Web design & digital marketing in Poole, helping 400+ businesses since 2010.
Expect Best
Maintenance · UK

Website maintenance, so it does not quietly rot.

Nearly every website emergency we are called into was avoidable. Something was out of date, nobody was watching, and the backup nobody had tested turned out not to exist.

UpdatesBackupsSecuritySmall changes
What we do

Website maintenance services for sites that matter.

A website is not a thing you finish. Software underneath it keeps changing, plugins get abandoned, security holes are found and published, and content quietly goes out of date while the design still looks fine. Left alone for two years, a site that cost thousands becomes slow, insecure and embarrassing, and bringing it back costs far more than keeping it current would have. Maintenance is unglamorous and it is the cheapest insurance in the business. What it buys you is straightforward: the software stays patched, the backups are real and tested, somebody notices when the site goes down before your customers do, and the small changes you need get made without raising a project.

WordPress sites

By far the most common case, and the one where neglect does the most damage.

Ecommerce stores

Where downtime and a broken checkout cost money by the hour.

Business-critical sites

Any site where enquiries stopping for a day is a genuine problem.

Inherited sites

Where the original developer has moved on and nobody is watching it.

Our work has been featured in

Why it matters

What neglect actually costs.

Unpatched means exposed

Most successful attacks use flaws that were public and fixed months earlier. Patching is the whole defence.

Small jobs become projects

Two years of skipped updates turn a ten-minute task into a careful, expensive migration.

Nobody notices downtime

Sites go down quietly. Without monitoring, the first you hear is a customer asking why nothing works.

Wondering where your own website falls short? Tell us what you are working with and we will tell you honestly, for free.

Get honest advice
What's included

What a maintenance plan covers.

Core and plugin updates

Applied on a schedule and checked afterwards, rather than applied blind and hoped over.

Tested backups

Taken regularly, stored off the server, and actually restored periodically to prove they work.

Security monitoring

Watching for the things that indicate a problem before it becomes an outage.

Uptime monitoring

We find out the site is down, not you, and usually before a customer does.

Performance checks

Speed reviewed regularly, because sites get slower by accretion rather than all at once.

Small changes included

A sensible allowance of content edits each month without raising a quote for every one.

Why Expect Best

We support what we build, and plenty we did not.

We host too

Hosting and maintenance in one place means no arguing about whose fault a problem is.

In-house Poole team

A real team you can ring rather than a ticket queue in another time zone.

Here for the long run

Trading since 2010 with 400+ clients. Plenty of the sites we look after we did not build.

You own it

Your site, your data, your hosting if you want it elsewhere. Nothing is held hostage.

Rather talk it through? Call 01202 237027 and speak to the team, or send us a message.

Send us a message
Our process

How a plan starts.

01

Review

We look at the current state: versions, plugins, backups, speed and security.

02

Stabilise

Anything urgent gets fixed first, before the routine work begins.

03

Set the rhythm

Updates, backups and checks move onto a schedule you can see.

04

Report

A short monthly note on what was done and anything worth knowing.

The initial review is a contained piece of work, so you can find out what condition the site is in before committing to a plan.

The exact timeline and cost depend on your project. Tell us what you have in mind and we'll come back with both, no pressure.

Tell us about your project

Our latest web design case studies

Trusted by local businesses in Poole for over a decade, we build fast, SEO-ready websites designed to generate enquiries and long-term growth.

The Judson Developments homepage, designed and built by Expect Best
Web design

Judson Developments Essex Web Design

Judson Developments renovate homes, build extensions and fit kitchens and bathrooms across Essex and Suffolk. Their website had to show that standard to homeowners who have never met them.

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Signs & Stickers, a custom software case study by Expect Best
Custom software

Signs & Stickers Reporting Portal

A busy WooCommerce store whose data was locked inside it. We built a portal alongside the shop that answers the questions the store could not, and took their consent record back from a third party.

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Premier Sports Solutions, a custom software case study by Expect Best
Custom software

Premier Sports Solutions Order Portal

A prestige car dealership needed order paperwork signed and paid without the endless chasing. The portal we built does the chasing itself, and keeps the record.

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F40 Parts, a custom software case study by Expect Best
Custom software

F40 Parts Email System

F40 Parts were emailing customers by hand with no reliable record of opt-outs or dead addresses. We replaced that with one system that verifies everything before it sends.

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Fox Wardrobes, a custom software case study by Expect Best
Custom software

Fox Wardrobes CRM

Fox Wardrobes run the whole business through a single custom system, replacing scattered spreadsheets, paper cut lists and personal inboxes with one place where nothing gets lost.

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Jordan Acoustics Bournemouth, a web design case study by Expect Best
Web design

Jordan Acoustics Bournemouth Web Design

Jordan Acoustics sell some of the finest hi-fi in the world from a showroom near Bournemouth. The site had to carry that standard into an online shop.

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Clad Force Poole, a web design case study by Expect Best
Web design

Clad Force Poole Web Design

Clad Force re-roof and re-clad the factories, warehouses and retail units that keep Dorset working. Their website needed to look as solid as the buildings they hand back.

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ACL Poole, a web design case study by Expect Best
Web design

ACL Poole Website Rebuild

Asbestos Contracting Limited had outgrown the site we first built them. The rebuild gives a regulated, safety critical business a presence that matches how it has grown.

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Green IP Poole, a web design case study by Expect Best
Web design

Green IP Poole Web Design

Green IP bring voice, mobile, connectivity and security together for businesses here and abroad. The website had to read as seriously as the clients they win.

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The numbers

Each day we facilitate

Real results we help our clients achieve, day in, day out.

What we look after

The three sorts of site we maintain.

Different platforms fail in different ways, and the maintenance work reflects that.

WordPress

The most common, and the most punishing if neglected. Plugin sprawl is usually the real problem.

Shopify and WooCommerce

Where uptime and checkout integrity matter by the hour rather than by the week.

Custom applications

Framework and dependency updates, which are less frequent but far more serious when skipped.

FAQs

Website maintenance FAQs

What people ask before putting a site on a plan.

No, though they fit together. Hosting is where the site lives. Maintenance is somebody keeping it updated, backed up and working. Plenty of sites have good hosting and no maintenance at all.

Yes, and a good share of what we look after came from elsewhere. We start with a review so we can tell you honestly what condition it is in.

Monthly as a minimum for most sites, and immediately for anything flagged as a security fix. Waiting is how small updates become migrations.

A sensible monthly allowance is, which covers most text and image edits. Anything larger gets quoted so there are no surprises on either side.

Not sure when your site was last updated?

That is usually the answer in itself. Tell us what you are running and we'll take a look and report back honestly.