Guide, September 2026
What happens after your website launches
Launch day is the halfway point. From then on a website needs updates, backups, renewals and someone to call when something stops working. Here is exactly what those jobs are, how often each one matters, and what it costs to hand them over.
What actually goes wrong
Nearly a third of small companies report something going badly wrong with whoever built their site. Almost none of those stories are about bad code.
- Things expire. Domains, security certificates and paid plugins all have renewal dates, and they do not care whether anyone is watching.
- Updates arrive. The software a site runs on gets security fixes. Applying them late is a risk; applying them blindly can break a page.
- Other people's systems change. Payment providers, booking tools and embedded maps all change their rules, and your site finds out the hard way.
- Content drifts. Prices, opening hours and team members change. A wrong price on a website costs more than a slow one.
- Spam finds the forms. Any form left alone long enough fills with rubbish until someone adds a filter.
- Links rot. Pages you linked to move or disappear, and visitors hit dead ends.
The checklist
Every month
- Apply updates, and open the site afterwards to check nothing moved.
- Confirm the backup ran, and that you could actually restore it.
- Send yourself a test message through every form on the site.
- Check the site loads on a phone, not just on your laptop.
Every three months
- Read your own pages: prices, hours, team, services. Fix what has drifted.
- Look for broken links and pages that no longer exist.
- Check Search Console for pages Google could not read or index.
- Look at how fast the site loads, especially on a phone.
Every year
- Confirm the domain, hosting and certificates are set to renew, and in your name.
- Review who has access to each account, and remove anyone who has left.
- Check the photos and the wording still match the business you run today.
- Decide what the site should do next year that it cannot do now.
Who should do each job
| Job | Fine to do yourself | Worth handing over |
|---|---|---|
| Content and prices | Yes, from your dashboard | Only if there is no dashboard |
| Updates | If you can undo them | Yes, they can break pages |
| Backups | Setting them up | Testing that they restore |
| Domain, hosting, email | Paying the bills | Renewals, records and access |
| Something is broken now | Rarely | Yes, this is the whole point |
What it costs to hand over
Care plans in Lebanon run from about $20 to $300 a month, and agency retainers in Dubai start around AED 2,000 a month. Mine starts at $99 a month and covers updates, backups, fixes, and managing your email, domain and hosting. Whoever you use, check two things: what counts as a fix rather than new work, and how quickly they answer when something is down.
More detail on what a plan includes is on the website care and maintenance page, and the full price picture is in the guides for Lebanon and Dubai.
The one thing to get right
Whoever looks after the site, every account must be registered in your name: the domain, the hosting, the email, the code, the payment provider. It costs nothing to insist on at the start and it is expensive to fix later. It is also the difference between changing who maintains your site and rebuilding it.
Questions people ask
What happens if nobody does any of this?
Nothing, for a while. Then something small breaks quietly: a form stops sending, a payment provider changes something, a certificate expires. Most sites do not fall over. They stop doing one job, and nobody notices until a customer says so.
Can I do it myself?
Most of it, yes, if you are comfortable in a hosting dashboard and you keep to a routine. The two jobs worth handing over are backups you have actually tested and updates that can break the site.
What does a care plan usually include?
Updates, backups, fixes and monitoring, and often domain, hosting and email management. New features are normally quoted separately. Mine starts at $99 a month and covers all of that.