What a Website Maintenance Plan Should Include

en 2026-09-26 7 min read

A website maintenance plan should cover four things: updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes. Ours is called Care, it costs EUR 100-300 a month, it includes support within agreed hours, and it deliberately stops short of redesigns and new features.

That short list is the point. A plan that promises to handle anything has to be priced for your busiest possible month, and you pay that price in every quiet one. A plan with a hard edge can stay cheap, and you can check whether it is actually being delivered.

The four things a plan should include

Updates

Every site runs on something that changes underneath it: a CMS, a framework, plugins, the libraries a form or a booking widget depends on. Updates close security holes and keep the site working in current browsers. A good plan checks the site after each update, because an update that breaks the contact form is worse than none.

Monitoring

Monitoring means someone hears about a problem before a customer does. The minimum is knowing when the site is unreachable. The failures that cost more are quieter: a form that submits but never delivers, a certificate that lapses, a page that errors only on a phone. Ask any provider, including us, exactly what is watched and who receives the alert.

Backups

A backup you have never restored is a hope. The plan should say where backups are kept, that they sit somewhere other than the server the site runs on, and that a restore has been tested. On a site with a database, such as one with accounts or bookings, the database is the part that matters, because the code already lives in the repository.

Small fixes

A wrong phone number, a stale price, a broken link, an image that needs swapping, a form field that needs renaming. Small fixes change what the site says, not what it does. That distinction keeps a plan honest, and it is worth having in writing.

What Care deliberately leaves out

Care does not include a redesign and it does not include new features. They are projects: they need scoping, design decisions and testing, and a fixed quote always follows scoping. Fold them into a monthly fee and the maintenance is what quietly stops while the feature gets built.

This is where requests land.

What moves the price inside EUR 100-300

The range follows how much there is to keep working, not how important your business is.

• The step you launched at. A step 01 landing page has one page, a form and analytics. A step 04 build can have a login, a dashboard, an API and payments, and each of those can fail without anyone noticing.
• Connected services. Every booking tool, CRM or mailing service wired into the site has its own ways of breaking.
• Whether there is a database. A site that stores accounts, orders or bookings needs that data backed up and its restores tested. A site without one mostly needs its repository kept safe.
• How much keeps changing. A site whose prices, menus or opening hours keep moving asks more of the plan than one that rarely changes.

Questions to put to any maintenance plan

1. Which parts of the site get updated, and who checks it still works afterwards?
2. What exactly is monitored, and who receives the alert?
3. Where are the backups kept, and when was a restore last tested?
4. What counts as a small fix, and what happens when a request is not one?
5. If I cancel, what do I keep?

You own the code, the repository and the database of a site we build, so they stay yours when Care ends. If a provider answers that the site stays with them when you leave, the monthly fee is paying for access to your own business.

How Care starts

For a site we build, Care begins after launch, and the build itself includes 14 days of support on launch defects. The build runs to its step: 1-2 weeks for a single-page landing, 2-3 weeks for a mini-site, 3-6 weeks for a business website and 6-12 weeks for an advanced site or web app. A custom SaaS platform is timed after discovery.

If we take on Care for a site built by someone else, the order is different.

1. We look at the site and its code first, because a price for maintaining something unseen would be a guess.
2. We get access to the repository, the hosting and the domain. This is the part that waits on you, since those logins sit with you or with your previous provider.
3. A backup is taken and restored somewhere safe before anything is touched.
4. Outstanding updates are brought current. If that turns out to be a rebuild in disguise, you hear it as a quote, not as a surprise on a Care invoice.
5. Monitoring is switched on, and Care runs from there.

When to spend less

If you launched a step 01 landing page at EUR 600-900 and nothing on it is about to change, you may not need a monthly plan at all. Keep a copy of the site, know where the repository is, and send an email when something breaks. Paying every month to avoid an invoice you may never receive is not a saving.

The same goes for a site with little underneath it. A static site with no plugins, no database and no connected tools has very little to update, and if someone on your team edits the text and checks the form, that person is already your maintenance plan. Care earns its place when the site takes bookings, handles accounts or talks to other systems, because then a quiet failure costs you enquiries or orders before anyone sees it.

And if what you want is a redesign, do not buy Care hoping it turns into one. Scope the redesign as a project, look at the steps on packages, and decide about Care afterwards.

Questions buyers ask

Does Care cover a redesign?

No. Care is a monthly plan for updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes, and a redesign or new features sit outside it. Those are scoped as projects, with a fixed quote after scoping.

What happens when a small fix turns out to be bigger?

You hear about it before the work starts. If a request changes what the site does rather than what it says, it is a feature, and it gets a fixed quote after scoping. Nothing is built quietly and billed later.

Is hosting included in Care?

Hosting is agreed per project rather than bundled by default, and the studio can host when that is what we agree. The Care fee itself covers updates, monitoring, backups, small fixes and support within agreed hours.

What do I keep if I cancel?

The code, the repository and the database. They are yours, so another developer can pick them up. Updates, monitoring and backups stop, which matters more on a step 04 build with logins and an API than on a single-page landing. How we build sites that stay easy to hand over is on design and engineering.

Tell us what your site runs on and what it connects to, and we will say where in EUR 100-300 it sits, or whether it needs Care at all: get in touch.