Website Maintenance Package: What Should Be Included?
Why Maintenance Is Important In 2026?
Security risks over the internet have increased. ASD received over 84,700 cybercrime reports in 2024–25, more than one per hour. $56,600 is the average loss small businesses suffer from cybercrime, as reported by the businesses themselves.
But privacy risk is also a top consideration. From January to June 2025, OAIC recorded 532 notifiable data breaches. Just over 10,000 were affected by cyber incidents on average, and 59% were caused by malicious or criminal attacks.
W3Techs estimates that WordPress accounts for 42.2% of all websites, and 59.6% of all sites using a known CMS.
Core Inclusions That Should Be Found In All Packages
Reputable website maintenance packages will specify what is included, when tasks are likely to occur, and what will happen if they do occur.
As a minimum, the services to look for are:
- Website health checks
- Themes and plugins are updated, along with the CMS.
- Regular backups
- Security monitoring
- Malware scans
- Uptime monitoring
- Hosting support
- A checklist of speed and performance checks
- Broken link checks
- Form testing
- Basic SEO monitoring
- Monthly reporting
- Help with minor issues. Assistance with minor problems.
If a pack only says “updates included,” make sure to find out what that means.
The Basic, Standard, And Advanced Packages
All websites are not equal. For a small number of pages and low traffic, a basic package might be appropriate. It should still contain updates, back-ups, security checks, and support.
A standard package suits websites involved in lead generation. It should include uptime monitoring, form testing, speed reviews, SEO health checks, and monthly reporting.
An advanced package is for e-commerce, membership, or booking websites. It needs to have more regular backups, priority support, checkout testing, enhanced security monitoring, and more thorough performance reviews.
The right answer depends on the amount of revenue, data, and customer trust your website handles. If the site is used by customers every day, select a more robust safeguarding option than the lowest-cost plan available.
Security Updates And Software Care
It is important to regularly update your website software, which involves checking the WordPress core, plugins, themes, PHP versions, and integration.
The more secure pathway is as follows:
- Recreate a new backup.
- Update core software.
- Keep plugins and themes up-to-date.
- Test critical pages and forms.
- Fix conflicts quickly.
A broken form can stand in the way of sales enquiries for weeks, without you knowing.
Backups Are Your Backup Plan
An efficient package should feature 24/7 backups, secure storage, and a clear restore procedure.
The question to ask is: “How fast can my site be restored?”
If they cannot respond, then the backup guarantee isn’t strong. Backups are only important when they are restorable in a timely fashion.
Hosting, Uptime, And Technical Support
Hosting affects speed, security, uptime, and user experience.
Planted Web Design provides Australian-based hosting for your website as part of its maintenance and hosting services, along with performance checks, security monitoring, and support for existing websites.
The package ought to track uptime and notify somebody if the website is unavailable. It shouldn’t be the first time you’re hearing it from a customer.
Check The Speed And Core Web Vitals
User trust, SEO, and conversions are affected by speed. Google defines Core Web Vitals as “real-world loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability.” Google also has a set of Core Web Vitals that it considers to be a good indicator for search success and user experience.
Be sure to have checks on your package for:
- Slow pages
- Large images
- Heavy scripts
- Layout shifts
- Poor mobile experience
- Caching issues
- Database bloat
SEO And Content Health Checks
The website’s ideal condition should be conducive to SEO. It should help to stabilise the foundations.
Apply some basic checks for:
- Broken internal links
- Missing meta titles
- Duplicate pages
- 404 errors
- Indexing issues
- Sitemap problems
- Search Console warnings
- Outdated service information
For example, a local plumber has changed their service area but hasn’t updated the website. It means that a quarterly content audit can prevent this from going wrong with the website attracting the wrong traffic.
Small Content Fixes And UX Tips
There are usually small changes that need to be made in most businesses, like hours, testimonials, prices, etc., photos, or service edits monthly.
It is important to determine a reasonable package by defining the amount of support time fairly. It can be, for instance, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 2 hours of content edits per month.
Usually, anything that is a new landing page, custom feature, redesign, or checkout rebuild falls outside the realm of standard maintenance.
Which Of The Following Should Not Be Automatically Included?
These are examples of things that a standard maintenance package might not cover
- Full redesigns
- New website builds
- Advanced SEO campaigns
- Paid ads management
- Long-form blog writing
- Custom coding
- New integrations
- A large progress towards conversion rate optimisation.
- Recovery from old unresolved issues: when it is clearly needed, the old issues are recovered.
These are still available separately with the scope and price.
How To Choose The Right Package
Basic tasks for a small brochure site include monthly revamp, backup, security monitoring, and basic checks. The form testing, SEO monitoring, speed checking, and reporting functions in a lead-generation site must be improved. More frequent backups, testing out the checkout process, security maintenance, and priority support are required for the e-commerce site.
Ask:
- How frequently is backup made?
- Do updates get tested after they’re done?
- Is hosting included?
- Is uptime monitored?
- What kind of support is provided?
- What is excluded?
- Is a monthly report given?
- Who is responsible for emergency matters?