Website Maintenance and Hosting
Website Maintenance keeps your Website working
Our aim is to take over your chore of maintaining your website on a monthly basis. We make it easy for you, so you can work on growing your business.
Website Hosting
Website hosting is a must. It shows your website to the world. As part of our website hosting, we provide a monthly analytical report. This shows where your site visitors come from, how they find you, which pages they looked at, and what events (such as sending a form) have occurred.
Our monthly Website Maintenance and Hosting Plan is $100 and includes:
We make your website visible to the world
We make sure your theme, plugins, widgets, and content are up to date.
We make sure your entire website is backed up on remote storage. Just in case.
We send you a monthly analytics report. There is an example on the right.
We let you know how visitors find your site, which pages they look at, and if there are any pages on which we need to improve the content.
Some of the websites we are hosting and maintaining are: Stoneham Cosmetic Dentistry, J and R Fine Landscaping, Childrens’ Dental Care, and Charron & Flaws
$100 per month for website maintenance and hosting
The Cost of Website Maintenance
Once you build your website, you’re done, and it takes care of itself, right? Nope!
A website is like a time bomb with many fuses that are constantly burning out. You need to update plugins, extensions, and your website framework (WordPress, Drupal, etc.) to reduce bugs and hacking.
What if I need to change the content of my website?
Most businesses have a need to update their website content, such as product or service information, staff bios, news, etc. Many business owners are so busy running their business, that their website content is continually on the back-burner. We help with content edits as part of our monthly maintenance contract.
Why do I need to upgrade plugins and extensions?
Plugins and extensions are mini-applications that we add onto your website to increase features, such as a slideshow on the home page. These mini-applications are often updated and need to be upgraded or they can become the backdoor that hackers use to access your website. Once a new plugin is installed, the website is checked to see if the new plugin “broke” any website feature. Sometimes plugins that worked well together previously are not compatible when upgraded. Many website frameworks will alert you when a new version of a plugin is available – but you have to be paying attention.
Why do I need website framework upgrades?
Websites are like any other software application you use, e.g., Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, etc., in that they have versions. Each new version adds features, or fixes security flaws. If you don’t upgrade your website then you can’t take advantage of new features and hackers could gain access to your website through some “backdoor”. This is why it’s always advisable to keep your website version up-to-date.
If you have a regular website on a standard hosting service, you are just renting the hosting “space” (not the website software). Normally the hosting company will not perform any upgrades for you. This means that you are responsible for maintaining your website framework, by upgrading it when a new one comes out. This could be every month depending on what type of framework your website is built on. Or you can hire us and we do this as part of our monthly website hosting and maintenance contract.
What if I don't have in-house IT?
If you don’t have an IT resource, you have a few options:
- Hire an IT consultant or Web Agency that can remotely monitor your website and make any updates for you. This consultant should have access to your hosting account and all your add-ons, plugins and extension licenses. That’s us, KiwiMotif.
- Contract with an automatic updating service that will automate your website updates. These services are effective if your website doesn’t have too much customization. If your website is heavily customized, then making a simple upgrade can cause a ripple effect and bring the whole website down. We can help you set up with someone.
- Ignore it and hope that your website will be safe from exploitation, hackers and malware. We often see clients that have gone this route. Their websites are usually riddled with malicious code and require many hours of “cleaning” and upgrades. Please don’t.
What about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
SEO keywords and meta tags are not as critical as they used to be. All your content should be properly tagged and new content should be tagged using current SEO best-practices. Once the content has be optimized for search engines, there is little reason to go back to it and re-SEO it. Your marketing resource or Web Agency should keep an eye on the analytics to determine if any further SEO work needs to be done to legacy content.
Website maintenance is a necessary part of your online budgeting. Talk with us to make sure you understand how your maintenance is being managed. If it’s not being managed or you would like a free review of your website code, contact us for more information.
What are other website maintenance costs?
- Hosting is a basic recurring cost. Depending on the complexity of your website and how much bandwidth you are using, your website hosting costs could range from $10 a month to $100+ a month for a small to mid-size business website.
- Domain Name: your domain name (or URL or website address) cost can start at about $15 a year.
- SSL: Google is now giving preferential ranking to businesses with SSL licenses. We now build it into all our websites for extra security. These can start at $50 a year.
- Backups: Website backups are cheap insurance, no matter the size of your website. If you get hacked or infected with malware, you could have to completely rebuild your website. Backup services start at $5 a month and go up depending on the size, frequency, and type of backup you need.