Build it
Make it sell
Keep it running
Maintenance & security
The unglamorous part that decides year six.
Updates, off-site backups, monitoring and hardening on a fixed schedule. You do not have to have hired us to build the site — most of the shops we look after, we did build, but not all of them.
The maths
A site that is not maintained is not cheaper. It is just not paid for yet.
One cleanup after a break-in costs more than three years of maintenance, and that is before the days the shop was offline. The work below is what makes sure the bill never arrives — and it is the same work whether we built the site or somebody else did.
What happens, and how often
No line item you cannot check.
This is the whole schedule. If something is not on it, we are not doing it — and we would rather you knew that before you signed than after.
| Task | Live | Daily | Weekly | Monthly | Quarterly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uptime monitoringExternal check, alert to both of us — not to one inbox | Live | ||||
| Off-site backupStored away from the server, restorable by either of us | Daily | ||||
| Malware and file scanChanged files flagged automatically, reviewed by a person | Daily | ||||
| Core and plugin updatesApplied deliberately, never automatically on a live shop | Weekly | ||||
| Update tested on a copy firstCheckout run through before anything reaches the live site | Weekly | ||||
| Speed checkReal pages on a real phone, not a synthetic score | Monthly | ||||
| Database cleanupOld revisions, expired sessions, orphaned plugin tables | Monthly | ||||
| Plain-language reportWhat we did, what we found, what we would do next | Monthly | ||||
| Restore testA backup nobody has restored is a backup nobody has | Quarterly | ||||
| Access reviewWho still has a login, who should not, two-factor on all of them | Quarterly |
Hardening happens once at the start and is checked with every review: server headers, file permissions, login protection, and everything switched off that your shop does not use.
Already have a site
We take over sites we did not build.
Often, in fact. Nobody here is going to make you feel bad about the state of it — we have seen worse, and whoever built it was probably working to a budget rather than being careless.
The check below is free and takes us about a day. You get the findings in writing whether or not you hire us, and if the honest answer is that your current setup is fine, we will say that too.
What we look at first
- 01What it is running onVersions of core, theme and every plugin, and which of them are no longer maintained by anyone.
- 02What would break under loadWhere the site slows down, what is querying the database on every page, and what happens on a real phone on a bad connection.
- 03Who can get inEvery account with a login, how old the passwords are, whether two-factor exists, and what is exposed that should not be.
- 04Whether there is a way backIf a backup exists, where it lives, and — the part most people have never tested — whether it can actually be restored.
- 05What it would cost to keepSometimes a repair costs less than a rebuild. We will tell you that even though it is the smaller job for us.
Across every site we currently look after, there has been one incident in six years — caught and closed the same day.
Send us the address. That is all we need.
No logins, no access, no commitment. We look at what is publicly visible first and tell you what we found — in writing, in plain language.