Website maintenance: what should a good contract include?

Why does a website decay without maintenance?

A website decays without maintenance because everything around it keeps moving: the CMS ships security updates, plugins evolve, PHP versions and browsers change. A frozen site steadily accumulates known vulnerabilities and compatibility issues. The concrete result: a contact form that silently stops sending, a booking module that crashes, an expired HTTPS certificate that greets visitors with a security warning.

Performance follows the same slope. Outdated plugins, a bloated database and unoptimised images drag down the scores measured by PageSpeed Insights. And Google uses Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) as a ranking signal: a slow site loses positions, then visitors, then customers.

What are the real risks of an abandoned website?

The three major risks are hacking, data loss and legal exposure. A hacked site can be blacklisted by Google, send spam or redirect your visitors to fraudulent pages. Without a recent, tested backup, a server failure or a simple human error can wipe out years of content in seconds.

On the legal side, a personal data breach engages your liability under the GDPR, in force since May 2018: the French regulator CNIL can issue fines of up to 20 M€ or 4% of worldwide turnover. An abandoned website is not a technical detail, it is a business risk.

What should a good maintenance contract include? The 8-point checklist

A good maintenance contract covers 8 specific points, all set out in writing. If one of them is missing, ask why before you sign.

Why is reversibility the most important clause?

Because without reversibility, you are locked in with your provider. Check three things: the domain name is registered in your name, you hold admin access to both hosting and website, and the contract guarantees a full export of your data at any time. The day you decide to switch agencies or plan a redesign without losing your SEO, these three guarantees make the difference between a transition in a few days and months of deadlock.

What are the classic traps in maintenance contracts?

The two most common traps are phantom maintenance and hostage hosting. Phantom maintenance is a monthly fee billed with no real work behind it: demand a report listing the updates applied and the backups performed. Hostage hosting is a domain or server registered in the agency's name: the day you leave, handover drags on for months or comes at a steep price.

Also watch out for vague packages (maintenance included with no defined scope), 24 or 36 month commitments with no exit clause, and contracts that exclude precisely the most likely failures.

How much does website maintenance cost?

Market prices vary widely: from a few dozen euros per month for a simple showcase site to several hundred euros for a complex e-commerce store, depending on the scope covered. The right reflex is not to hunt for the lowest price, but to compare what is actually included, point by point.

At Neting, hosting with maintenance included starts at 29 €/month: updates, backups, monitoring, HTTPS and security patches are all covered. For a complete project, Neting websites start at 490 €, with go-live 5 days after the specifications are approved.

Which questions should you ask before signing?

Ask these 6 questions and insist on written answers:

• How often are updates applied?
• Where are backups stored and when were they last tested?
• What is the guaranteed response time in case of outage?
• Are the domain name and hosting registered in my name?
• If I cancel, what do I get back and how quickly?
• Will I receive a regular report of the work performed?

A serious provider answers without hedging. Neting offers a free quote with a reply within 24 hours via the website form: a good way to test responsiveness before you even sign.