Do You Need A WordPress Maintenance Service?

Good WordPress maintenance keeps your website running smoothly. If you can’t handle the technical aspects of site management, you might consider paying for WordPress maintenance services. But is this necessary, and is it worth the cost?

If you lack time or technical skills, paying for maintenance services is a sensible decision. Website professionals will take care of updates, backups, and security for you. However, large or complex websites can usually find more affordable ways to outsource ongoing maintenance tasks.

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at what WordPress maintenance services involve. We’ll also discuss the drawbacks of using these services and consider a cheaper alternative. Let’s get started!

What Is a WordPress Maintenance Service?

When you set up a WordPress website, you’ll need to regularly check its various components to make sure that everything is up-to-date. This includes plugins, themes, and the WordPress core software.

However, website maintenance also involves making frequent backups, implementing necessary security measures, and removing bad links and spammy comments.

Many site owners don’t have the knowledge or patience to attend to their website’s needs. Or, they’re simply too busy to oversee website maintenance.

That’s why you might prefer to invest in WordPress maintenance packages. These services handle performance optimization, security, updates, and more. They help ensure that your site runs smoothly at all times.

The primary benefit is that you’ll free up time to concentrate on growing your website, creating valuable content, or engaging with your audience. Plus, you won’t need to learn how to properly maintain WordPress, which can be a big ask if you’re not technologically inclined.

Common Tasks WordPress Maintenance Services Provide

While WordPress maintenance services can vary according to the provider, here are some common tasks:

• Regular updates. Software updates come with new features and security patches, and ensure compatibility with other essential tools. A good maintenance service will run updates for themes, plugins, and WordPress Core as soon as new versions become available.
• Technical support. Maintenance services provide access to support specialists who have in-depth knowledge of the CMS. This enables you to quickly resolve plugin conflicts, fix WordPress errors, or address server issues.
• Performance optimization. A slow-loading website will disrupt the user experience (UX) and result in poor search rankings. With a WordPress maintenance service, you can identify the specific issues impacting your site and implement fixes like caching or image compression.
• Backup management. If your server crashes or you suffer a security breach, a backup is the quickest way to recover your website. Site maintenance plans include regular backups, stored in a secure location. This means you’ll always have a recent copy of your website to restore should anything go wrong.
• Security monitoring and protection. WordPress vulnerabilities enable cybercriminals to hack into your website, steal data, or distribute malware. A WordPress maintenance service protects your website via firewalls, security scans, malware removal, and more.
• Uptime monitoring. Website availability is crucial for maintaining your online reputation. Most maintenance packages alert you if/when your website goes down, and they might even identify the cause.
• Search engine optimization (SEO). Some WordPress maintenance services implement SEO best practices to maximize your site’s visibility in the search results. This might involve creating proper title tags, generating sitemaps, or ensuring mobile-friendliness.

Note that each service is different, so you might also find packages that assist with content updates or custom development. The solutions can also vary depending on the expertise of the support team.

The Limitations of WordPress Maintenance Services

WordPress website maintenance services are super convenient if you don’t want to learn how to look after your site. Or, you might lack the time to handle these tasks yourself if you’re busy juggling other responsibilities.

However, depending on the scope of work that your website requires, WordPress maintenance services can end up costing a lot of money.

While you canfind packages priced around $30-$50 per month, this will usually get you a basic solution that might be restricted to just one or two core services like updates and backups. Or, it might be limited by the number of hours worked each month.

If you require more thorough maintenance services, or you have a larger website, this won’t be sufficient. In these cases, you’re often looking at rates that exceed $100 per month:

This makes WordPress maintenance services impractical for site owners on a tight budget.

Additionally, you’ll have to carry out your own research to make sure that you choose a high-quality WordPress website maintenance service as not all of them are the same. For example, some packages assign a dedicated account manager to oversee your project.

You’d also need to check that your preferred maintenance plan is capable of servicing WordPress sites specifically. If you opt for a general website maintenance service, you may experience shortcomings such as incomplete optimizations, missed updates, or a lack of expert WordPress support.

Should You Pay For a WordPress Maintenance Service?

If you have the extra monthly income to invest in WordPress website maintenance services, go for it. But as we discussed above, you’ll need to make sure that you partner with the right company to carry out the work.

If you don’t have the budget to pay for website maintenance, and you don’t want to handle it yourself, there is another option. An easy way to outsource maintenance tasks is to opt for a managed WordPress hosting provider like NameHero:

Every website needs a hosting provider to store key website files and make content publicly accessible on the internet. Unless you know how to configure a web server, you’d have to pay for a hosting plan anyway.

Managed WordPress hosting is an excellent choice for beginners who lack technical skills. Besides hosting, you’ll also get access to additional services free of charge.

For example, NameHero’s WordPress hosting packages include a free SSL certificate, a web application firewall, and DDoS protection to secure your website. You’ll also receive free daily backups, automatic WordPress updates, and 24/7 access to a team of WordPress experts.

Just like website maintenance services, managed WordPress hosting helps improve your site’s performance. NameHero combines its superior cloud hosting service with NVMe storage (faster than SSD) and LiteSpeed caching technology to boost content delivery times.

Another bonus is that managed hosting guarantees maximum website availability (which maintenance services aren’t capable of). For instance, NameHero promises at least 99.99 percent uptime, ensuring that your website is nearly always ready to accommodate visitors.

NameHero is a complete one-stop shop for launching and managing websites. Along with hosting, we provide domain registration and business email account creation. And, you can manage everything from a single dashboard.

Conclusion

WordPress is an excellent platform for building websites. However, some users don’t realize that it needs to be properly maintained to enjoy peak performance, security, and functionality.

If you don’t have the time or technical skills to do everything yourself, you could use WordPress maintenance services. This enables you to offload essential tasks like updates, backups, security, and optimization. However, these solutions are expensive.

The good news is that you can access a similar service by opting for NameHero’s WordPress managed hosting. For a cheaper monthly fee, you’ll get web hosting along with automatic updates, backups, security monitoring, uptime monitoring, speed optimization, technical support, and more. Check out our packages today!