and suits made by NASA to go faster. Usually if the site is custom built and not a page builder (shameless plug for previous article), you will be a good spot though for future improvements and changes. 

Content Updates and Bug Fixes

Throughout the life of your site, content will change, malfunctions will happen, and updates need to be made. Some web maintenance providers cover small content updates, others cover all of them, and others cover none and require you to pay hourly every time. Same things with bug fixes. There really is no right or wrong way, but it is nice when a web maintenance provider helps you with the day to day happenings of your site. 

Analytics Monitoring or Reports

Finally, if you want to know how your site is doing, some web maintenance providers will provide baseline analytics reports and may recommend improvements. What is more common though is web maintenance providers have a separate digital marketing business vertical that is billed separately to help your website grow and thrive. In my experience, getting analytics reporting is not standard practice, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility. 

TL;DR (written by AI) – Web Maintenance Essentials