Small businesses · Website maintenance

Website maintenance for small businesses

A small-business website usually has one job, to make the phone ring, and it fails at that job in small, unglamorous ways. The hours on the site are from before the move, so the Google listing and the homepage disagree. The price list is two years old. The contact form forwards to an address nobody opens. The plugins have not been updated since the site went live, and the domain is registered to a cousin who set it up in 2019. The site still loads, so nobody in the building thinks of it as broken. A customer standing in a parking lot on a phone, deciding between you and the next result, does.

Get a free site check(612) 293-0636

We built the websites for A-Tran LLC, accessible medical and mobility transportation; Amaal Event Center, a Minneapolis wedding and event venue; Zolasina, a sustainable apparel brand on Shopify; and Jabane Law, and we would rather name four than imply forty.

We built the sites for A-Tran, an accessible medical and mobility transportation company, Amaal Event Center in Minneapolis, Zolasina, a sustainable apparel brand on Shopify, and Jabane Law, and they share almost nothing except the person responsible for the website afterward: the owner, at night, after the real work. A care plan takes the part that needs doing every week whether or not anyone remembers, the patching, the backups, the monitoring, the form test, and leaves the owner with one task, which is sending us the change. New hours, a new price, a photo of the new room, a job posting: it goes up, and the site and the Google Business Profile say the same thing again. You keep the domain, the hosting, and every login. We keep the site right.

What goes stale first

  • 01Hours and prices rot firstGoogle prompts businesses to confirm holiday hours and tells customers when hours may differ, so a site that disagrees with the Business Profile sends people to a locked door. Prices are the same problem one step later: the menu, the rate card, and the rental fee on the venue page are what a visitor checks before calling, and a number that turns out to be old costs more trust than no number at all.
  • 02The season changes and the site does notA venue books engagement season from New Year to March for dates a year out, so December is when the rates and the gallery have to be right. A transportation company's winter page is a different page from its summer one. A store's holiday shipping cutoff decides whether an order ships. These pages are predictable a year ahead and still get written the week they are needed, if at all.
  • 03Reviews and testimonials have rules nowSince October 21, 2024, the FTC's rule on fake reviews, 16 CFR Part 465, treats invented or in-house customer quotes, bought reviews, and tools that hide negative reviews as violations. Most small-business sites still carry a testimonial block nobody can source. We replace what cannot be traced to a real customer and keep the ones that can, with a date and a first name.
  • 04Nobody can get into the accountsThe domain in a relative's registrar account, hosting billed to an expired card, the only admin login held by the person who built the site. At GoDaddy a lapsed domain goes dark within days and a redemption fee follows; an expired certificate shows every visitor a full-page browser warning. Both are routine, both are cheap to prevent, and both only need someone watching the renewal dates.

The year on the website

This is the calendar we keep for a small businesse site on a care plan. Your dates go in during onboarding; the work happens without anyone on your staff having to remember it.

  1. January – FebruaryThe new year's prices, hours, and holiday closures; last year's promotions archived; the first speed and accessibility pass of the year; for a venue, the engagement-season gallery and rate card live before inquiries peak.
  2. March – AprilSpring services and seasonal pages, the PHP version checked before the host charges for extended support (PHP 8.2 reaches end of life on December 31, 2026), staff and team photos refreshed, and the Google Business Profile compared to the site field by field.
  3. May – JuneSummer hours, graduation and wedding season pages for a venue, job postings for the summer hire, and the mid-year form test: every contact, quote, and booking form submitted and the email confirmed to arrive.
  4. July – AugustThe quiet months are for cleanup: broken links, outdated PDFs, the privacy notice read against what the site actually collects, old testimonials replaced with ones you can source, and a backup restore tested.
  5. September – OctoberFall hours and services, holiday booking pages for venues and stores, shipping cutoffs drafted, and the domain, certificate, and hosting renewals confirmed in your name before the year-end rush.
  6. November – DecemberHoliday hours on the site and the Business Profile on the same day, store and venue pages watched through the busiest weeks, year-end thank-you and closure notices, and the next year's calendar drafted.

What we handle every month

  • Hours, prices, and holiday closures changed the day you send them
  • Site and Google Business Profile compared field by field every quarter
  • Seasonal pages built ahead: engagement season, winter service, holiday shipping
  • Every form submitted monthly and the notification email confirmed to arrive
  • Testimonials and reviews kept to ones a real customer can be named for
  • Domain, certificate, and hosting renewals tracked and kept in your name
  • Weekly plugin and core updates after a backup, daily off-site backups
  • Speed checked quarterly on a phone over cellular, not just a desktop

Worth knowing

The rules that reach a small-business website

Three rules touch most Minnesota small-business sites, and none of them is satisfied once. The FTC's rule on reviews and testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, in force since October 21, 2024, bans fake or in-house reviews, bought reviews, and suppressing negative ones; a testimonial block has to be real and stay real. ADA Title III website lawsuits reached 3,117 federal filings in 2025, and Minnesota ranked fourth with 162; a Minnesota federal court held in Frost v. Lion Brand Yarn (2025) that a stand-alone website is a place of public accommodation, which is why the quarterly accessibility pass is on the schedule. The Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act, effective July 31, 2025, exempts businesses that meet the Small Business Administration's definition except for the ban on selling sensitive data without consent, so for most of our clients the honest job is keeping the privacy notice accurate about what the site collects, not meeting a statutory threshold. General information, not legal advice.

What it costs

Care plans for small businesses

The same three plans as everywhere else on the site; the one we usually recommend for this sector is marked. Each shows the market range for that level of service, and your own number is a fixed monthly quote. Hosting and the domain stay in your name, and there is no contract.

Protect

Keep it running

Recommended

A site that rarely changes but has to stay up, patched, and backed up. Hosting stays in your account; we manage it.

What this level costs elsewhere

$50 – $100 / month

Entry plans with updates, backups, and monitoring but no content time ran $50 to $100 a month at the three Twin Cities agencies that publish one, and $59 to $99 at four national WordPress maintenance vendors, read October 2026.

Your price: a fixed monthly quote, in writing, after a free site check

Content time
30 min / month
We respond
2 business days
  • Weekly core, plugin, and theme updates, taken after a fresh backup
  • Daily off-site backups, kept for 30 days, restore tested once a year
  • Uptime monitoring every 5 minutes, with the alert going to us
  • Malware scanning, firewall, and login hardening
  • SSL, domain, and hosting renewals tracked so nothing lapses
  • + 3 more, on the maintenance page
Start with Protect

Update

Keep it current

An organization whose site has to change most months, and nobody on staff whose job it is: schools, nonprofits, clinics, mosques, busy small businesses.

What this level costs elsewhere

$349 – $474 / month

Twin Cities plans that include about two hours of content work a month were published at $349 to $474 in October 2026; plans with 30 to 60 minutes ran $149 to $250.

Your price: a fixed monthly quote, in writing, after a free site check

Content time
2 hours / month
We respond
Next business day
  • Everything in Protect
  • Two hours of content work each month: news, events, calendars, staff, photos, PDFs
  • New pages built from copy you send, inside the hours
  • Contact, application, and donation forms tested end to end every month
  • Broken links, 404s, and redirects checked and fixed monthly
  • + 4 more, on the maintenance page
Start with Update

Grow

Keep it growing

An organization that wants the site worked on, not just kept: new content written and posted, local search watched, and a monthly conversation about what to do next.

What this level costs elsewhere

$749 – $850 / month

The two Twin Cities agencies that publish a four- to five-hour plan priced it at $749 and $850 a month in October 2026, usually without the writing and search monitoring included here.

Your price: a fixed monthly quote, in writing, after a free site check

Content time
5 hours / month
We respond
Same business day
  • Everything in Update
  • Five hours a month, including writing: one article or two to four new or rewritten pages
  • Google Business Profile posts, photo updates, and review responses drafted for you
  • Monthly analytics and Search Console review, with a 30-minute call
  • Landing pages for a program, campaign, enrollment season, or Give to the Max Day
  • + 3 more, on the maintenance page
Start with Grow

Proof

Small businesses sites we have built

Real organizations, live sites you can go and look at. Every one carries the kind of calendar, form, and posting load a care plan exists for.

A-Tran LLC website design by TayoPro
Small BusinessTransportation

A-Tran LLC

A-Tran's mission is to provide safe, reliable, and compassionate transportation services, ensuring that every passenger, regardless of mobility, receives the highest level of care and comfort.

Amaal Event Center website design by TayoPro
Small BusinessEvent venue

Amaal Event Center

Amaal Event Center is an all-inclusive event center in the heart of Minneapolis. The brand-new space shines with high ceilings, beautiful light fixtures, and amazing amenities, with luxury decor as the perfect backdrop for weddings, nikkahs, bridal showers, and parties.

Zolasina website design by TayoPro
Small BusinessClothing brand

Zolasina

Zolasina is a clothing brand offering luxurious, eco-friendly apparel and accessories. Their collection uses high-quality, skin-friendly natural fabrics such as Tencel lyocell, derived from sustainably sourced eucalyptus trees.

Jabane Law website design by TayoPro
Small BusinessLaw firm

Jabane Law

At Jabane Law, core values guide their commitment to integrity, professionalism, and excellence, ensuring trusted solutions and meaningful relationships with clients and the community.

FAQ

Small businesses: common questions

Our site is on Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify. Do we need any of this?

Less of it. Those platforms patch their own software and handle hosting and certificates, so the weekly update work mostly does not apply. What they do not do is change your hours, swap the photo, test the form, renew the domain, keep the privacy notice honest, or notice that the checkout stopped working after an app update. If something on the site changes most months, Update fits a Shopify store as well as it fits a WordPress site. If nothing changes, keep your money.

What does website maintenance cost for a small business?

We do not publish a rate card; after a free look at the site you get a fixed monthly price in writing, and it does not move unless you ask for more. For context, Twin Cities agencies that publish care plans, read in October 2026, run $50 to $100 a month for updates, backups, and monitoring alone, and $149 to $474 for plans with one to two hours of content work. National WordPress maintenance vendors publish $59 to $395.

How fast will a change go up?

On Protect, small edits go up within two business days; on Update, the next business day; on Grow, the same business day. A new price, a holiday closure, a job posting, and a photo swap are all small edits. Something larger, a new section or a feature like booking, is quoted in writing first. The changes that cannot wait you can make yourself from a phone: we train one person on the two or three edits that matter at 7 a.m.

Our domain is in a former employee's account. Can you fix that?

Yes, and it is the first thing we do. Onboarding starts with an inventory of every account, domain, hosting, website, email, analytics, and Google Business Profile, and moves each one into an account in the business's name with billing on the business card. It is written down and handed to you. The most common emergency we get called into is a business locked out of its own site, and it is entirely preventable.

Will this make our site rank higher?

Not by itself, and we will not pretend otherwise. What a care plan does for search is keep the things Google checks from going wrong: a site that loads fast on a phone, a Business Profile that matches the site exactly, no broken links, no security warnings, and pages that still say what you do. Gaining ground, with new pages and reviews every month, is the Local SEO & content retainer, and we will tell you if you actually need it.

Read next

Guides for this sector

Costs, calendars, and the rules that make the website a standing job. Free, and useful whether or not you hire us.

Related sectors

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A free thirty-minute look at your small businesse site: software, backups, forms, the pages that have gone stale, and what it would cost to keep right. No card, no pitch deck.

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