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Maintenance & Hosting

For businesses that depend on a website or system every day and want it hosted, updated, backed up and watched by the people who know how it is built, with a clear route to ask for help and a plain statement of what is covered.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

The business asking about maintenance and hosting usually has a site or system that nobody is looking after.

  • The hosting was set up by a previous developer and renews on a card that may or may not still work.
  • Updates are not applied because the last one broke something, so the platform and its dependencies are years behind and the security notices go unread.
  • There is a backup, probably, somewhere, but nobody has tried restoring it.
  • When the site goes down the first person to notice is a customer, and the first person to be told is whoever answers the phone, who does not know who to call.
  • A certificate expired once and the site showed a warning for a weekend.

Where it gets harder

Small changes pile up: a new opening time, a form that should go to a different inbox, a page that needs removing.

  • Each one needs a developer, and finding one for a twenty-minute job is harder than the job.
  • Meanwhile the system we built, or one we took over, has moved on in a direction the business cannot see: dependencies with known problems, a database that has never been tuned since launch, log files growing on a disk that will one day fill.
  • What the business needs is not a project but an arrangement: someone responsible, a monitored environment, a schedule of updates and backups, and a route for small changes that does not start from nothing each time.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A maintenance and hosting agreement normally covers the environment, the upkeep, the monitoring and the support route, stated per site or system in a written schedule. The environment is managed hosting sized for the site, with a separate staging copy, automated deployments, certificates renewed automatically, firewall and access rules, and backups taken on a schedule with restores tested on a set rhythm rather than assumed. Upkeep is the application of security and dependency updates in a staging environment first, scheduled platform upgrades, database maintenance, log rotation and storage management, and a record of what changed and when. Monitoring covers availability checks from outside, error rates, queue and job health, disk, memory and database figures, certificate and domain expiry, and the key user journeys, with alerts routed to us and, where you want them, to you.

The support route is a named way to ask for help, with a severity scale that says what counts as an outage, a defect and a change, and an agreed monthly allowance for small changes such as content, configuration and form routing, beyond which work is quoted.

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A gym operating a membership system and a public site with class bookings wants both hosted and maintained, with the booking journey monitored, a tested restore each quarter and a monthly allowance for timetable and pricing-rule changes. The two systems, the journey monitoring and the restore rhythm are written into the schedule, which states exactly what is covered and what is not.

Deliberately out of scope

  • New features and redesigns, which are quoted as projects
  • Third-party service fees such as domains, payment providers and email platforms, which you hold in your own accounts
  • Content writing. We describe what is monitored and how incidents are handled
  • We do not quote uptime percentages or promise a response within a fixed time, because those depend on the severity scale and the schedule agreed for your system

Deliverables

What you receive

  • A written maintenance schedule per site or system stating what is covered, the severity scale and the monthly allowance
  • A managed hosting environment with staging, automated deployments, certificates, access rules and backups
  • Scheduled security and dependency updates applied through staging with a change record
  • Monitoring of availability, errors, resources, expiry dates and key user journeys with alerting
  • A tested restore on the agreed rhythm, with the result recorded
  • A support route with a named contact method, a ticket record and the severity scale applied
  • A periodic report of incidents, changes, updates applied and figures from monitoring

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to the current hosting, domain, code and third-party accounts; an audit of versions, backups, certificates and known problems.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    The maintenance schedule is drafted: environment, update rhythm, monitored journeys, restore rhythm, severity scale and allowance.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    The hosting environment, deployment pipeline, backup policy and monitoring checks designed for this system.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Environment built, the system deployed to staging, outstanding updates applied and tested, monitoring and alerts configured.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Your team checks the staging copy, the support route is tried end to end and the first test restore is performed together.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Schedule, checks and access adjusted from the review.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Move to the managed environment in a quiet hour with DNS switched, the old hosting kept until the move is confirmed.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The agreement runs on its schedule with periodic reports; it can be adjusted or ended under its own terms.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Hosting providers and content delivery networks
  • Uptime, error and log monitoring services
  • Backup storage in a separate location from the hosting
  • Domain registrars and certificate authorities
  • Transactional email providers whose sending health is monitored
  • Payment providers whose webhooks and settlement are watched
  • Ticketing and status page tools for the support route

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A gym with a membership system and a public site with class bookings

In this scoping scenario, a gym runs a membership system and a public site with class bookings, both on hosting set up years ago with no staging environment and a backup that has never been restored. The schedule we would propose: a managed environment for both systems with staging and automated deployments; monthly security updates applied through staging with a change record; nightly backups to separate storage with a tested restore each quarter; monitoring of availability, errors, disk and database figures, certificate expiry, the payment provider's webhooks and the class booking journey; a severity scale defining outage, defect and change; a monthly allowance for timetable, pricing-rule and content changes; and a quarterly report.

The custom route is needed because the two systems share members and payments, the booking journey must be monitored as a whole, and the allowance covers rule changes specific to this gym's operation.

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number and size of the sites or systems covered
  • Whether we built the system or are taking it over, and its current condition
  • Traffic, storage and the hosting resources required
  • Update rhythm and how much testing each update needs in staging
  • Journeys and figures to monitor, and where alerts should go
  • Backup frequency, retention and the restore rhythm
  • The monthly change allowance and the severity scale agreed
  • Compliance and access requirements such as audit records and restricted access

Start from a package

  • Software package

    Corporate website package

    A packaged corporate website with structured service pages, leadership profiles, careers applications, news, office pages, a document library and enquiry routing by department.

    Custom build

  • Software package

    Gym membership package

    Membership plans with freezes and cancellations, class timetable with capacity and waiting lists, inductions, PT packs, check-in and retention reporting for independent gyms.

    Custom build

  • Software package

    Online shop package

    Catalogue with variants, stock per location, checkout through a payment provider, fulfilment with carrier labels, returns, click-and-collect and customer accounts for retailers and brands.

    Custom build

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Can you take over a site or system you did not build?

Usually yes, after an audit. We review the code, versions, hosting, backups and known problems, and the schedule states what we can cover and anything we cannot until it is brought up to date. Bringing it up to date is quoted separately before the agreement starts.

What exactly is covered and what is not?

The written schedule per system lists the environment, the update rhythm, what is monitored, the backup and restore rhythm, the severity scale and the monthly change allowance. New features, redesigns, content writing and third-party fees are outside it and quoted or held by you. There is no small print beyond the schedule.

Do you promise uptime or response times?

No. We describe what is monitored, how alerts reach us and how incidents are classified and handled under the severity scale. A fixed percentage or a reply-within-hours promise would say nothing about your system, so we do not make one; the schedule and the periodic report show what actually happened.

Which of your packages include maintenance?

Every package can be taken with maintenance and hosting as separate recurring lines, from a corporate website to a gym membership system or an online shop. The product pages describe what maintenance covers for that package; this page describes the service itself.

Can we leave, and what happens to our data?

Yes, under the terms of the agreement. You own the code and data throughout; on leaving you receive the latest backup, the deployment configuration and the documentation, and we help with the move to the new host within the allowance or at a quoted cost.

Get a project quote for maintenance & hosting software

Answer a few questions about your business, your current systems and what should change. We reply with a clear, competitive proposal.

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