--- title: The Importance of Website Maintenance Plans and Retainers date: 2020-07-14T05:00:00-04:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-9/maintenance-plans/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 03 Episode 9 – Jul 14, 2020 17:41 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## The Importance of Website Maintenance Plans and Retainers  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-03/09-Maintenance-Plans-master.mp3) Sean and Mike discuss the benefits of having a regular maintenance plan for your website, and having a Web developer on a retainer contract. ### Show Notes - What is a maintenance plan / retainer? - Retainers can help with budget limitations - Potential forms that maintenance plans can take - Benefits of having a developer on retainer - Drawbacks of *not* having a developer on retainer ### Show Links - [Why Your Website's CMS Should Be Updated](https://block81.com/blog/why-your-websites-cms-should-be-updated) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Mike:** Hey, this is Mike Mele and with me, as always, is Sean Smith, my co-host and that makes this the website 101 podcast. Hi, Sean. **\[00:08\]** **Sean:** How are you? Hi, I'm doing good, I'm socially isolated, and all is well, at least in my house. How about you guys? **\[00:17\]** **Mike:** Yeah, as we were saying earlier in a chat, we are less socially isolated than we have ever been before because now our families are home all the time with us and usually it's just you know we're alone with pets or without pets and so it's a yeah we're getting by it's fine a lot of people are worse off than we are but it's tough hopefully when people hear **\[00:39\]** **Sean:** this you know society still exists and whatnot yeah well anyways this is take two of this podcast Halfway through the first recording, I lost the internet for a while and So we had to start over and here we are Today our topic is going to be maintenance plans and retainers. That's right. So a maintenance plan and a retainer is not really something that you need to worry about if you're Do it yourself or But, assuming you've moved on and you're working with a web developer or an agency, a maintenance plan and a retainer is definitely something that you should consider. And we're going to talk about all the reasons why that is. That's right. Mike, can you start off by telling us what a maintenance plan or a retainer is? **\[01:37\]** **Mike:** Yeah. Well, I've got a few of these going on with some clients of mine and they're very grateful and they're helpful and everything. So the idea is that rather than hiring a web developer to build something or make a change or whatever and then you pay them, you the client, pay them, and then they sort of disappear into the ether. The idea is with a maintenance plan or a retainer, you have access to that developer on an ongoing basis. So typically you might pay a certain amount each month, say for example, where you get, I don't know, access to five or 10 hours of that developer's time during that month, and you can always reach out to them often they prioritize your work ahead of others, things like that. And of course, the purpose of it would be to continually build your website rather than just a one and done sort of deal. **\[02:30\]** **Sean:** Right. So is there anything wrong with doing one and done? Hey, I hired Billy Bob at Internet RS and they built my website and why should I keep coming back to them or paying them once a quarter or once a month for maintenance? I mean, my website's up. It's running. It's all good to me. **\[02:54\]** **Mike:** Yeah. I mean, sometimes that's what your budget allows for and that's fine. But I, and I'm sure you agree with me, Sean, is that I've always said that a website is not like building a building where, you know, you build it and then it's built and it's done. It's more like running sort of a garden and it requires ongoing maintenance to keep it in shape. And I know that you have a similar analogy about a car that you've written blog posts about. **\[03:23\]** **Sean:** Right? Yeah, I have a blog post called a website is like owning a car. And the short story on that is you buy your car, you don't buy it and then you're done. You need to put gas into it whenever you're using it. That's the most simple maintenance is just giving it fuel. You need to do tire rotations, oil changes, brake changes, occasionally something breaks and then you need to replace that part or maybe Maybe you're not happy with your stock radio, so you buy a new radio and you put it in. That doesn't happen so much anymore, but back in the 80s, that was a big deal, right? Or you add it by an add-on part, like maybe your car doesn't come with a GPS, but you want to have a standalone GPS, so you buy one for like 80, 100 bucks and you plug it into put the suction cup on the window and you're good there or you you like to uh you go camping and you've got a camper that you need to tow well another add-on for your car is your hitch yeah that you don't buy a car and it comes with a hitch you have to go to a place and they they put it on for you so these are all the similar things that you would do with a website is regular maintenance you're checking the software and making sure it's up to date, you're checking the plugins, making sure it's up to date. Oh, it's been a few months or a year. Maybe I need to bolt on a new section or a new feature. That's like buying my GPS or my my hitch for my car. I'm adding something **\[05:05\]** **Mike:** on to the site. Yeah, the GPS example is good because that's that show, you know, like in that circumstance, maybe your car, when you bought it, didn't, that GPS things didn't really exist. Maybe it's a 20-year-old car or something. And now they do because everything's moved forward in that way. So the same thing with websites where new technology becomes available as the industry moves forward, and you may want to suddenly add that to your website. And you should, you should keep up to date rather than letting it sort of deteriorate over time until you have to redo the whole thing. Hi, hope you're enjoying this episode. We're always looking for topic suggestions from listeners. So if there's anything you'd like us to discuss in the future, please let us know. **\[05:49\]** **Sean:** We're also looking for guests. If you know somebody who would make a great guest, if you think you would be a good guest, please let us know. You can reach out to us at website 101podcast.com slash contact. So, you know, it's not just my article. I've seen a couple of other articles by people talking about the same thing. And one is by Angie Herrera, who was in season two, episode three, I believe, last year, talking about how to hire a developer for an agency. And her article is called, why your website CMS should be updated. And this came out in the fall. So it's only been a few months now. And so she talks about an out-of-date CMS is a security risk. And it's not just the CMS. You need to look at the plugins, right? So whether you're using WordPress, which requires a lot of plugins, or you're using something like craft or expression engine, which require fewer plugins than crap, WordPress, WordPress dues, they all use plugins. You need to keep those up to date. And I have a lot of personal experience with older clients that I've had or clients that I have acquired with an existing website that has not been updated. And I gotta say, the longer you go without doing your maintenance and updates to your CMS and plugins, the more costly it's gonna be. It's cheaper to spend a couple hundred dollars every six months or three months or whatever, get it updated than after two or three years you find out your CMS can't be updated anymore because you haven't done the regular maintenance. And then you're looking at like a lot of money to get custom development done or rebuilding in a new CMS. **\[07:50\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that's right. So that's one of the real, well, a great example of why you might want someone on retainer or with the maintenance plan. You can keep on top of those changes and just, you know, you might even work that into the plan itself where part of what the developer does on a regular basis without you even asking is keeping those plugins and all that software up to date. And that's something we'll get to shortly about what the plans could be. That's exactly what I do. Yeah, you have some plans like this with some clients, right? **\[08:22\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so I have, if I'm hosting my clients, I require a maintenance plan. If they're hosting themselves or whatever I don't, but if you're gonna host with me, you pay your annual hosting charge and then you do a quarterly maintenance charge. And so once a quarter, I go in and I update the CMS in the plugins and I check the documentation for the CMS to make sure that everything's up to date and that we're aware of any sort of security issues that may be coming. We learn about new features and things that could be helpful for the website going forward. **\[08:59\]** **Mike:** Right, right, okay, that's great. Yeah, and the other thing that I wanted to add Another benefit of having a developer on retainer is it sort of nurtures this ongoing relationship thing that I value really highly, where I've had clients where I just know their business so well because we've worked together for so long that I can either foresee issues happening, I can anticipate potential problems or opportunities that might be available for the site. And I just, you know, it really forms sort of an intimate relationship between you you and the developer that you could really leverage in your web presence. **\[09:38\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I think it's important because they're gonna know the website. And then if you're doing these quarterly maintenance, you're gonna find out that hey, this plugin is no longer developed. It's now abandoned where I stuck at this version, we need to come up with a plan. All right, so this just happened. It's not urgent right now. It's not like it's been two or three years, and I'll have to sudden that I can't do anything anymore. Right. You have time to make a plan. Maybe that's find a new plugin or change the way the website works or think about these sort of things. It's not urgent, but you're aware of it and you know going forward that something needs to be done eventually instead of being surprised. Like, for example, I have a client that I acquired about three and a half years ago. They weren't happy with their previous developer and I took them on, they're a really big company. And at the time, I said, hey, your website's a little bit the CMS is, it's not built in the greatest way and there's a lot of plugins inside this thing. I mean, there's a lot. Yeah, a lot of them are abandoned. We need to rebuild, and they're like, well, we don't wanna rebuild it. And I was like, all right, we'll work with it for now. But every year, for a couple of years, I bring it up, and then I started bringing it up every six months, and now we're rebuilding it. And it just got to a point where the pain for them was too much. And I kept saying, look, I can't do this because of ABC plugin. Yeah, it's not that I'm stuck. And then I showed them what they could get with a difference in this being craft as everybody knows that's what we use. And they were happy with that. And so we're moving forward and it's a really big build. It's just massive. Do you have a similar experience? **\[11:43\]** **Mike:** I have a client where they have decided to undergo a complete redesign. It's more because of budgeting issues and that's something I wanted to add is that if you have limitations on your budget having a retainer in place is a great way to sort of circumvent that. You know, you might be able to budget better rather than trying to find a lump five ten thousand dollars to do a redesign or rebuild you know you might be able to break that up into segments throughout the year with a retainer in place where you just pay certain amount, you know, each quarter or what have you, and then it could feel better that way. You know, you might be able to budget better rather than trying to find a lump **\[12:29\]** **Sean:** sum right up front. Yeah, I think that's a great way. Spread out the cost around the over time. **\[12:36\]** **Mike:** Right. So let's talk a little bit about what a little more about what form these plans could take. What if someone wanted to engage in something like this, how would they broach it with their developer? I'm thinking about forming a more formal relationship and doing things on a regular basis. What form could that take? **\[12:56\]** **Sean:** Well, I think there's a couple of basic forms, so you take a look at the term. That could be like a monthly term, quarterly, or annually, or every six months, something like that, but I think the most common would be monthly or quarterly. Yeah, I have a couple that are monthly. And so what I see the maintenance plan or the retainer being is that you're paying to secure my availability. Okay. So how I work it is I give you a slight discount on my hourly rate and you buy a set number of hours. That could be three hours for five hours or 10 hours. It's negotiable. And those hours are set up per month or per quarter. And if you do not use all of those hours, they don't roll over. So you're prepaying for my availability. And what that gets you is, you call me up and you say, Hey, Sean, I've got an issue or I want to change something on the website. Can you do this for me? What that does for you is it jumps you to the front of the queue because you've prepaid, you're more important to me. So you're getting jumped to the front of the queue. You're getting it done quickly. And you're getting it done at a slight discount because you've prepaid. **\[14:19\]** **Mike:** Right. Now, actually, you brought up something, you reminded me of a new point that we haven't really mentioned, and that is that immediate availability should you be required is a really good benefit of this. So for example, let's say you are running a nonprofit And suddenly, there's a decision that, okay, we need to collect this kind of information from our users right away before the annual meeting, which is in two weeks. If you call up your regular developer, but you don't have a retainer in place, that developer might say, sure, I can build that form and whatever it is that you need to collect. But I'll have to do it in four weeks when I'm done of the current project I'm working on for another client. But if you're in a relationship with that guy or a girl where you have a retainer, maybe they'll, as you said, skip you ahead to the front of the queue. And oh yeah, sure, I can have this knocked out in a couple of days. So that's another benefit, right? Is it immediate availability? **\[15:18\]** **Sean:** Exactly. And that happened to me just recently during this COVID-19 thing. I had four clients come to me on the same day. Hey, we need to add a notice to our website about COVID-19 and how it's impacting our business and what we're doing. And, hey, three of those people were on a maintenance plan and one wasn't. So, the one person that wasn't on a maintenance plan, they had to wait. And the other three, I had to kind of put them in order of when they came in. But, you know, I got it done really quickly for those guys. And then the other guy, by the time it was her turn, it was the end of the day. And I was like, well, I guess I'll be doing this tomorrow. Now, did you, with that fourth client,... **\[16:03\]** **Mike:** did you broach the subject of, hey, you know, if you had me on a maintenance plan, retainer contract, you might have been- I might have been working in the evening. **\[16:12\]** **Sean:** No, I didn't. I probably should have. I mean, that's just one example. Maybe it's not worth it, but yeah, fair enough. No, but I mean, I think that's how you show the benefit of what the maintenance plan is getting. Yeah. It ended up working out. The last client was like, yeah, well, you know, we're tight on money, okay. We'll wait. Sure. And I didn't have to work in the evening to get it done on time. So I was happy about that too. **\[16:40\]** **Mike:** Uh huh. Okay, so I think we covered everything on my list. You have anything you wanted to add about maintenance plans or tanners? **\[16:48\]** **Sean:** No, I think this covers it. It's a short topic, but you know, It's one of those things. Yep, owning a website is like owning a car or as Mike said, running a garden, you gotta just maintain it and prune it and grow it over time. **\[17:02\]** **Mike:** That's right, so consider maintenance plans. **\[17:05\]** **Sean:** Thank you so much for listening to this episode. My name's Sean Smith, your co-host and you can find me at my website, caffeinecreations.ca. On Twitter, caffeine creation that spelled C-A-F-F-E-I-N-E-C-R-E-A-T-I-O-N. And also, I'm on LinkedIn, caffeine creations. **\[17:28\]** **Mike:** And I'm Mike Mela, and you can find me online at beelikewater.ca. And I'm also on LinkedIn and Twitter. My username is Mike Mela. That's M-I-K-E-M-E-L-L-L-A. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). 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