--- title: "Website Maintenance Plans: Updates, Backups, Monitoring — Dardo" description: "Website maintenance plans: uptime, SSL and form monitoring, tested updates, restorable backups, small changes and a monthly report. WordPress too." url: "https://dardo.studio/en/services/website-maintenance/" language: "en" translation: "https://dardo.studio/es/servicios/mantenimiento-web/" updated: "2026-10-08" --- # Website maintenance plans: updates, backups and monitoring Website maintenance is the monthly work that keeps a live site online, secure and current after launch. Dardo runs maintenance plans for companies that depend on their website for inquiries or sales: we monitor uptime, certificates, domains and forms, test every update, keep backups we have restored, make small changes and report monthly. We maintain the Astro sites we build and, after an audit, WordPress sites built by others. By Dardo editorial team · Updated 8 Oct 2026 · 8 min read [Message us on WhatsApp](https://wa.me/573163373216?text=Hi%20Dardo%2C%20I%27d%20like%20a%20proposal%20for%3A%20Website%20maintenance%20plans%3A%20updates%2C%20backups%20and%20monitoring) · [Read in Spanish](https://dardo.studio/es/servicios/mantenimiento-web/) ## What a website maintenance plan includes We shape the engagement around the actual brief. The proposal identifies which of these deliverables are included, who supplies the inputs and how each one is accepted. - Uptime, SSL certificate, domain expiry and form delivery monitoring with alerts - Dependency, CMS and plugin updates, tested on a staging copy before production - Off-site backups with scheduled restore tests - Security headers, vulnerability scans and an access review - Small content and design changes within the plan's hours - Monthly report: Core Web Vitals, search, inquiries and work done ## When a maintenance plan makes sense Choose a maintenance plan when the site already does its job and the risk is that it stops without anyone noticing: an expired certificate, a form that no longer sends, a plugin update that breaks checkout. If the structure, content or platform is the problem, start with a website redesign or a website migration and maintain the result. If the site is stable but brings too few inquiries, conversion rate optimization is the better use of the budget. ## How a plan starts: audit, baseline, then a monthly rhythm Every plan starts with an initial audit, also for sites another team built. We list the hosting, DNS, domain registrar, certificates, CMS, plugins or code dependencies, integrations and forms, and who holds each account. We take a full backup and restore it in a separate environment to prove it works, and we record a baseline of Core Web Vitals, search performance and inquiries. The audit ends with the urgent fixes, the plan's scope and a quote. After that, each month follows the same rhythm. Monitoring runs all the time and alerts reach a named person on each side. Updates are grouped, tested on a staging copy and released with a rollback point. Change requests arrive through one channel, are estimated before work starts and are logged against the plan's hours. At the end of the month you get a report of what changed, what we found and what we recommend next. Response times for incidents and requests are written into the plan you sign. ## What does a maintenance plan check and fix? A plan watches the parts of a website that fail without warning and fixes them before visitors or search engines notice. These checks run every month, adjusted to the platform: The monthly report puts the numbers next to the work. Google's Search Central documentation defines good Core Web Vitals as Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1, and web.dev recommends reading them at the 75th percentile of page loads, split by mobile and desktop. The report shows those values from real visits, search clicks and impressions, inquiries received, and every update, incident and change made in the month. - Uptime of the home page and the pages that bring inquiries, checked from outside your hosting - SSL certificate expiry and automatic renewal on every domain and subdomain the site uses - Domain registration expiry and DNS records, including the ones email delivery depends on - Form delivery: a scheduled test submission confirms inquiries still reach the inbox or CRM - Performance after each release, so a heavy image or script is caught the same week - Updates to code dependencies, CMS core, plugins and themes, tested before production - Backups stored away from the server, with a restore tested on a schedule - Security headers, vulnerability scans and a review of who has admin access - Small content and design changes: text, images, a new page from an existing template, links and redirects ## Plan tiers by scope: Monitor, Maintain, Evolve Plans differ in what they cover, how many change hours they include and how fast we respond. The names below describe scope only. Each plan is quoted after the initial audit, because the same tier costs different amounts on a static Astro site and on a WordPress store with dozens of plugins. Response times, support hours, included change hours and whether unused hours carry over are written into each plan. Work beyond the plan, such as a new section or an integration, is estimated and approved before it starts. __Plan tiers by scope: Monitor, Maintain, Evolve__ | Plan | What it covers | Who it fits | | -------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Monitor | Uptime, SSL, domain and form monitoring with alerts; backups with a periodic restore test; urgent security updates; a short monthly report | Stable sites that rarely change, with someone in-house who edits content | | Maintain | Everything in Monitor, plus scheduled updates tested on staging, security scans, a set number of change hours and the full monthly report with Core Web Vitals, search and inquiry trends | Business sites whose inquiries or bookings depend on forms, and WordPress sites with many plugins | | Evolve | Everything in Maintain, plus a larger block of design and development hours for new sections, landing pages and tests, and a quarterly review of priorities | Teams that keep improving the site and want one studio to design, build and maintain it | ## Why certificates and plugins need closer watching now Certificate lifetimes are getting shorter on a published schedule. Under the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements, the maximum validity of public TLS certificates is 200 days from 15 March 2026, 100 days from 15 March 2027 and 47 days from 15 March 2029. At 47 days, renewing by hand stops being practical, and an automated renewal that fails quietly shows visitors a browser security warning instead of your site. We monitor expiry on every hostname, not only the main domain. WordPress needs the closest watch. Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, 42% more than in 2024, and found 91% of them in plugins and 9% in themes. A WordPress plan therefore starts by removing plugins the site does not need, then tracks security advisories for the ones that remain and tests updates on a copy before they reach production. ## Can you take over a site another team built? Yes, after the initial audit. On a site built by someone else, the audit answers what is there, who controls it and what is fragile: plugins nobody updates, a theme edited directly so it can no longer be updated, logins only a former freelancer has, backups that were never restored, forms that send to an inbox nobody reads. Some findings need a one-off fix before monthly maintenance makes sense, and we quote that separately. Ownership stays with you. Hosting, domain, DNS, CMS, analytics and email-sending accounts should be in your company's name, with Dardo invited as a user. If they are not, moving them is the first task, so that ending a plan never means losing access to your own website. ## Questions before you choose **How much does a website maintenance plan cost?** It depends on the platform, the number of plugins and integrations, the change hours included and the response times you need. A static Astro site with one form costs less to maintain than a WordPress store with many plugins and a payment gateway. Dardo quotes each plan after the initial audit, when those drivers are known, instead of publishing a flat fee that hides them. **Do you maintain WordPress, Shopify or Webflow sites?** Yes. On WordPress a plan covers core, theme and plugin updates, backups, security, monitoring and changes. On hosted platforms such as Shopify and Webflow the provider runs the servers and core software, so the plan focuses on apps and integrations, forms, content changes, performance, search and the monthly report. **What happens if the site goes down?** Monitoring alerts us and the contact you named. We find the cause, whether hosting, DNS, an expired certificate, a failed update or an outside service, restore the site by fixing it or rolling back, and send a short incident note with the cause and what changed. How fast we respond, and in which hours, is set in your plan. **Who owns the hosting, domain and accounts?** You do. Hosting, domain, DNS, CMS and analytics accounts should be registered to your company, with Dardo added as a user with the access the work needs. If a previous provider holds them, transferring them to you is part of the initial audit. **Can I cancel a maintenance plan?** Yes. The notice period is in the agreement. When a plan ends we hand over the latest backup, the update and incident log, the documentation and any credentials we created, and we remove our users if you ask. **What counts as a small change?** A change that uses the existing templates and components: editing text, replacing images, adding a person to a team page, publishing a page from an existing layout, fixing a link or a redirect. New page types, new integrations and redesigns are not small changes; they are quoted separately or come out of the larger hours in an Evolve plan. We estimate each request before starting. **What do you need from us to start?** Access to hosting, the domain registrar, DNS, the CMS or code repository and analytics, a list of the forms and pages that matter most, and a person who receives alerts and approves changes. The initial audit takes longer when access is scattered across old providers, so gathering logins first is the fastest way to begin. ## Sources & further reading Sources behind this page, with further detail from the original publishers. - [CA/Browser Forum: TLS Baseline Requirements (relevant dates)](https://cabforum.org/working-groups/server/baseline-requirements/requirements/) · cabforum.org - [CA/Browser Forum: Ballot SC-081v3, schedule of reducing validity periods](https://cabforum.org/2025/04/11/ballot-sc081v3-introduce-schedule-of-reducing-validity-and-data-reuse-periods/) · cabforum.org - [Patchstack: State of WordPress Security in 2026](https://patchstack.com/whitepaper/state-of-wordpress-security-in-2026/) · patchstack.com - [Google Search Central: Core Web Vitals](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/core-web-vitals) · developers.google.com - [web.dev: Web Vitals thresholds](https://web.dev/articles/vitals) · web.dev [Dardo](https://dardo.studio/) · [Services](https://dardo.studio/en/services/) · Website maintenance ## Start with an audit of the live site Send the site's address, what it runs on and who holds the accounts. We reply with what the initial audit covers and how a plan would be scoped. [01 · **Compare adjacent scope** · Web development](https://dardo.studio/en/services/web-development/) · [02 · **Discuss your brief** · Request a scoped proposal in your language](https://dardo.studio/en/contact/?service=website-maintenance) ## Keep exploring. - [Service · **Web development agency in Bogotá, Colombia**](https://dardo.studio/en/services/web-development/) - [Service · **Web accessibility audit and remediation (WCAG 2.2 AA)**](https://dardo.studio/en/services/web-accessibility/) - [Service · **Conversion rate optimization (CRO) services**](https://dardo.studio/en/services/conversion-rate-optimization/)