What it involves, and how often
| Task | How often | If skipped |
|---|---|---|
| Software updates: platform, theme, plugins | Weekly on WordPress; automatic on hosted platforms | Security holes stay open; incompatibilities accumulate until something breaks |
| Backups, stored off-site, and a test restore | Daily backups; test a restore quarterly | A hack or a bad update becomes a rebuild |
| Uptime and security monitoring | Continuous | You learn the site is down from a customer |
| Fixes: broken forms, links, layouts after updates | As they happen; check the form monthly | Enquiries silently stop arriving |
| Domain and certificate renewal | Yearly; automatic if set up | The site vanishes on the renewal date |
| Content and prices | As the business changes; review quarterly | Last year’s prices and a Christmas banner in March |
| Speed check and Core Web Vitals | Quarterly | Slow decay as images and plugins accumulate |
| Search Console review | Monthly | Indexing problems and lost rankings go unnoticed for months |
Source: Cybrial’s hosting and care checklist, in use on client sites, September 2026.
What happens to a site that gets none
Nothing, for a while, which is why it is skipped. Then, in roughly this order: the site gets slower as images and plugins accumulate and nothing is cleaned; a plugin update that was never applied leaves a known vulnerability open; the form breaks after a hosting change and nobody notices because a broken form is silent; the site is compromised and starts serving spam or redirecting visitors, and Google flags it; or the domain lapses because the card on file expired.
Our own experience of taking over unmaintained sites is that the form is broken more often than not, and that the owner has usually been wondering why enquiries dried up. That single check, monthly, pays for a year of care on its own.
Maintenance is not hosting, unless the plan says so
Many businesses pay a monthly “hosting” fee and assume someone is looking after the site. Bare hosting keeps the server on; nothing in the table above is included unless the plan names it. Ask which you have. Our fee bundles both because separating them leaves a gap nobody owns; it is £50 a month and the list of what it covers is on the hosting page.
How often should you update the content?
Owners ask, and the honest answer is: when it changes, and otherwise not for its own sake. Prices, hours, team, services and offers should be right the day they change. Beyond that, adding a page that answers a question customers ask is worth more than rewriting pages that already work, and Google rewards genuinely updated content over dates changed for appearance. Quarterly, read every page as a stranger and fix what is stale. Monthly, check the form.
Doing it yourself or paying
Everything in the table can be done by an owner with an hour a week and a checklist, on a WordPress site with a managed host doing the heavy lifting. The reason most owners pay is not difficulty; it is that the hour a week stops happening in month three. A plan is buying the habit. On our prices, that is £50 a month including the hosting; the maintenance cost guide compares the UK market.
