Plenty of businesses get a website built, love it, and never touch it again. Two years later it's slow, the plugins are out of date, the copyright line says the wrong year, and nobody's sure who has the login. That's not a website problem, it's an ownership problem, and it's avoidable with one conversation before the project starts.
The things that genuinely need doing
Software updates are the boring one that matters most. WordPress core, plugins, and themes ship security patches regularly, and the overwhelming majority of hacked websites were running known vulnerabilities with a fix already available. Updates need to happen on a schedule, and they need to happen somewhere they can be checked before going live.
Backups need to exist and, more importantly, need to be restorable. A backup nobody has ever tested is a hope, not a backup.
Forms need testing. The most expensive bug on the internet is a contact form that silently stops delivering. Nothing looks broken; the leads just quietly stop. Submit your own form once a month.
Then there's the ordinary stuff: fixing links that break when other websites reorganize, swapping in new photos, adding services, keeping hours current.
Who does what
Decide this before launch, in writing. Who applies updates? Who holds the hosting and domain logins? Who do you call when something breaks on a holiday weekend? Who owns the content and the design files if you part ways?
That last question matters more than people expect. Make sure the domain is registered in your name, not your designer's. We've untangled that one more than once and it's never fun.
What to ask before signing a maintenance plan
Maintenance plans range from genuinely useful to pure margin. Ask what's actually included: updates only, or updates plus backups plus monitoring plus a monthly allowance of content changes? How fast is the response when something breaks? Are edits included or billed separately, and what counts as an edit?
Then ask the uncomfortable one: if we stop the plan, what happens to the website? The answer should be 'nothing, it's yours.' If the website stops working or you lose access to it, you were renting, not maintaining.
Doing it yourself is a real option
Plenty of owners handle their own updates and content, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's a decision instead of an accident. Get trained at launch, know how to take a backup before touching anything, and know who to call when a plugin update breaks a page. What doesn't work is assuming somebody else is watching when nobody is.
The part that isn't maintenance
Maintenance keeps a website working. It doesn't make it better. Rankings, conversion, new content, and new services are growth work, and they're a separate line of thinking. A perfectly maintained website that hasn't gained a page in three years will slowly lose ground to competitors publishing regularly. Budget for both, or at least know which one you're buying.