Your Website Is Live. Who Looks After It Now?

Imagine this: you run a small contracting business near Winchester. A neighbour mentions sending a quote request through your website last week. You never received it. You open the homepage on your phone, and everything looks fine.

In this hypothetical situation, the contact form has stopped delivering messages. The website is still online. The part that helps bring in work is broken.

Who would you call? The person who built it? The hosting company? Whoever handles your email?

That question is worth answering while the site is working. For an Eastern Ontario small business, website maintenance should come with a clear understanding of who looks after what once launch day is over.

Hosting and website care cover different jobs

Hosting is the service that makes your website available online. Website care covers the work needed to keep it useful and working over time. They can come from the same company, but check what your agreement includes.

Ask your provider a specific question: "If my contact form stops working, is finding and fixing the problem included?"

Then ask who applies security updates, who gets outage alerts, and what happens when you need to change your opening hours. A hosting invoice alone doesn't answer those questions.

Think about your own part, too. Your website provider needs you to flag business changes. If you've stopped offering a service or moved your pickup location, tell them. Technical upkeep and accurate business information need someone responsible for each.

Five things to check after launch

1. Know who renews your domain

Your domain is your website address. Find out which company holds its registration, when it renews, and who receives the reminders. Confirm who pays the renewal charge, even if someone else manages the settings.

ICANN advises renewing before expiry, paying renewal charges on time and keeping your contact information current so you receive reminders. See ICANN's domain renewal guidance.

Our practical suggestion: keep the registrar's name and renewal details somewhere your business can find them. Don't leave the only record in an old email conversation with a former supplier.

2. Put someone in charge of software updates

Google recommends keeping website software and plug-ins patched and monitoring for security problems. Its Search Console can notify owners about malware Google detects. These are ongoing jobs. See Google's website security guidance.

Ask your provider which updates they handle and who reviews security alerts. The answer should fit the way your site was built. You don't need to learn every software name, but you should know whether the work is covered and whom to contact about a warning.

3. Try the site as a customer

Make a short routine of testing the things a visitor needs to do. We suggest checking monthly and after changes to a form or connected service.

Send a clearly labelled test enquiry and confirm it arrives in the right inbox.
Tap your phone number on a mobile phone and check the number it opens.
Follow the booking link and confirm it reaches the right service or location.
Read your hours, address and main service details.

For booking or checkout tests, agree on a safe test process first so you don't create a real appointment or charge.

Ask your provider what they test as part of the plan. An alert that the site is offline answers a different question from whether a quote request reaches you.

4. Ask what can actually be recovered

"We have backups" deserves a follow-up: "Backups of what?"

Ask separately about the website itself and the information collected through it. Restoring an earlier version of a page is a different task from recovering customer enquiries, orders or booking records held in a connected service.

Have your provider explain what is saved, how far back recovery can go, and who handles the restore. If your booking system is supplied by another company, include it in that conversation.

For example, suppose a page edit accidentally removes your service list. Returning to an earlier site version may solve that problem. Don't assume the same process can recover an appointment someone deleted from a separate booking tool.

5. Agree on repairs and changes

These are useful examples to put to a provider before signing:

"The form used to send enquiries, and now it doesn't." Ask about repair coverage.
"We've changed our hours and have two new photos." Ask about content time.
"We want a new page and online booking." Ask about project pricing.

Get the boundaries in writing. Check whether unused content time carries forward and what happens when a request exceeds the allowance. A modest monthly plan can be a sensible fit for a site that rarely changes, provided you understand the cost of occasional edits.

Keep ownership and moving arrangements clear

Before choosing a build or care plan, ask what you receive if you leave. Can you take the design, content and code to another developer? Who controls the domain account? What work and charges would be involved in moving?

Ask for a plain answer you can keep with the agreement. It's much easier to discuss a future handover while everyone is on good terms than during an urgent move.

How CinnTech's Site Shield fits

Site Shield is our ongoing care service for websites CinnTech builds. An existing WordPress site or a site on another platform would need to move to a CinnTech build first.

Every tier includes hosting, the security certificate for an encrypted connection (SSL), domain settings management, outage alerts, security updates, a firewall and bot blocking. We save every site change so an earlier version can be restored, and fixing breakage is included on every tier. That site-version recovery should not be read as a promise to recover records in a separate booking or customer system.

Care starts at $45/month, with content changes billed separately. Care Plus is $95/month, including 30 minutes of content changes; Managed is $195/month, including one hour. Prices are CAD, plus HST. Content allowances don't roll over, and new pages, redesigns and feature builds are quoted separately. Connected tools have their own maintenance allowances or charges, shown on the plan page.

Site Shield has a 12-month term, then runs month to month with 30 days' notice. You own the design, content and code. If you leave, we hand over the complete site once outstanding invoices are settled.

Give website care a name and a plan

Start with one practical step: write down who you contact when the site breaks, then send a test enquiry through your form. If either answer is unclear, you have a useful starting point for a conversation.

Planning a new website or replacing an older one? See our website builds and Site Shield plans, or contact CinnTech. Tell us what your site needs to do and how often you expect it to change. We'll help you work out the build and ongoing care together.