1 min read
Skipping updates looks like saving money until the day the site goes down. A look at what maintenance really prevents.
Most websites and applications are launched with care and then left alone. For a while nothing happens. Then a plugin is two years out of date, a certificate expires on a Saturday or a full disk stops the database.
What a bad day costs
Count the hours your team cannot work, the orders that do not arrive and the customers who see an error page. Add the emergency rate of whoever fixes it. For most businesses a single outage costs more than a year of maintenance.
What maintenance does
- Updates close security holes before they are exploited.
- Backups turn a disaster into an inconvenience, if someone has tested that they restore.
- Monitoring tells a person within minutes when something stops.
- Small changes keep the system matching how you work.
How to size it
Maintenance should match what you run. A brochure site needs monthly updates and a backup. A shop that takes orders at night needs alerts that reach a person at night. Pay for the response time your business needs, not more.
The goal is boring: a system that works on Monday the way it did on Friday.
