What's included in website maintenance, and do you need it?
Website maintenance is the routine work that keeps a site secure, working, and current: software updates, backups, security and uptime checks, testing forms, watching speed, and small content changes. Every WordPress site needs it. The question is only whether you do it yourself, rely on what your host and theme automate, or pay someone for a maintenance plan.
What maintenance covers
| Task | Why it matters | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Updates to WordPress, plugins, and theme | Most hacks use holes that an update already fixed | Weekly, or automatic |
| Backups, stored away from the site | The only quick way back from a hack, a bad update, or a mistake | Daily, kept for weeks |
| Restore test | A backup you can't restore isn't a backup | A few times a year |
| Security checks | Spot unknown users, malware, or warnings early | Monthly |
| Uptime monitoring | Know the site is down before a customer tells you | Continuous, automated |
| Form and email tests | Contact form emails fail silently | Monthly, and after any email or DNS change |
| Speed checks | New images and scripts slow pages over time | Monthly |
| Broken links | Pages get moved and outside sites disappear | Quarterly |
| Accessibility checks | New content can introduce problems | Quarterly, and for new templates |
| Renewals: domain, SSL, licenses | An expired domain takes the site and email down | Yearly, set to auto-renew |
| Content updates | Hours, staff, prices, and events go stale | As things change |
What a maintenance plan usually includes
Plans vary, so compare what's written down. Common inclusions: updates, backups, monitoring, security cleanup if something goes wrong, a set amount of small content changes each month, and a response time for problems. Ask whether hosting is included, whether a hack cleanup costs extra, and how many hours of changes the fee covers.
Do you need a plan?
- You might not if your host runs daily backups and updates, the site is simple, and someone on your team will check forms, links, and content every month.
- You probably do if the site takes payments, bookings, or donations, brings in most of your leads, has many plugins, or nobody has time to check it.
Hosted builders such as Squarespace and Wix handle the software updates and backups themselves, so their maintenance is mostly content.
If your site runs on Dirigible
Some of this is built in:
- Updates: the Dirigible theme and plugins update themselves, checked twice a day. Other plugins keep their own update settings. See Keep Dirigible up to date.
- Checks: Dirigible → Tools & Maintenance has Send test email, Audit broken links, an Accessibility audit, and a Gravity Forms Settings check. See Using Tools & Maintenance.
- Speed: with Dirigible Optimize, Google tests your home page daily and charts the score. See Daily PageSpeed score.
Backups and uptime monitoring come from your host, so check what your hosting plan includes.
If the site brings in money or leads and nobody on your team owns these checks, price a maintenance plan against what a day of downtime, a month of lost form emails, or a hack cleanup would cost you.