Maintenance & support
Hosting, security, performance monitoring, and the small fixes that keep a site healthy after launch.
Launch is a stage, not a milestone
Sites that stop receiving care quietly degrade, packages fall behind on security patches, content gets stale, performance regresses as scripts and integrations accumulate, and small breakages compound until something visible fails. A maintenance and support engagement keeps the site healthy and absorbs the small ongoing changes that would otherwise queue up indefinitely.
What's covered
Hosting and uptime
Managed hosting, CDN, TLS, DNS, backups, and uptime monitoring. We can host on our infrastructure or work alongside your existing provider.
- Managed hosting and CDN
- Daily backups with tested restore
- 24/7 uptime monitoring
- TLS and DNS management
Security
Patching, dependency upgrades, vulnerability monitoring, and incident response, the unglamorous work that keeps the site out of the news.
- Core, framework, and dependency updates
- Vulnerability scanning and triage
- WAF and bot mitigation where appropriate
- Incident response runbook
Performance and accessibility
Sites slowly get slower without intervention. We monitor Core Web Vitals and accessibility conformance and fix regressions before they affect rankings or users.
- Core Web Vitals monitoring
- Performance budgets and regression alerts
- Accessibility regression testing
- Image and asset optimization
Content and small changes
A bucket of hours each month for the small content edits, layout tweaks, and feature additions that don't justify a full project.
- Content updates and content support
- Small UI and layout changes
- New page templates and components
- Integration tweaks and analytics fixes
Reporting and roadmap
A monthly report on uptime, security, performance, and the work done, plus a quarterly roadmap conversation about what's worth investing in next.
- Monthly health report
- Quarterly roadmap review
- Backlog prioritization
- Renewal and capacity planning
What ongoing maintenance actually covers
A serious maintenance and support engagement covers more than the periodic patching of dependencies. It includes regular review of error logs and performance dashboards to surface issues before they become outages, ongoing security work, backup verification and disaster-recovery testing, content and configuration changes that the business needs, performance and Core Web Vitals tracking, and the small steady stream of bug fixes and improvements that keep the site feeling cared-for rather than abandoned. The engagements that produce the most value tend to combine reactive support (fixing what breaks) with a small monthly improvement budget (fixing what is annoying, improving what is slow, refreshing what is outdated) so the site keeps getting better rather than just staying static.
How we structure the relationship
We structure maintenance engagements around clear service-level expectations: response times for different severity levels, regular reporting cadences (monthly is usually right), and a transparent backlog of what has been done and what is queued. We treat the relationship as a long term partnership, which means we tell clients honestly when a maintenance request would be better handled as a project, when an issue is the platform's fault rather than something we can fix in-place, and when the right answer is to invest in the site rather than to keep maintaining what is there. The clients who get the most value out of these engagements use them as an embedded technical resource rather than a help-desk.
Why most sites benefit from a retainer
Project-based work has its place, but most live sites generate a steady stream of small needs that don't justify a project of their own. Without a retainer, those needs either pile up unaddressed or get rushed through whoever is closest to the codebase. A modest monthly retainer absorbs that work, keeps a single team familiar with the site, and avoids the drift that comes from each change being handled by someone different.
How we scope a retainer
We start by sizing the steady state work, security and performance maintenance, content updates, monitoring, and then add a buffer of hours for the small projects that emerge. Hours roll over for one month so seasonal busy periods don't penalize a quiet one. Larger projects are scoped separately so the retainer doesn't quietly absorb work that deserves real planning.
Common questions
Do you support sites you didn\u{2019}t build?
Yes, after a discovery period to understand the codebase, hosting, and any technical debt that needs addressing before a steady state retainer can work.
What\u{2019}s the response time on issues?
We agree on response times during scoping. For most retainers, critical issues (site down, security incident) are responded to within an hour during business hours and within four hours otherwise.
Site overdue for some care?
Tell us where you are and we'll suggest the right shape of support.
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