The article
An hour after the https certificate of Muzychko Vocal School was issued, a bot was already trying the site's admin login 102 times a minute. It did not need a link or a visitor: it found the new domain in the public logs of issued certificates. The admin moved to a secret path. That is the short answer to why website maintenance services exist: a site gets attacked, ages and breaks whether or not anyone is looking at it.
I have been building software for 18 years, and my team looks after the sites we build for $29 a month, billed annually ($348). Below is exactly what that covers and where it stops, how to compare it with other plans, a check you can run on any site in ten minutes a month, and what happens if you leave.
Website maintenance services: the short version
| What | How it works |
|---|---|
| Price | $29 a month, billed annually ($348), from launch |
| For | The sites we build, including the $499 website |
| Included | Hosting with https, any bug in our work fixed at our expense, changes to texts and pictures, backups and updates, an eye on uptime and the domain's renewal date |
| Response | Within 3 business days |
| Estimated separately | New design, new pages, features, integrations, large amounts of content |
| Term | A year at a time, renewing automatically; cancel by email at least 30 days before the renewal date |
| A site built elsewhere | We look at it first; if it fits, we move it to us and rebuild it with AI for the price of the plan |
What the plan covers, line by line
Every website maintenance package has fine print. Ours is short enough to read in a minute.
- Hosting on our servers, with https. Web hosting maintenance is part of the plan: 1 GB for your files and data and 20 GB of traffic a month, more than a typical small business site uses. Pictures go up to 2 MB and documents up to 10 MB; video and audio live on YouTube, Vimeo or a similar service and play on your pages. When 80% of the space is used, we tell you. 5 GB and 100 GB cost $120 a year more - $39 a month, billed annually ($468) - never added without your approval.
- Any bug in our work, fixed at our expense. If something we built behaves wrong, fixing it is on us.
- Changes to texts and pictures on your pages. You send one list at a time, and each list is done within 3 business days after its turn comes. There is no limit on the number of lists.
- Backups and updates. Both are on our side: you do not schedule them, and you do not pay for them separately.
- Uptime and the domain. If the site stops answering or the domain's renewal date gets close, we tell you what happened and where.
- Answers from the developers who built the site. A web support service is only as useful as the person who reads your message, and ours can open the code.
You also keep the admin: every text, picture and page stays yours to change, at any time. If something is missing there or you cannot find it, write to us while the plan is active.
What it does not cover
The plan keeps your site working; it does not build a new one. These are estimated before any work starts, and nothing goes ahead without your yes:
- a new design, or new pages designed and built by us;
- new features: client accounts, online booking, payments, integrations with other tools;
- writing or entering large amounts of content.
That line is how monthly website maintenance stays at one price with no hidden fees. New work is never slipped into the plan, and the plan never quietly turns into an hourly bill.
Why a finished site still needs upkeep
A website does not stay finished. Four things happen to every site, whether or not anyone touches it.
- Certificates expire. When an https certificate lapses, browsers warn visitors away from your page. On our servers, certificates renew on their own.
- Libraries and plugins age. Old ones are how sites get broken into, and bots find a new domain fast: the Muzychko bot was at the admin login within an hour.
- Forms fail without a sound. A contact form whose email stops sending shows no error; the leads simply stop. On Buhgalteria na doloni, an accounting firm's site, every request is saved first and only then sent by email and Telegram, so a failed email loses no client.
- Browsers change the rules. On Build Wise Investments, a silent background video stayed black on iPhones in Low Power Mode, because such clips do not start there on their own. Posters cut from the footage and a timed fallback fixed it.
Slow pages lose their place in search, too, so speed is something you keep, not something you get once at launch.
How to compare website maintenance plans
Monthly website maintenance packages are hard to compare by price alone: web maintenance services and plans differ most in what they leave out. In October 2026 I read four website maintenance pages from the first page of Google for this search; a fifth blocked my measuring browser. Two publish a monthly starting price, $299 and $300. One names its usual response time, 24 hours on workdays; another sells a one-business-day turnaround as a paid extra. One says your domain and hosting account stay in your name. None of the four says what you take with you if you leave.
Four pages are a small sample, so read it as a list of questions for any web maintenance company or agency, us included:
- What exactly is included, and what is billed by the hour?
- How fast do you respond, and does faster cost extra?
- Whose name are the domain and the hosting account in?
- What do I get if I leave: the code, the files, a data export?
- Who finds out first when the site goes down?
A monthly check you can run in ten minutes
You do not need a developer to know whether your site is healthy. Once a month, run these checks on your own site, whoever maintains it. Forward the list to the person responsible: if they cannot answer a line, that line is the first thing to fix.
| Check | How | If it fails |
|---|---|---|
| The contact form | Send yourself a message through the site | Tell whoever maintains it today: each day costs leads |
| The phone | Open the site on your phone over mobile data, not office Wi-Fi | Ask for the slowest page to be fixed first |
| The padlock | Click the padlock in the address bar and read the expiry date | If nobody renews it automatically, ask who will, and when |
| The domain | Look up its expiry date in a WHOIS or RDAP service | Turn on auto-renew at your registrar, in your own account |
| Search Console | Open the Pages report and look for new errors | Ask what changed and when it will be fixed |
| Speed | Run PageSpeed Insights on your homepage, mobile tab | Compare with last month; a drop after an update is a bug |
| The link preview | Paste a page link into WhatsApp and send it to yourself | No picture in the card: ask for a preview image on every page |
| Backups | Ask when the last copy was made and when one was last restored | A copy that was never restored is not yet a backup |
| Admin accounts | List everyone who can sign in to the admin | Remove the people who have left |
| Your listing | Search for your business name in Google | Fix wrong hours or phone numbers on the site and in your Google Business Profile |
On the sites we look after, the padlock, the domain watch, the backups and the updates are our part. The form, the content and your listing still deserve your eyes once a month.
A site built by someone else
The plan is for the sites we build: we know their code and run their hosting, which is why one price can cover them. A site you already have can become one of them: send us its address, we look at it first, and if it fits, we move it to us and rebuild it with AI for the price of the plan itself. If it does not fit, the honest answer may be a new site, and the $499 website comes with this plan from launch.
This is website maintenance for small business sites: one price and nothing to configure. If you run a store with a catalog and a checkout, ecommerce website maintenance starts with a review of the store. If your site is really an application, with accounts and dashboards, see web app maintenance.
If you leave
Leaving should be boring. The plan renews automatically every year; to stop it, email us at least 30 days before the renewal date. Then:
- the domain was always yours: you registered it, and you pay for it;
- you get an archive with the code, the files, a data export and notes to deploy it, so another host can run the site;
- Google Analytics and Search Console are handed over, with everything in them;
- access to our hosting is not part of the handover, and help with the move is priced separately;
- the site goes offline at the end of the paid year, and we keep a copy for three months in case you come back.
Where to start
Run the ten-minute check first. If a few lines fail, send us your site's address: the first call and the rough estimate are free. Everything else we look after, from apps to servers, is under IT support, and every price we publish is on the pricing page.
