Maintenance is the work that keeps a site healthy between builds: updates, fixes, small additions, and advice. It is billed hourly for one-off tasks or as a monthly retainer for recurring work.
If you have ever logged into your site, seen a notification you did not understand, and closed the tab hoping it would resolve itself — this page is for you. It usually does not resolve itself, but it is almost always quick to fix when someone who has seen it before takes a look.
What a maintenance request actually looks like
Most maintenance is not dramatic. It arrives as a short email, and it sounds like this:
- “The contact form stopped sending me notifications last Tuesday. I only found out because a client mentioned it.”
- “I added a new team member and the About page now looks broken on phones.”
- “The plugin update notice has been sitting there for four months and I am afraid to click it.”
- “I need to add a page for a new service by Friday.”
- “The site is suddenly slow and I do not know why.”
- “Someone left a comment that looks like spam but I am not sure.”
None of these are emergencies. All of them are the kind of thing that gets worse when left alone. A form that quietly stops sending is the most common and the most costly, because the enquiries do not bounce — they simply never arrive, and nobody notices for weeks.
That is the honest case for maintenance. Not that your site will collapse without it, but that small things fail quietly, and quiet failures are the expensive kind.
What maintenance covers
- Core, theme, and plugin updates
- Fixing broken layouts, forms, or links
- Adding new pages, posts, or sections using existing templates
- Form changes: new fields, new notification recipients, spam tuning
- Small feature additions that do not require a new design
- Advice on prioritization when you have a list of requested changes
What the work actually involves
Updates are the routine part, and the part most people skip. WordPress, the theme, and each plugin release updates on their own schedules. Applying them takes minutes. Knowing which ones are safe to apply together, and which have a history of breaking things, is the part that comes from experience. I apply updates in a staging copy first when the site warrants it, and I check the forms afterward, because forms are what break first and loudest.
Fixes are usually quick once the cause is found. The cause is rarely where the client thinks it is. “The site is slow” is often one large image. “The menu is broken” is often a plugin conflict that appeared after an update. Finding it takes longer than fixing it, and that is what the hourly rate is paying for.
Adding pages and sections using existing templates is straightforward and keeps your site consistent. New pages built from the same blocks as the rest of the site look like they belong there. New pages built from scratch tend to look like they were built from scratch.
Form changes are the most common small request, and the most worth getting right. A new field, a second notification address, a better spam filter — small changes with a large effect on whether enquiries reach you.
Advice on prioritization is the part clients underuse. If you send a list of eight changes, I will tell you which three matter and which five can wait. That conversation usually saves more money than the work itself.
What this does not include
- Full redesigns or new custom templates (quoted as a separate project)
- Ecommerce troubleshooting that requires developer-level debugging (quoted separately)
- Emergency recovery from malware or hacking (quoted separately)
- Content writing
The exclusions are here so that nothing arrives as a surprise. If a request falls outside them, I will tell you before doing any work, and you will get a quote rather than an invoice.
Pricing and how it works
Rate: $100/hour, billed in 30-minute increments. Monthly retainers are available for recurring work (see Monthly Retainers).
How a request usually goes:
- Send the request by email, with a screenshot if it is a visual problem. A screenshot saves about fifteen minutes of back-and-forth, which is fifteen minutes you do not pay for.
- I confirm the estimate before starting. Small fixes are usually quoted as “under 30 minutes” or “about an hour.” You approve before I begin.
- I do the work and tell you when it is done, including anything I noticed along the way that you did not ask about.
- You get an invoice at the end of the month, or immediately for larger jobs, depending on what we agreed.
Payment terms:
- Invoices are due within 7 days.
- Work under 30 minutes is billed at the 30-minute minimum.
- Anything estimated above two hours is quoted in advance and requires approval before work starts.
- If a fix turns out to be caused by something outside my work — a host outage, a third-party service changing its API — I will tell you rather than bill you for chasing it.
When maintenance is the wrong answer
Sometimes it is. If your site is more than a few years old and the list of fixes is longer than the list of things that work, maintenance becomes a subscription to patching a leaking roof. A rebuild is cheaper over three years, and I will say so rather than take the hourly work.
The same is true if the changes you need are design changes rather than maintenance. Adding a page is maintenance. Redesigning the homepage is a project, and it should be quoted as one.
Knowing which one you are looking at is part of what the first conversation is for.
Who this is for
Clients with an existing site who need occasional help, and clients who want a predictable monthly arrangement instead of ad hoc hourly work.
It suits sites that are basically healthy and need looking after. It does not suit sites that need rebuilding, and it is not a substitute for the Annual Care Plan if what you mainly want is for the updates to happen without you thinking about them.
Frequently asked questions
How quickly can you fix something?
Small fixes are usually same-week. Larger jobs are scheduled. If something is genuinely urgent — a broken checkout, a form that has stopped sending — say so in the subject line and I will treat it as urgent.
Do I need to be technical to request maintenance?
No. Describe what you see and what you expected to see. “The button does nothing when I click it” is a perfectly good request. Diagnosis is my job.
Can you just do the updates and not bother me?
Yes — that is the Annual Care Plan. Maintenance is for when you have specific requests. The Care Plan is for when you want the routine work handled quietly in the background.
What if I do not know whether something is broken?
Ask anyway. “Is this supposed to look like this?” is a normal question, and the answer is sometimes no. Checking takes less time than you would expect, and I will tell you if there is nothing to fix.
Do unused retainer hours roll over?
No. Retainer hours are reserved for the month they are booked. This is covered in more detail on the Monthly Retainers page.