What Happens When You Don't Maintain Your Website
Most South African businesses launch a website, pay for hosting, and then forget about it. This is one of the most costly mistakes a business owner can make. Here's exactly what goes wrong — and how quickly it happens.
🔴 Security Breaches (within 6 months)
WordPress releases security patches every 2–6 weeks. Plugins release fixes even more often. An unpatched site is a known vulnerability waiting to be exploited by automated bots. When a site gets hacked, recovery costs R3,000–R20,000+ depending on damage — far more than any maintenance plan. Worse, Google blacklists hacked sites, destroying your search rankings overnight.
🟡 Google Ranking Drops (within 3–6 months)
Page speed is a Google ranking signal. Outdated plugins slow your site down. Broken links signal poor quality to Google. An unmaintained WordPress site that once scored 90/100 on PageSpeed can drop to 55/100 within a year as plugins accumulate bloat. Your competitors who do maintain their sites pull ahead — and your traffic follows them.
🟠 SSL Expiry Browser Warnings (every 12 months)
SSL certificates expire annually. When one expires, visitors see a red "Not Secure" or "Your connection is not private" warning in their browser. Most users immediately leave — and they don't come back. Google also drops HTTPS sites that lose their certificate. An expired SSL kills both trust and rankings in a single moment.
🔵 Broken Functionality (ongoing)
Hosting providers upgrade PHP versions. Contact forms that worked in PHP 7.4 break in PHP 8.2. Payment integrations require API updates. WooCommerce releases breaking changes. Without someone monitoring and testing your site monthly, you only discover these problems when a customer tells you — after losing how many sales?
MBICT Website Maintenance Packages
We offer three tiers to match your site's complexity and how actively you use it. All packages include no lock-in contracts — cancel anytime with 30 days notice.
Basic Care
For brochure sites and small businesses
Professional Care
For active business sites and WooCommerce stores
Enterprise Care
For high-traffic sites, e-commerce & custom web apps
What "Website Maintenance" Actually Means — Task by Task
Many agencies use vague language like "updates and monitoring." Here's exactly what MBICT does every month for our maintenance clients.
🔄 CMS & Plugin Updates
We update WordPress core, all installed plugins, and your theme — but not blindly. Before updating, we backup your full site. After updating, we test critical functionality (forms, checkout, login, payments) to catch any plugin conflicts. If an update breaks something, we roll back and investigate before proceeding.
💾 Backups & Disaster Recovery
We run automated backups of both your files and database, stored offsite (separate from your hosting server). A backup on the same server as your site is useless if the server fails or gets hacked. We test backup restoration quarterly so we know it works when you need it most.
🛡️ Security Scanning
We scan for malware, injected code, file changes, and known vulnerabilities monthly (daily on Enterprise plans). If we detect anything suspicious, we quarantine and investigate immediately — you're notified within 1 hour of discovery. We also monitor blacklist databases to ensure your domain isn't flagged by Google or email providers.
📊 Performance Optimisation
We track your Core Web Vitals monthly — LCP, FID, and CLS scores that Google uses for rankings. When scores drop, we investigate: image optimisation, caching configuration, database cleanup, or plugin conflicts. Professional and Enterprise clients receive a PageSpeed improvement report each month.
⏰ Uptime Monitoring
We check your site every 5 minutes, 24/7. If it goes down, we're alerted within 5 minutes — before most of your visitors notice. We investigate the cause (server issue, traffic spike, plugin conflict, DNS problem) and work with your host to restore service. You receive a monthly uptime report; most well-maintained sites hit 99.9%+ uptime.
How to Choose the Right Maintenance Package
| Your Situation | Recommended Package |
|---|---|
| 5-page brochure site, rarely updated | Basic Care — R1,500/month |
| Business blog, active content site, lead generation | Professional Care — R3,500/month |
| WooCommerce / e-commerce store | Professional Care — R3,500/month |
| High-traffic site, custom web application | Enterprise Care — R8,500/month |
| Fintech, healthcare, or POPIA-sensitive data | Enterprise Care — R8,500/month |
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does website maintenance cost in South Africa? +
Website maintenance packages in South Africa start from R1,500/month for basic hosting and updates, ranging to R8,500/month for full-service packages including SEO monitoring, content updates, security scanning, and priority support. MBICT offers packages from R1,500/month with no lock-in contracts.
What does a website maintenance package include? +
A standard website maintenance package includes: WordPress/CMS core and plugin updates, security scanning and malware removal, daily backups with offsite storage, uptime monitoring (24/7 alerts), SSL certificate renewal, performance optimisation, and monthly reporting. Higher-tier packages add content updates, SEO monitoring, and priority response times.
What happens if I don't maintain my website? +
Unmaintained websites face multiple risks: outdated plugins create security vulnerabilities leading to hacks, slow page speeds cause Google ranking drops, expired SSL certificates cause browser warnings that drive visitors away, and broken functionality loses customers. Over 40,000 websites are hacked daily — mostly through outdated CMS plugins.
Do I need website maintenance if I rarely update my site? +
Yes — even a static website needs maintenance. WordPress core and plugins release security patches regularly regardless of whether you add content. Your SSL certificate expires annually. Hosting servers update PHP versions. Google also tracks site speed and uptime as ranking signals, so a neglected "set and forget" site will lose search rankings over time.
Can MBICT maintain a website they didn't build? +
Yes. MBICT can onboard and maintain WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, and custom PHP/Laravel sites — even if we didn't originally build them. Our onboarding process includes a full technical audit of your existing site before we take over maintenance, so we know exactly what we're working with.
Protect Your Website — Starting at R1,500/month
Get a free site health audit when you sign up for any MBICT maintenance plan. We'll check your plugins, security, speed, and backups — and give you a full report before you commit to anything.