In this guide · 8 sections
- 01The website maintenance schedule at a glance
- 02Monthly website maintenance checklist
- 03Quarterly tasks: restore test, links and clean-up
- 04Yearly tasks: renewals, content and access
- 05Monitoring: let tools watch the site between checks
- 06Shopify, Wix and Squarespace: what still applies
- 07Do it yourself or get help?
- 08Frequently asked questions
Short answer
Monthly: back up, update core, theme and plugins, test every form and check uptime alerts (45 to 60 minutes). Quarterly: test a backup restore, fix broken links, remove unused plugins and users. Yearly: renew the domain, review content and prices, and check who has admin access.
The website maintenance schedule at a glance
Use this as the master plan. Put the monthly block on the same day each month, for example the first Monday, so it becomes routine.
| When | Tasks | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Continuous | Uptime, SSL and domain expiry monitoring with alerts | Set up once |
| Monthly | Backup, updates, form tests, quick security and Search Console check | 45-60 min |
| Quarterly | Restore test, broken links, remove unused plugins and users, speed check | 1-2 hours |
| Yearly | Domain and hosting renewal, content and price review, access review, legal pages | 2-3 hours |
If you are wondering what a paid maintenance service should cover instead, our guide to what website maintenance services should include uses the same list.
Monthly website maintenance checklist
Do the steps in this order. The backup comes first because updates are the most common cause of a broken site.
Take a fresh backup (5 min)
Run your backup plugin or host's backup and confirm it finished. WordPress's own backup guide recommends keeping 3 to 5 recent backups in different places, such as the host, cloud storage and your computer.
Update core, theme and plugins (15 min)
Update WordPress core, then the theme, then plugins one at a time on busy sites. WordPress's hardening guide notes that older versions are not maintained with security updates.
Click through the key pages (5 min)
Home, a service page, contact, checkout or booking. Look for broken layouts, missing images and error messages, on phone and desktop.
Test every form (10 min)
Submit each contact, quote and booking form with a test entry. Check the email arrives, is not in spam, and reaches the right person.
Check monitoring alerts (5 min)
Review last month's downtime and SSL warnings from your uptime tool. Investigate anything that repeats.
Glance at Search Console (5-10 min)
Look at the Pages report for new errors and at Performance for sudden drops in clicks.
Quarterly tasks: restore test, links and clean-up
Quarterly work is about proving that your safety nets actually work and removing the clutter that causes problems later.
Quarterly checklist
The restore test is the one most people skip, and the one that matters. A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a plan. Our backup and restore guide walks through a safe test restore.
Yearly tasks: renewals, content and access
Once a year, look at the things that only change slowly but cause the worst outages when forgotten.
- Domain renewal: confirm auto-renew is on, the card is valid, and the registrar contact email is one you still read.
- Hosting and paid plugin licences: check renewal dates and prices, and cancel anything unused.
- SSL: most hosts renew free certificates automatically; make sure monitoring would alert you if renewal fails.
- Content review: prices, opening hours, team photos, service lists and old promotions.
- Legal pages: privacy policy, cookie notice and terms still accurate for how you collect data.
- Access review: who has admin access to the website, domain, DNS and hosting accounts, and whether that still makes sense.
Keep a one-page record of where the domain, DNS, hosting and backups live and who has the logins. If you are ever locked out, that page saves days.
Monitoring: let tools watch the site between checks
A monthly routine cannot catch a site that goes down on a Tuesday afternoon. An uptime monitor checks the site every few minutes and emails or messages you when it fails.
- UptimeRobot Free50 monitors, 5-minute checks; marked for hobby and non-profit projectsUS$0
- UptimeRobot Solo60-second checks; SSL monitoring is on paid plansFrom US$108/year
- Google Search ConsoleIndexing errors and search trafficFree
- Your backup plugin or host backupsCheck retention and off-site storageOften included
Typical DIY monitoring costUS$0 to about US$108 a year
UptimeRobot prices from its pricing page, approximate, as of October 2026.
Whichever tool you use, send alerts to an address someone actually reads, not an old webmaster@ inbox.
Shopify, Wix and Squarespace: what still applies
Hosted platforms handle core updates, hosting and SSL for you, so the monthly update step mostly disappears. The rest of the checklist still applies: test forms and checkout, review installed apps and remove unused ones, check staff accounts, keep the domain renewed if it is registered elsewhere, and review content and policies. On Shopify, app clean-up matters most, because each storefront app can add code that slows pages.
Do it yourself or get help?
If you are comfortable in your website dashboard, this routine is very doable: about an hour a month and a longer session each quarter. What usually slips is consistency, especially the restore test and form checks during busy months.
Our Monitor plan (S$29 a month) watches uptime, SSL, domain expiry and email blacklists with a monthly health report. The Care plan (S$129 a month) adds monthly updates, daily off-site backups and up to an hour of small changes. Both can be cancelled any time.
Frequently asked questions
Check for and apply WordPress core, theme and plugin updates at least monthly, after taking a backup. Apply security updates for actively exploited vulnerabilities straight away rather than waiting. Hosted platforms such as Shopify and Wix update the core system for you, but you should still review apps and content regularly.
Backups you have actually tested. Updates, hacks and hosting problems can all break a site, and a recent working backup is what gets you back online. Back up before every update, keep copies in more than one place, and restore one to a test location at least once a quarter.
For a typical 5 to 20 page business site, about 45 to 60 minutes a month once you are used to the routine: a backup, updates, a quick click-through, form tests and a look at monitoring and Search Console. Quarterly tasks take another one to two hours.
UptimeRobot's free plan offers 50 monitors with 5-minute checks, but its pricing page describes it as good for hobby and non-profit projects. Paid plans start at about US$108 a year as of October 2026 and add 60-second checks and SSL monitoring. Check the current terms before relying on the free plan.
Less than WordPress, but yes. The platform handles core updates, hosting and SSL. You still need to test forms and checkout, remove unused apps, review staff accounts, keep content and prices current, and make sure the domain renews, especially if it is registered with a separate provider.