Doing website maintenance yourself works when three things are true: the site is fairly simple, one named person owns the routine, and that person can restore the site from a backup without outside help. If any of the three is missing, a maintenance plan is usually the safer choice. The decision is less about skill than about who is responsible when an update goes wrong on a busy Tuesday.
What the routine involves each month
Most of the work is short and repetitive. The time goes into the rare month when something breaks. Here is what DIY website maintenance means in practice for a typical WordPress site, and what each task asks of the person doing it.
| Task | What it takes | Where DIY gets hard |
|---|---|---|
| Backups | A scheduled backup of the files and the database, stored away from the site | Nobody checks that the backup is complete until it is needed |
| Core, theme, and plugin updates | Applying updates and reading what changed | Deciding whether an update is safe to apply on a site with many plugins |
| Check after updating | Opening key pages, sending a test form, checking the checkout or booking flow | Spotting a problem that only appears on one page or one device |
| Restore when needed | Putting the files and database back from a known good copy | Doing it for the first time under pressure |
| Uptime and SSL | Knowing quickly when the site is down or the certificate is about to expire | Alerts that go to an inbox nobody reads |
| Accounts and access | Removing old admin users, keeping passwords and recovery emails current | Access held by a former employee or contractor |
| Platform versions | Noticing when the PHP version or a plugin is no longer supported | Upgrades that need code changes, not a button |
What WordPress already does for you, and what it doesn't
Part of the routine is automated. According to the WordPress.org documentation, since version 3.7 most sites apply minor and security releases of WordPress in the background, while major feature releases still need someone to click Update Now. Since WordPress 5.5, administrators can turn on automatic updates plugin by plugin and theme by theme; by default WordPress runs these auto-updates twice a day and emails the site owner about successful and failed attempts.
That helps, but automation covers only the update itself. It does not open your contact form to see if it still sends, and it does not decide what to do when a plugin update conflicts with your theme. The same documentation suggests making sure you can roll back to a previous version of the site before you turn on plugin and theme auto-updates. It also notes that auto-updates rely on WordPress scheduled tasks, which may not run correctly on every server.
The part that decides it: restoring a site
Updates are the visible work. The real test of any maintenance setup is the restore. WordPress developer documentation describes a backup as two parts, the database and the files, and says you need both to fully restore a typical site. It suggests weekly backups for smaller sites with few posts and daily backups for busy ones, and recommends keeping several recent backups in different locations.
Before you choose DIY, ask the person who will own it a simple question: have you restored this site from a backup, start to finish, on a copy? If the answer is no, that is the first thing to practice, before the next update.
DIY usually works when
- The site has a small number of plugins and no custom code that depends on specific versions.
- A downtime of a day would be inconvenient, not costly.
- One person has the routine on their calendar, with a named backup person for vacations.
- That person has hosting access, knows where the backups are, and has done a test restore.
- Your hosting provider handles server updates and offers its own backups as a second layer.
A plan usually makes more sense when
- The site brings in inquiries, bookings, or orders, so a broken form costs real business.
- Updates have been postponed for months because nobody wants to be the one who breaks the site.
- The person who built the site has left, and nobody is sure how it is set up.
- The site has many plugins, a premium theme with its own update process, or custom code.
- You want a record of what was updated and when, for your own peace of mind or for a security review.
A split that often works
DIY and a plan are not all or nothing. Many small teams keep the work they are good at and hand off the rest:
- Your team: page content, blog posts, prices, staff changes, and checking that the site still says what the business does.
- A plan: backups, updates with a check afterwards, monitoring, and restores.
Whichever way you go, keep the accounts in your company's name: hosting, domain, and any paid theme or plugin licenses. Then changing who does the maintenance later is a handover, not a rescue.
Five questions to settle it
- Who exactly will do the updates next month, and who covers when they are away?
- When was the last backup tested by restoring it?
- How would you find out that the site is down, and how quickly?
- What would a broken contact form for a week cost the business?
- Is the time your team spends on this better spent on something else?
If the honest answers point to a plan, compare plans by what they actually do rather than by their names. See what website maintenance costs and what plans include. DEXVANE offers website maintenance & support plans for WordPress sites, with updates, daily backups, monitoring, and support during business hours. No plan removes all risk; it makes sure someone owns the routine.
Sources
- WordPress.org Documentation, Updating WordPress (accessed October 4, 2026)
- WordPress.org Documentation, Plugin and themes auto-updates (accessed October 4, 2026)
- WordPress Developer Resources, Backups (accessed October 4, 2026)