01 · Essential
Uptime + security baseline.
- Uptime monitoring (24/7)
- Weekly security patches
- Daily off-site backups
- Monthly CWV snapshot
- 2 dev hours included
- 48-hour response SLA
§
§ · maintenance
Website maintenance. Preventive. Not reactive.
Monthly retainer for uptime monitoring, security patches, plugin and theme updates, daily backups, and same-day emergency fixes. Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Next.js; no setup fee.
§ 01 · preventive care
Maintenance before the incident.
A website is a live system. CMS versions drift out of date, plugins ship security patches on Tuesday and zero-day exploits on Wednesday, Core Web Vitals degrade as content piles up, checkout flows break after a third-party tag update. The cost of preventive maintenance is small and predictable; the cost of reactive incident response is large, unpredictable, and usually strikes at the worst possible moment. Monthly retainer trades certainty for uncertainty.
§ 02 · three tiers
Essential. Standard. Premium.
02 · Standard
Active operational support.
- Everything in Essential
- 8 dev hours included
- Weekly CWV regression alerts
- Quarterly performance review
- 4-hour emergency SLA
- Monthly written status
03 · Premium
Engineering retainer depth.
- Everything in Standard
- 20 dev hours included
- Quarterly CRO audit
- Same-day emergency SLA
- Dedicated tech lead
- Weekly check-in call
§ 03 · platforms covered
Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Next.js.
Every major platform we build on, we maintain. Shopify clients get the specialized Shopify Maintenance service (same underlying team, Shopify-specific SLAs around apps and checkout extensions). WordPress clients get plugin-audit, theme-update, and security-hardening with Wordfence or equivalent. Webflow and Next.js sites get deploy-pipeline monitoring, dependency audits, and performance regression alerts. If your site is on a platform not listed here, the 2-week inheritance audit determines whether we can maintain it.
§ 04 · questions
Five answers.
What does website maintenance actually cover?
Five recurring activities. One, uptime monitoring (24/7 external pings with SLA-backed alerts). Two, security patches (CMS core, plugins, themes, dependencies) applied weekly or as urgent. Three, daily off-site backups with quarterly restore tests. Four, performance monitoring (Core Web Vitals, server response time) with regression alerts. Five, allocated development hours for fixes, small features, and content updates. Emergency response (broken page, failed checkout, security incident) is included at higher tiers with a same-day SLA.
How is this different from my hosting provider's support?
Hosting support covers the server and the platform: disk, memory, network, CMS core. It does not cover your plugins, your theme, your JavaScript, or your specific customizations. A typical Shopify or WordPress site has 8 to 20 installed plugins or apps; when one of them breaks checkout or introduces a JavaScript error, hosting support points to the plugin vendor and the plugin vendor points back. Website maintenance covers the gap: someone who knows your site, your plugins, and your business, on contract to fix whatever breaks.
Do you maintain sites you did not build?
Yes, with a 2-week inheritance audit first. The audit covers: platform version and update status, plugin and theme inventory with known-vulnerability check, backup and recovery setup verification, performance baseline (Core Web Vitals, time-to-first-byte), security posture (HTTPS, security headers, admin access), and a risk register. We then onboard onto the retainer; urgent issues the audit surfaces go in the first-month dev-hour allocation so you do not pay extra.
What response times do you commit to?
Essential tier: 48-hour business-hour response for non-critical items, best-effort same-day for emergencies (broken checkout, down page). Standard tier: 24-hour response for non-critical, 4-hour business-hour response for emergencies. Premium tier: 4-hour business-hour response for non-critical, same-day written SLA for emergencies including evenings and weekends. Every response-time commitment is in writing in the contract, not a marketing claim.
Can I cancel month-to-month?
Yes. Every tier runs month-to-month after the first month. 30-day written notice to cancel. On cancellation we hand over all access credentials, current backup, a written status of every in-progress item, and a 2-week grace period for emergency issues. No long-term contracts, no automatic renewals past the opt-out window, no data hostage situations. The easiest way to earn the next 12 months of retainer is to make leaving easy.
§ 05 · scope the retainer
Month-to-month. Exit clauses in writing.
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