Keeping the site working, including the part nobody checks
Patching, tested backups, monitoring and a monthly content allowance — plus an end-to-end test of your contact form every month, because a form that quietly stops delivering is the most expensive failure a business website has.
Ask about a planWhy the form test is on every plan
In April 2026 a security change to this very website added a Content Security Policy that blocked our own contact form from reaching our own server. The browser refused the request before it was ever sent. Visitors saw a success message. We saw no enquiries and no errors, because nothing reached a server to be logged.
It ran that way for five months. Every monitoring tool reported the site as healthy, because it was — the form was not. We found it in September 2026 and fixed it the same day. A monthly end-to-end submission test would have caught it in week one, so it is now included on every plan we sell, including the smallest.
The four things that constitute maintenance
Maintenance plans are often sold as long feature lists, which obscures the fact that nearly all the value sits in four activities.
Patching
Keeping the platform, dependencies and libraries current. The overwhelming majority of site compromises exploit a known vulnerability in an out-of-date component rather than anything novel, which makes this the highest-value item on any plan.
Backups you have actually restored
An untested backup is a belief, not a protection. The question worth asking any provider — including us — is not whether backups run, but when one was last restored successfully.
Monitoring
Uptime, certificate expiry and malware scanning. The point is to find out before a customer tells you, or before a search engine starts warning visitors away from your site.
Content changes
An allowance of small updates each month. This is the item clients actually use, and it is what determines whether the site still describes the business in two years.
Plans
The gap between the first two tiers is more significant than it looks. Automated updates occasionally break a site, and an automated plan with nobody looking means the site stays broken until someone notices — which on a low-traffic business site can be days.
Essential
A brochure site that needs to stay up, secure and accurate.
Quoted on scope
- ✓Platform, dependency and security patching
- ✓Daily backups, with a restore tested quarterly
- ✓Uptime and TLS certificate expiry monitoring
- ✓Monthly contact-form delivery test, confirmed end to end
- ✓Small content changes — hours, prices, staff, a new service
Not included
- Out-of-hours response
- New functionality
- Performance engineering
Standard
A site that generates enquiries and is expected to earn its keep.
Quoted on scope
- ✓Everything in Essential
- ✓A person reviews the site after each update round, rather than assuming no news is good news
- ✓Larger monthly content allowance, including new pages
- ✓Search-visibility checks — indexation, canonical tags, broken links, crawlability for AI answer engines
- ✓Quarterly report of what changed, what broke and what was fixed
Not included
- Guaranteed out-of-hours response
- Content strategy and copywriting
Business-critical
A site that transacts, or one where downtime costs money the same day.
Quoted on scope
- ✓Everything in Standard
- ✓Defined response time, stated in the agreement rather than in conversation
- ✓Staged updates applied to a copy first, then to the live site
- ✓Performance and error monitoring with alerting
- ✓Restore from backup included as part of the plan, not billed as an incident
Not included
- New feature development, which is scoped and quoted separately
If you would rather not pay anyone
Declining a maintenance plan is a legitimate decision for a low-stakes site. If you make it, do these four things — they cover most of the downside at no monthly cost, and we would rather you did them than did nothing.
- ✓Set up free uptime monitoring that emails you when the site stops responding.
- ✓Submit a test enquiry through your own contact form once a month and confirm it arrives.
- ✓Know where your backups are, and restore one at least once so you know it works.
- ✓Put a recurring reminder in the calendar to read your own website twice a year as a stranger would.
The form test is the one people skip and the one that pays for itself. We know that from our own site.
Frequently asked
What does website maintenance actually include?
Four things carry nearly all the value: keeping software patched, backups you have tested restoring, uptime and security monitoring, and an allowance of content changes. Everything else on a typical feature list is a variation on those.
What happens if I do not maintain my website?
Nothing, for months — which is why it keeps happening. Then one of five things: a known vulnerability is exploited, the contact form silently stops delivering, the certificate expires and browsers warn visitors away, an update breaks the site, or the content is simply wrong for long enough to cost you enquiries.
How much should website maintenance cost in Australia?
Plans for small business sites commonly sit between roughly $100 and $500 a month. The differentiator is rarely the feature list — it is whether a person looks at the site after updates, and what the committed response time is when something breaks.
Do you maintain sites you did not build?
Yes. The first step is an assessment of what the site is built on, what is out of date, where backups are, and whether you control the domain and hosting accounts. Occasionally that assessment concludes the site is cheaper to rebuild than to maintain, and we will say so.
Is a static site cheaper to maintain than WordPress?
Generally yes, because there is no database and no plugin ecosystem to patch, which removes the largest category of risk. It does not remove the need for monitoring, backups and content changes. It is worth asking what a site is built on before accepting that a maintenance cost is unavoidable.
Do you cover the contact form specifically?
Yes, with a monthly end-to-end delivery test on every plan. A form that returns a success message while delivering nothing is the most expensive silent failure a business website has, because the enquiries do not bounce — they never existed.
Send us your website address
We will tell you what it is built on, what is out of date, and which plan actually fits — including if the answer is that you do not need one.
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