Paying monthly for your website? Here's how to see what you got

Plenty of small businesses pay a monthly fee to someone for their website. It might be called hosting, maintenance, a care plan or a retainer. It's often been running for years, and it's often hard to say what it actually pays for.

Some of these arrangements are excellent value. Some quietly pay for nothing beyond the hosting itself. The trouble is that from the outside they look the same.

What the fee usually covers

There are a few different things a monthly website fee can pay for, and it helps to know which ones you're getting.

Hosting: the server your site runs on. Necessary, but often the smallest part of the cost.

Updates: keeping the software, plugins and security patches current. Skipping this is how sites get broken into.

Backups: a copy of your site you can go back to if something goes wrong. Worth asking when the last one was tested.

Changes: small edits you ask for, like new prices, opening hours, a new team member.

Monitoring: someone checking that the site is up, the forms still deliver and nothing has broken after an update.

Five questions worth asking

What did you change on my site last month? A good provider can answer in a sentence, with dates.

When was the last backup, and has anyone tried restoring one? A backup that has never been restored is a hope rather than a plan.

When did you last test my contact form? Forms stop delivering more often than people realise, and nobody notices until enquiries dry up.

Is the site up to date, and what's still waiting? There's usually something waiting. What matters is that someone knows about it.

If I left, what would I get? Your files, your domain, your logins. The answer should be simple.

What a good monthly report looks like

It doesn't need to be long. One page each month is plenty: what was updated, what was changed at your request, whether the forms were tested, whether the site went down at any point, and anything coming up that you should know about.

If you're getting that, you know what you're paying for. If you're not, ask for it. Most providers who are doing the work will be glad to show it.

If the answers are vague

Vague answers don't always mean nothing is being done. Sometimes the work is happening and nobody has thought to report it. But it's your site and your money, so it's fair to ask for clarity.

That's what we'd expect from any provider, ourselves included. If you'd like a second opinion on what your current plan covers, send it over and we'll tell you honestly what it includes.