Website maintenance: what it includes and what it costs

What does website maintenance actually mean?

Maintenance is the mostly invisible work that keeps a site working after launch day. It's like servicing a car: you don't buy the car for it, but without it the car breaks down exactly when you need it most.

A modern site isn't just a few pages. Behind it run a server, a database, code libraries written by other people, a security certificate, forms that send emails and sometimes payments or bookings. Each of these can change or break independently of you. Maintenance means someone watches all of those parts and steps in before a customer runs into the problem.

What should a maintenance plan include?

A serious plan covers five things, and if one is missing it's worth asking why. On paper, all offers look alike. The difference shows up when something breaks and you find out what was really included.

• Hosting: the server the site and its database run on, with someone responsible for it.
• Updates: new versions of the framework, libraries and, where relevant, plugins, especially when security issues are published.
• Backups: automatic copies of files and the database, stored somewhere other than the server, and checked from time to time by actually restoring them.
• Monitoring: an automated check that notices when the site stops responding or when the SSL certificate is about to expire.
• Small changes: a line of text, a photo, a price or opening hours, done quickly without a separate quote each time.

What happens if you skip maintenance?

Usually nothing dramatic at first, and that's exactly the trap. Problems creep in gradually, and a customer tends to find them before you do.

A free SSL certificate renews automatically only while the renewal mechanism keeps working; when it stops, browsers show visitors a red warning. The contact form may stop sending emails after a change at your email provider, and quote requests disappear silently. Old libraries keep their already published vulnerabilities, which bots scan for automatically across the whole internet. And if the server fails with no recent backup, rebuilding the site can cost more than a full year of maintenance.

Then there's Google. A slow site with pages that throw errors or links that lead nowhere gradually loses visibility. Maintenance doesn't do SEO on its own, but it stops it from decaying.

How much does website maintenance cost at ZED-ZEN?

Maintenance plans start from 100 RON a month and cover hosting, monitoring, updates and small changes. The final price depends on how complex the site is: a presentation site with a few pages needs less work than a site with online ordering, payments and an admin panel.

For presentation websites, the first year of hosting is included in the project price, and every project comes with a warranty period. The maintenance plan is optional, and we discuss it together with the quote, so you know from the start what the site costs after launch, not just up to it.

The domain (for example, your-company.ro) isn't part of this: it's paid yearly to the registrar. We recommend registering it to your company, not to the agency, so it stays yours whatever happens.

Where do the sites we maintain live?

On our own infrastructure: a dedicated Hetzner server, Coolify for deployments, where 28 apps run, self-hosted Supabase with 16 databases and daily backups, and Cloudflare in front. That way you don't pay a separate hosting platform for every project, and you have one point of contact.

It matters because when something goes wrong, there's no “it's the host” versus “it's the developer” back-and-forth. The people who built the site have access to the server, the database and the logs, so they can see the cause, not just the symptom.

Can you handle part of the maintenance yourself?

Yes, the content side, if the site has an admin panel. At Terasa Florilor, the restaurant's team edits products, events, photos, coupons and users on its own, without asking a developer for every change.

The technical side (updates, backups, security, the server) is better left to someone who does it every day. Not because it's magic, but because a botched update can take a site down, and someone who works with the same architecture all the time knows where to look.

What should you check in a maintenance contract?

Get five things in writing: exactly what's included, how quickly a problem gets a response, where and for how long backups are kept, who owns the domain, the code and the data, and what happens if you want to leave. The last one is the most often forgotten. Fair maintenance hands over the code, access and a copy of the data at the end, without haggling.

Also ask for a definition of a “small change”. Updating a price or a photo is small. A new page with a new form is already a small project, and it's healthier to know that upfront than to find out from the invoice.

Frequently asked questions