Comparison
Website maintenance options compared
There are three honest options for keeping a website healthy: a monthly plan, ad-hoc call-outs, or nothing. All three have a price — the third one just invoices you later, at the worst time. Here is the fair comparison.
Updated July 2026
Side by side
| Criterion | Maintenance plan | Ad-hoc support |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | Predictable: indicative R850–R8 000 by plan tier in SA | R0 until something breaks; then hourly at R650–R950+ |
| Response when things break | Priority targets; provider already knows the build | Queue position and re-learning time billed to you |
| Silent failures (forms, SSL, backups) | Monitored — caught before customers notice | Discovered by a customer, eventually |
| Software updates | Tested and applied routinely | Deferred until forced — the riskiest pattern |
| Small improvements | Monthly change time keeps the site current | Minimum-charge friction means they never happen |
| Search performance | Reviewed on business-tier plans; decay gets seen | Unwatched |
When maintenance plan is the right choice
01
The website produces enquiries or sales you would miss within days
02
Ecommerce or applications where downtime is direct revenue loss
03
You want one accountable party and no surprise invoices
When ad-hoc support is the right choice
01
A genuinely static site whose failure costs little and shows fast
02
You have technical capacity in-house for monitoring and updates
03
The site is scheduled for replacement within months
Our verdict
Match the plan to what failure costs: if a dead form for a week costs one client, essential care already pays for itself; if the site is a seldom-visited brochure, ad-hoc is defensible and we will say so. The only indefensible option is “nothing” on a site that earns money. Our plan tiers and indicative pricing are published openly — compare them against what one silent failure would cost you.
Relevant service: Website maintenance and support
Apply this to your situation
Tell us what you need and get a straight answer — clear scope, indicative pricing and a fixed quote after one scoping conversation.