Website support: what ‘included’ ought to mean
Ask two web companies what support they include and you’ll get two answers that sound the same and mean entirely different things. The word is doing at least four jobs at once, and the gap between them is where most disappointment lives.
Here is how to take it apart.
The four jobs hiding inside one word
Hosting: keeping it switched on
The server, the connection, the security certificate, the monitoring. If this stops, your site is gone, and everything else on this page is academic. Hosting is the one thing nobody forgets to charge for.
Maintenance: keeping it safe and current
Software updates, security patches, certificate renewals, backups that have actually been tested, checking that forms still deliver, keeping an eye on broken links. It is invisible work. You only ever notice it when it hasn’t been done.
Support: answering you
Someone to ask. A phone number or an email address, a person on the other end, and small changes made without a negotiation. New opening hours. A price that went up. A member of staff who left in March and is still smiling on your About page.
Development: building something new
A new section, a booking system, a shop, an integration with the software you use for quoting. This is a project with a scope and a cost, and it is entirely fair for it to be charged for separately.
Almost every argument between a business and its web company is caused by one side filing a request under support and the other filing it under development.
So what should be included?
There’s no law about this, but there is a reasonable expectation. In our view, a fair monthly arrangement includes hosting, maintenance and support, and charges for development.
That means the following ought to be included without a conversation about money:
- Text changes, price changes, opening hours, staff changes.
- Swapping or adding photographs on existing pages.
- Adding a page in the shape of your existing pages.
- Fixing anything that stopped working.
- Backups, updates, certificate renewals, monitoring.
And the following are fairly chargeable:
- A new section of the site that needs designing.
- A shop, a booking system, a members’ area.
- Connecting your website to other software.
- A rewrite of your content, or new photography.
If a company charges you £45 to change a phone number, they are not selling support. If a company promises to build you a shop for free as part of support, read the small print, because that promise is not going to survive contact with reality.
On the word ‘unlimited’
We use it ourselves, so it’s only fair to say what it means.
Unlimited support, offered honestly, means we are not counting. You don’t need to ration your questions, save them up, or worry that a phone call costs you money. Ring us four times in a week if you need to.
What fair usage exists to prevent is one thing only: rebuilding a website in instalments. If a request would be a project when written on a quote, it is still a project when sent as eleven separate emails.
What fair usage must never be used for is refusing an ordinary change. If you feel awkward about asking for your own phone number to be corrected, the arrangement is not working, whoever you are with.
Our own support is included in the monthly fee, by phone and by email, from the people who built your site. When something genuinely is a development job we tell you, and our hourly rates are published on the price list so you can see the number before you ask rather than after.
The questions that reveal the truth
Before you sign anything, ask these. The answers are more useful than any brochure.
Who will actually do the work?
The person who built the site, a support desk, or an outsourced team in a different time zone? There is no wrong answer, but it changes what an ordinary request feels like.
How do I get hold of you, and when?
A telephone number with a person on the end is a different product from a ticket form with a four-day queue. Ask what happens on a Friday afternoon.
What counts as a change and what counts as a project?
Ask for an example of each. A company that can answer this crisply has thought about it. A company that waves the question away has not.
What is the hourly rate when it is a project?
If they will not tell you, that is your answer. Published rates are a sign of a business that expects to be asked.
Who takes the backups, how often, and have they ever been restored?
Backups nobody has tested are a rumour rather than a safety net.
What happens if I want to leave?
Notice period, what comes with you, who holds the domain. Better asked now than later.
The awkward truth about one-off builds
If you paid a fixed sum for a website and it was handed over, then hosting, maintenance and support are all nobody’s job until you arrange for them to be somebody’s. That isn’t sharp practice, it is simply what buying a thing outright means.
It does mean that a one-off price and a monthly price are not comparable numbers, which is the point our five-year cost comparison works through in detail. And it explains a good proportion of the sites described in our piece on websites that quietly stop working: nothing dramatic went wrong, it just quietly stopped being maintained.
What we do
Support is included in both of our website packages, there’s no ticket system and no call centre, and you can speak to the person who knows your site. Our packages run month to month, so we keep your business by being worth having rather than by holding a contract over you.
If you are comparing us against somebody else, ask them the six questions above as well as us. Genuinely. A good answer from them is more useful to you than a sale for us.
Let's get your website sorted
Tell us about your project – no hard sell, no hidden costs. Just a friendly chat.
