What does website maintenance include?
A full maintenance plan covers everything a live business website needs to stay fast, secure and up to date. On my managed plans that means hosting, an SSL certificate that renews itself, regular off-site backups, and security and software updates applied as they are released rather than months later. It also includes uptime monitoring, so if the site ever stops responding I usually know before you do, and concierge content changes — you email me the new prices, photos or opening hours, and I make the edit, with up to an hour of changes covered every month. There is no ticket portal and no per-change invoice for routine updates. Performance is part of maintenance too: I keep an eye on Core Web Vitals so the site stays quick as it grows. In short, you run the business, and the website simply keeps working in the background.
How much does website maintenance cost in the UK?
Fully managed website maintenance starts at £45 per month with £0 setup on my plans, and that price includes hosting, SSL, backups, updates, monitoring and routine content changes. Across the wider UK market, published plans ran £29 to £379 per month in my July 2026 price check, with most small-business plans between £40 and £99 and agency retainers with development hours at £149 to £379 — often with scope-creep fees on top when something significant breaks. The DIY route looks free but costs your own time: five to six hours a month on updates, backups and troubleshooting done properly, plus the risk of getting a security patch wrong. One-off fixes outside a plan are quoted in writing before any work starts, so you always know the cost. My UK maintenance cost guide breaks the whole market down in detail.
Can you maintain a website you did not build?
Yes — most sites I take over were built by someone else. Takeovers start with a security and performance review: I check hosting, software versions, plugins, backups and page speed, and give you a plain-English summary of anything risky before touching the live site. From there the site moves onto a regular update and backup schedule like any other managed site. I work across WordPress, Shopify, React and Laravel, as well as fully custom-coded sites, so the platform your previous developer chose is not a problem. If your current arrangement is with an agency, the handover usually just needs hosting and domain access — I deal with the technical transfer and visitors see no downtime. There is no lock-in at my end either: the site, its content and its domain stay yours, so if you ever want to move on, you can.
What happens if my site goes down?
Uptime monitoring is included on every managed plan, so an outage is flagged within minutes and recovery starts straight away — often before the business owner has noticed anything is wrong. Getting the site back online is part of the service: on a managed plan there is no extra charge for recovery work, whether the cause is a failed update, an expired certificate, a hosting fault or something more serious like a hack. Regular off-site backups mean there is always a clean copy to restore from, so a rebuild-from-backup is a routine job rather than a crisis. If your site is down right now and I do not maintain it yet, call me on 07735 526 331 — emergency fixes on WordPress, Shopify and custom sites are quoted quickly, and diagnosis starts with the same monitoring and backup checks.
Do you offer website maintenance in London and Essex?
Yes. I am based in Highams Park, London E4, and most of the sites I look after belong to small businesses and tradespeople across East London and Essex — Walthamstow, Chingford, Woodford, Loughton and Epping are all local patch. Being nearby matters more than it might seem for maintenance: when something needs discussing, we can talk it through on the phone or in person, and I understand the local market your site is competing in. That said, maintenance is remote-friendly work — backups, updates, monitoring and content changes all happen online — so I also look after sites for businesses across the rest of the UK. Wherever you are based, you deal with one developer directly: the person answering the email is the person doing the work, with 20+ years of experience building and running sites for businesses like yours.