Your website is one of your most important business assets. For most small businesses it’s where enquiries come from, where first impressions are formed, and where potential customers decide whether to get in touch or click away. Leaving it unmanaged is a genuine risk – but handing it to the wrong provider can be just as damaging.
I’m Ed, I run EJK Web Solutions and we look after WordPress websites for small businesses across the UK. I have an obvious interest in you choosing a good maintenance provider – hopefully us – but I’ve tried to write this the way I’d explain it to someone over coffee. That means telling you what to look for, what to avoid, and what questions to ask any provider, including me, before you sign up for anything.
You Can Actually Trust
Before you can evaluate a maintenance provider, it helps to be clear on what maintenance actually is – because the word gets used loosely.
Hosting is not maintenance. Hosting is the infrastructure that keeps your site online – the server it lives on. Most hosting providers will keep that server running and very little else. Maintenance is everything that happens to your actual website: keeping plug ins and themes updated, running backups, monitoring security, checking performance, and being available when something goes wrong.
Some providers bundle hosting and maintenance together. Others maintain your site wherever it already lives. Neither is inherently better – what matters is understanding exactly what is and isn’t included before you pay for anything.
If you want a full breakdown of what proper maintenance covers, the website maintenance services guide goes into detail on every component.
What to actually look for
Most maintenance providers will tell you they cover “everything you need.” Here’s what to look for beyond the marketing language.
Manual updates, not automated ones. Plugin and theme updates should be reviewed before they go live, not pushed automatically overnight. Automated updates are efficient for the provider. They are risky for you. A compatibility conflict between two plugins can take a site down, and if it happens at 2am on a Sunday because of an automated process, you may not know until Monday morning.
Offsite backups. Daily backups stored separately from your hosting server. If your server is compromised and your backup lives on the same server, you have no backup. Ask specifically where backups are stored and how they are protected in transit.
Defined response times. “We’ll get back to you as soon as possible” is not a response time. Before signing anything, know exactly how long you can expect to wait if your site goes down, if there’s a security incident, and if you need a minor content change. These should be different answers.
Transparency about what’s included. A good provider can give you a written list of everything covered each month. If the description is vague, that’s usually because the service is too.
Ownership stays with you. You should always have full admin access to your own WordPress dashboard, your own domain, and your own hosting account. A provider who is reluctant to give you this access is one worth walking away from.
Local vs national - what actually matters
There’s a genuine debate about whether local or national providers offer better value. The honest answer is that it depends more on the individual provider than the geography – but there are some real differences worth knowing.
National and budget providers – typically starting from £20 -£40 a month – make their numbers work through volume and automation. You’re one of potentially thousands of clients. Updates are pushed automatically, support goes through a ticket queue, and the person responding may have no knowledge of your specific site. For a very simple, rarely-changed website this might be adequate. For anything more complex, it usually isn’t.
Local specialists know your site because they either built it or took the time to learn it before taking it on. When something goes wrong, you speak to the person doing the work. They understand your business context, your local market, and what your website is trying to achieve.
The question to ask yourself is: if my site went down on a Monday morning before an important meeting, who do I want to be calling?
Who Maintains WordPress Sites in Rugby?
A comparison of the three types of provider you are likely to encounter
| Provider type | Typical price | Updates | Response time | Hosting included | Direct contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Agency add-on
Variable
|
£50 – £200/mo Often unlisted |
▲ Often automated | Varies widely Rarely defined |
▲ Sometimes | ▲ Account manager |
|
National / budget
High volume
|
£20 – £40/mo Low cost, low touch |
✕ Automated | Slow Often days |
✓ Usually | ✕ Support queue |
|
Local specialist
EJK Web Solutions
|
£90 – £350/mo Transparent pricing |
✓ Manual review | Same day / 4hr Defined in contract |
✓ UK hosting | ✓ Direct to a local expert |
Eight questions to ask before you sign anything
The best way to evaluate any maintenance provider (including me) is to ask direct questions and see how they respond. A provider who knows their service can answer all of these clearly and in writing.
8 Questions to Ask Before You Sign Up
Use this checklist with any maintenance provider — including us
How we answer those questions at EJK Web Solutions
Since I’ve suggested you ask these questions of any provider, it’s only fair I answer them myself.
What’s included each month? A written list is on our service page for all three plans – Essential, Growth and Professional. No vague summaries.
Manual or automated updates? Manual, every time. Every update is reviewed through our MainWP dashboard before it goes live. We check compatibility and have a rollback plan ready.
Backups – how often and where? Daily, stored offsite on pCloud in Switzerland. Encrypted in transit. Completely separate from your hosting server.
UK-based servers
99.99% uptime
100% renewable energy
every 24 hours
Encrypted in transit
Encrypted transfer
Swiss data protection law
Response times? Next business day on Essential, same day on Growth, four hours on Professional. These are written into the agreement, not aspirational targets.
Who looks after your site? Me, Ed. Not a team member, not an outsourced contractor. You have my direct contact details from day one.
What if an update breaks something? Fixing it is included. That’s the point of manual review – but if something does go wrong, it’s our responsibility to fix it at no extra charge.
Is hosting included? Yes on all plans. UK-based on Fasthosts Pro – 99.99% uptime, 100% renewable energy, UK servers.
Contract terms? We offer either monthly rolling or annual. Monthly rolling means no minimum commitment – if we’re not delivering, you’re free to leave and that keeps us honest. Annual saves you 10% and tends to work better as a genuine partnership – we get to know your site properly, plan ahead, and treat it as a long-term investment rather than a monthly transaction. Most clients who start monthly switch to annual once they see how we work.
A note on price
The cheapest maintenance option is rarely the best value. At £20 – £30 a month, the only way the numbers work for a provider is through automation and volume. You are not getting a person who knows your site – you are getting a system that processes it alongside thousands of others.
That said, not every business needs the same level of care. A simple brochure site that rarely changes has different needs to an active WooCommerce store taking daily orders. The right plan is the one that matches your actual risk, not the most expensive one.
Every site we maintain is manually monitored via our MainWP dashboard - no automated updates that break things overnight. Just careful, hands-on care that keeps your site secure, fast and working properly.
- UK SSD hosting (Fasthosts Pro)
- Manually reviewed plugin & theme updates
- Daily backups
- Malware scanning
- SSL & uptime monitoring
- Image optimisation
- Minor content changes included
- Next business day response
- Active PageSpeed & Core Web Vitals fixes
- Technical issue scanning
- Google Search Console monitoring
- Google Business Profile management
- Monthly performance report
- Quarterly check-in call
- Priority same-day response
- Already on an SEO package? Ask us about bundling
- Advanced malware protection & clean-up
- 4-hour emergency response
- Monthly strategy call
- SEO monitoring
- Enhanced GBP optimisation
- Monthly analytics review
10% Off Annual Payment
Pay annually and save 10% on any maintenance package. Toggle the switch above to see your annual price.
10% Off Your Website Build
Taking out a 12 month maintenance package at the same time as your new website? We'll take 10% off your website build cost too.
All plans include UK-based hosting on Fasthosts Pro - 99.99% uptime, 100% renewable energy, daily site backups with encrypted storage.
EJK Web Solutions provides WordPress website maintenance, design and SEO services to small businesses across the UK.
Sources:
- Patchstack State of WordPress Security 2026 – patchstack.com
- Kinsta WordPress Security Statistics – kinsta.com