Website maintenance: scope and cost

Specify what is updated and who responds to problems. A presentation site has different needs from a shop with payments or a platform holding operational data. Maintenance may cover updates, backups, monitoring and corrections, without including every requested change.

• Component and dependency updates
• Backups and a restoration procedure
• Monitoring important functions
• Incident corrections within agreed scope
• Support for website administrators

A backup is useful if it contains the required data and can be restored. Define frequency, storage, access and restoration checks. A shop taking daily orders has different needs from a rarely updated site. Agree acceptable data loss and recovery time.

Response time describes when an incident is taken up, not necessarily when it is resolved. Clarify working hours, channels and priorities. An SLA should explain its measurements and ownership of hosting, application and external services.

Systems, update complexity, integrations and support hours affect the budget. Midavco agrees maintenance by project and contract; there is no single public rate for every website. Ask for the subscription price, included work and the process for estimating additional interventions.

New copy, pages, redesign and features can be development work. SEO promotion has different deliverables from technical maintenance. Defect warranty also has its own conditions. Clarify these services to plan costs.

Supporting another team’s website first requires access, a component inventory and a condition review. Existing issues need identification and estimation. Record domain, hosting and account owners and available handover documentation.