Who Takes Care of Website Maintenance? A Complete Guide for Businesses

Website maintenance is typically handled by a webmaster, WordPress specialist, or web maintenance agency. For business websites, outsourcing this task to an external expert like Annie Bergeron WordPress Specialist means you’ll benefit from dedicated technical expertise, proactive monitoring, and optimal responsiveness to potential issues.

Let me tell you about Martin, a marketing director at a distribution company in the Montreal area. One Monday morning, he discovered their website had been down the entire weekend. Nobody had noticed. The result? Over $20,000 in lost orders and a PR nightmare. Sound familiar? Maybe not quite that dramatic, but how many times have you realized your website had an issue only after a customer pointed it out? Here’s the thing: a website isn’t something you buy, install, and forget about. It’s a digital employee working 24/7 for your business. And like any good employee, it needs attention, care, and regular maintenance. In this article, I’m going to explain who should handle your WordPress site maintenance and why delegating this task is one of the most profitable business decisions you can make. Because at the end of the day, your time is too valuable to spend wrestling with technical updates while your competitors focus on their core business.

Who Takes Care of Website Maintenance?

Website maintenance can be handled by several types of professionals, each with their own advantages and limitations: The webmaster is typically the person or team handling all technical aspects of a website. A qualified webmaster manages updates, security, backups, and performance optimization. This is often the most comprehensive solution for businesses without in-house technical expertise. The in-house system administrator in some companies, an IT team member might handle website maintenance on top of their other responsibilities. This approach can work for simple sites but becomes risky for critical business websites. WordPress specialists, like myself, focus exclusively on the WordPress platform and offer deep expertise in this specific area. We understand the technical nuances of WordPress, its themes and plugins, and can anticipate problems before they happen. Web agencies often offer maintenance packages alongside their website creation services. This option can be interesting if the agency already developed your site, but can be more expensive. Internal marketing teams can sometimes manage certain maintenance aspects, particularly content updates, but typically lack the technical expertise for security and performance optimization. For Canadian small and mid-sized businesses, hiring an external WordPress specialist is often the most practical choice. This approach strikes a good balance between technical expertise, cost, and peace of mind.

Your Site is a Security Breach Waiting to Happen

In 2023, over 70% of hacked WordPress sites were compromised through known vulnerabilities that already had available patches. In other words, these businesses fell victim to problems that could have been easily avoided. Picture this: your site gets hacked. Your customers see sketchy ads, or worse, their personal information gets stolen. It’s your reputation that takes the hit, not WordPress’s.

Your Customers Don’t Have the Patience You Think They Do

Did you know that 40% of visitors leave a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load? And that each additional second drops your conversions by 7%? What does that mean in real terms? If your site generates $10,000 in monthly revenue, each second of delay costs you $700 per month. Just like that.

Google Penalizes Poorly Maintained Sites

This isn’t a myth. Google favors fast, secure, and regularly updated sites in its search results. A neglected site gradually loses its ranking, sometimes so slowly you don’t even notice until the damage is done.

9 Pillars of Professional WordPress Maintenance

Maintaining a WordPress site goes way beyond clicking “Update” once a month. Here are the 9 critical elements that make up a real maintenance strategy:

1. Strategic Updates

WordPress, theme, and plugin updates are essential, but they need to be done smartly. Every update should be tested in a staging environment before being applied to the main site.

2. Daily Backups (or More)

A complete daily backup is the bare minimum. Ideally, critical data should be backed up several times a day. And most importantly, these backups must be stored off the main server.

3. Continuous Security Monitoring

Intrusion attempts are constant but invisible until it’s too late. Proactive monitoring with real-time alerts makes all the difference.

4. Web Application Firewall (WAF)

A specialized shield that filters malicious traffic before it even reaches your site. It’s like having a security guard checking every visitor before letting them in.

5. Performance Optimization

Heavy images, unused code, and inefficient database queries slow down your site. Monthly optimization keeps your site snappy and responsive.

6. Database Cleanup

Over time, your database gets cluttered with temporary data, unnecessary revisions, and abandoned tables. Regular cleanup significantly improves performance.

7. Broken Link Checking

Nothing’s more frustrating for a visitor than clicking a link that goes nowhere. These links also damage your SEO.

8. Mobile Compatibility Testing

With over 60% of web traffic coming from mobile devices, your site needs regular testing on different devices.

9. Response Time Monitoring

Your site’s speed isn’t constant. It varies based on traffic, updates, and even changes at your hosting provider.

Let’s talk money. How much does WordPress maintenance really cost?

Professional maintenance typically runs between $100 and $250 per month for a standard business site in Canada. That might seem like a significant investment, but let’s look at it differently: The average cost of emergency intervention after a hack is around $3,000, not counting revenue lost during downtime. So just one incident equals an entire year of preventive maintenance.

The Hidden Bill of In-House Management

“I’ll just have my admin assistant handle it.” I hear this all the time. But let’s crunch the numbers on what that really means:

• 5 to 10 hours per month for someone who’s not a specialist
• The salary cost (with benefits) for those hours
• The opportunity cost: what could that employee have accomplished during that time?
• The risk of errors due to lack of specific expertise

For a company where an employee’s average hourly rate is $35, that easily represents $350 per month in real costs. And I’m not counting the professional tools needed (often another $50–100 monthly).

Who Should Manage Your WordPress Site Maintenance?

The question is: should you manage maintenance in-house or trust an expert?

When In-House Management Makes Sense

In-house maintenance might be worth considering if:

• You have a full-time WordPress specialist on your team
• Your site is critical for daily operations
• You have very specific security needs for your industry

In all other cases, outsourcing offers considerable advantages:

The Benefits of an External Maintenance Partner

• Specialized expertise: A WordPress professional manages dozens of sites and knows the common pitfalls
• Economies of scale: Professional security and performance tools are spread across multiple clients
• Peace of mind: You can literally forget about these technical concerns

Why Choose Annie Bergeron as Your WordPress Maintenance Specialist?

You’re probably tired of wasting time looking for technical solutions when you should be focusing on your business. As a WordPress specialist, I don’t just “fix things when they break.” I take a proactive approach:

• I monitor your site to detect problems before they affect your customers
• I perform all updates in a test environment to avoid nasty surprises
• I give you peace of mind so you can finally stop worrying about your website

Unlike many service providers, I understand you don’t have the time or desire to become a WordPress expert. My goal is simple: make your site run flawlessly, without you having to think about it.

Maintenance Isn’t an Expense, It’s an Investment

In the end, the question isn’t “Can you afford WordPress maintenance service?” but rather “Can you afford to go without it?” Every hour you spend trying to figure out why your form plugin stopped working is an hour you’re not spending on your customers, your team, or growing your business. Professional WordPress site maintenance isn’t a luxury. It’s a fundamental pillar of a serious digital strategy, just like your accounting or customer service.