# Per-Request, Monthly, or Annual Website Maintenance?

Source: https://www.jvds.cn/en/share/website-design/website-maintenance-models
Language: en
Published: 2026-09-19
Author: JVDS Design Studio

Many companies think the job of building a website is completely finished the moment it officially launches and the final payment is made. Then, more than half a year later, a salesperson suddenly comes over: “A customer says our website won't open, and their browser is showing a whole bunch of red security warnings!” After some investigation, it turns out that the SSL certificate expired without renewal, someone forgot the domain's real-name verification and renewal, or log files filled the server's disk and caused it to crash. Nobody inside the company was looking after any of it.

![Website](https://www.jvds.cn/upload/2026/0824/1787562433167-743407.webp)

A website is like a car: finishing the code and launching it is equivalent to bringing the car home. As long as it is running on the public internet, two things are unavoidable: **security maintenance for the underlying environment** and **routine adjustments to page content**. Whether maintenance should be billed per request, monthly, or through an annual flat fee depends entirely on whether your company has dedicated technical staff.

## First, divide “website maintenance” into two jobs: keeping the underlying technology alive vs. updating the public-facing content

![Business](https://www.jvds.cn/upload/2026/0824/1787562433167-525617.webp)

Many outsourcing companies deliberately blur these categories when quoting maintenance fees. When we sign a [website development and maintenance agreement](https://www.jvds.cn/en/service/website-development) with a client, we clearly separate the two:

1. **Underlying technical operations and security maintenance (the “basic insurance” no website can afford to let lapse)** Includes: security patch updates for the server environment, firewall and tampering monitoring, monitoring of automatic HTTPS/SSL certificate renewals, weekly automatic off-site database backups (ensuring a complete rollback within 2 hours in the event of a data center failure or accidental data deletion), and emergency troubleshooting for occasional website access failures.
2. **Public-facing design changes and feature extensions (“renovation work” driven by actual business changes)** Includes: routine news publishing and product additions. For entering this text and imagery, your marketing colleagues can use the CMS we deliver to publish whenever they like, free of charge; there is no need to pay maintenance fees for this. What actually requires the design and development team is a change such as “We launched a new business line this year and need a new dedicated page layout” or “The homepage needs a completely new key visual and interactive module for a trade show.”

![Budget](https://www.jvds.cn/upload/2026/0824/1787562433167-279903.webp)

## Which of the three maintenance pricing models offers the best value?

| Maintenance arrangement | Scope of services included | Which companies does it suit? | Pitfalls to watch for |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Model One: Annual basic technical maintenance (Annual Tech Care)** | Year-round server/domain/SSL monitoring, regular off-site backups, free code bug fixes, plus a fixed annual allowance (such as 8–16 hours) for minor text, image, or layout adjustments | **Suitable for 80% of conventional corporate websites**: An in-house marketing specialist regularly publishes articles and products through the CMS, major page restructuring is rare, and an external technical team is needed to take care of server security and occasional small changes | Before signing, clarify how many backup verification checks are included each year and the emergency incident response time limit |
| **Model Two: Billing per individual ticket (Pay-per-Ticket / prepaid hours package)** | The company has its own IT operations team responsible for servers and backups; when a separate campaign page or a redesign of a particular module is needed during the year, each request is billed according to the assessed person-days (Man-day) | Suitable for medium to large technology and manufacturing companies with dedicated operations engineers and full control of their source code already secured | A prerequisite is receiving the complete, unobfuscated source code and deployment documentation at the end of the website project |
| **Model Three: Ongoing monthly design and development support (Monthly Retainer)** | A fixed number of designer and frontend engineer hours is reserved each month for ongoing heatmap and conversion-rate analysis, A/B testing, monthly landing pages for new products, and coordinated visual updates across overseas social media and the corporate website | Suitable for fast-growing SaaS companies, DTC brands expanding overseas, or marketing-driven teams without a dedicated in-house web designer | With unused base hours rolled over in monthly billing, this is far more cost-effective than hiring a full-time designer and a full-time frontend developer on short notice |