Managed hosting and security, monthly edits and updates, uptime and performance monitoring, from $199 a month. Monthly, cancel any time, never required. This page lists exactly what it covers, what it does not, what happens to a site nobody looks after, and how a site built by someone else is taken on.
A website is not finished at launch. The domain renews, the certificate expires, the hours change at Christmas, the form stops arriving because an email address changed, and the person who built the site has moved on. Website maintenance is the unglamorous work of making sure none of that takes the site down or costs you a customer. Our version is the Care Plan, from $199 a month: hosting, security, backups, monitoring and a monthly round of edits, handled for you. It is optional on every build, and a site we did not build is taken on only after the audit.
The site runs on hosting we manage, kept patched and behind a valid certificate, with backups you can go back to.
Change requests handled each month: new hours, a price, a team member, a photograph, a paragraph. The number covered is agreed in writing per project.
We are told when the site goes down or slows, before a customer tells you.
No contract, and the site is yours whether or not you keep the plan. A static site can be handed to you to host free.
The plan is described on the pricing cards as keeping the site fast, secure and current: hosting, backups, monitoring, and monthly change requests handled for you. This is what each of those means in practice.
The site lives on hosting we manage, in an account you own, with the certificate renewed and the software kept current. Our default build is hand-written HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript served from a content delivery network, which has no plugin stack to patch and nothing to hack. On a site that runs a content management system, keeping the platform and its plugins updated is most of the security work, and exactly what that covers is agreed in writing per project. Backups are taken so that a bad edit or a failed update can be undone.
The reason most owners take the plan. You email the change — a new price list, holiday hours, a new stylist or technician, a photograph, a paragraph on the services page — and it is made, checked on a phone, and confirmed back to you. The number of change requests covered each month is set in writing when the plan starts, and anything beyond it is quoted before a minute of work happens. A new page or a new feature is not an edit; see below.
The site is monitored for whether it is up and how fast it loads, and we are notified when either changes. Most outages are quiet: a lapsed domain, an expired certificate, a hosting change nobody mentioned. Monitoring means we find out before your customers do, and the fix is usually made before you knew there was a problem.
Two things fail silently and belong in the plan's written scope: whether the contact form still reaches an inbox someone reads, and whether analytics still record. A spam filter changes, a mailbox is closed, a script is removed in an edit. A form that has not arrived for three months is the failure nobody notices until a customer mentions it in person, which is why what is checked, and how often, is agreed in writing per project rather than assumed.
Being specific about this is what makes a $199 plan honest, and it is the part most maintenance pages leave out.
New pages, new features and redesigns. A page per service or a booking tool is a build, quoted separately at the published prices. A full rework is the redesign page.
Photography and logo design. You supply images and brand assets, or we use stock; logo work is quoted separately.
Your domain and third-party fees. The domain renewal, the booking or ordering software, a texting provider, any paid app the site connects to. We tell you what is due and when; we do not pay it for you.
Search engine optimisation beyond what is in the build. Ongoing SEO is a separate retainer, from $750 a month on the SEO page, and Google Business Profile management starts at $500 a month per location on the local SEO page.
Ad spend and ad management, which are on the digital marketing page.
Hosting and monitoring for a custom tool. A tool built alongside the site is managed separately, from $400 a month on the AI automation page, because software has more that can go wrong than a page does.
Regulated copy. Medical, legal or financial claims need a specialist to sign off, and an edit that introduces one is sent back to you for that.
Nothing dramatic, at first. Then, one at a time, over a year or two, the ordinary things.
The domain renewal notice goes to the email address of the person who registered it, who has left, and the domain lapses. The site disappears, and so does every email address on that domain, on the same day. The security certificate expires and every browser shows a warning page before your home page; most people click back. A content management system and its plugins go unpatched, and the site is quietly used to host someone else's spam pages until Google flags it. The contact form's destination mailbox is closed, and the form keeps saying "thank you" to people whose messages go nowhere. The hours on the site are the old ones, the phone number is the old one, the price list is two increases behind, and the person who could change any of it cannot be found. The card on the hosting account expires.
Each of these is common, none of them is a design problem, and each costs customers in a way that never shows up as an invoice. The reason the care plan exists is that every item on that list is cheap to prevent and expensive to discover.
You do it. Changes after launch are yours to make, and we show you how. A static site can be handed to you to host free, and there is less to go wrong on one. This is the right answer for an owner who is comfortable making a text change and will remember the domain renewal.
We do it. The care plan, from $199 a month, monthly, cancel any time. The right answer for an owner who does not want to be the person who notices.
Or it is already covered. On the $149-a-month Starter plan, hosting, updates and edits are included for the whole twelve months, after which the site is yours and you choose.
What it is never here is required. The home page compares the routes to a small-business site, and on the subscription-agency route ongoing care is listed as included and required; ours is offered. The site is in your name either way, and if you leave, you keep all of it and we help you move. The page on choosing a web design company lists a required maintenance plan among the things to watch for.
We take on the maintenance of a site we did not build, but only after the Site & Business Audit: $750, paid once, with a written report in three business days. The reason is not a sales step. Promising to keep a site up means knowing what is in it — how it is hosted, what it runs on, whether the domain and the accounts are in your name, whether it is indexed, how fast it is, whether the forms arrive, and what its security state is. The audit scans every page against 190+ technical, SEO, local and conversion checks, including indexing, speed, security, schema and links, then a person reads your copy, offer and ads, and the report ranks what to fix by impact against effort with the exact fix.
The report is yours to keep, or to hand to anyone. Three outcomes are common. The site is sound, and we take it on with a care plan at the published price. The site needs specific fixes first, which are quoted in writing at fixed prices before any are made. Or the site is not worth maintaining and the honest answer is a rebuild, which the redesign page covers at the same packages and prices as a new build. If the site runs on WordPress, Shopify or Squarespace and is doing its job, we work inside it rather than move it. Whichever it is, the scope of the plan is agreed in writing per project before the first monthly payment.
What Grand Rapids web designers charge puts maintenance at $50 to $300 a month locally and notes that it is often where an agency's real margin lives. The home page cites Digital Applied's 2026 pricing data, which puts a small-business maintenance retainer at $1,800 to $6,000 a year; $199 a month sits inside that range rather than under it, and the difference is what the plan includes and who does the work. There is no contract, and nothing to export if you leave, because the site was in your account to begin with.
The web development page explains why a hand-written static site is cheap to host and has nothing to patch, which is the reason a plan at this price can cover it properly. Why website projects stall is about the months before launch; this page is about the years after.
A site built here can add the plan at launch. A site built elsewhere starts with the audit.
Built here: the plan is added at launch, or any month after. Built elsewhere: the $750 audit, three business days, report yours to keep.
Where it is hosted, what is patched, how many edits a month, and the price, agreed in writing per project before the first payment.
Domain, hosting and every login confirmed as yours, or moved into your name if they are not.
Send the change. It is made, checked on a phone, and confirmed back. Monthly, cancel any time.
From $199 a month. It is monthly and you can cancel any time. It covers managed hosting and security, monthly edits and updates, and uptime and performance monitoring, with backups. The number of change requests covered each month is agreed in writing per project.
A change to what is already there: new hours, a price, a new team member, a photograph, a paragraph on a page. A new page, a new feature or a redesign is a build, quoted separately at the published prices. Anything beyond the agreed number of edits is quoted before a minute of work happens.
Yes, after the Site & Business Audit: $750, paid once, with a written report in three business days. It tells us what the site runs on, whether it is in your name, and what its security and speed are, which is what a promise to keep it up depends on. The report is yours to keep. If the site runs on WordPress, Shopify or Squarespace and is doing its job, we work inside it.
No. Changes after launch are yours to make and we show you how; a static site can be handed to you to host free. On the $149-a-month Starter plan, hosting, updates and edits are included for the whole twelve months. The care plan is for owners who would rather not be the person who notices.
The site is yours. Domain, hosting and every login were registered in your name from the start, so nothing has to be exported. A static site can be handed to you to host free, and we help you move.
Send me the site. If we built it, I'll add the plan. If someone else did, I'll tell you what the audit would look at and what a plan would cover, in writing.