Monthly maintenance contracts

[paulk7737514]

I usually hand off my sites with a PDF document showing how to maintain the site, which usually means adding or changing text and/or photos. The Content Management System is thus a selling point as a means of easy in-house updates as well as a means to save money and not have to deal with the hassle of contacting the web designer for every update.

However, some companies or organizations may prefer a monthly maintenance contract. I had a friend web designer who priced his services as Bronze, Silver and Gold plans in order to make as much money as possible. I do not charge for database backups (yet) but simply use an extension that emails me the database and if a site is ever hacked or compromised by the client, I would certainly charge a fee to restore the site with the database. I simply can't imagine telling a client who signed up for the Bronze plan (with no database backup) that they need to sign up for the Silver plan before I can restore their site.

Or charge for domain name management. I simply have clients tick the auto-renew box in their account so that their domain automatically renews. While I could charge for this, it seems like it would be a pain and if something ever happened and you slipped up and allowed a client's domain name to expire, you could be sued.

Do you enter into one of these with every client? It seems very unpractical for an independent web designer.

[Nancy OShea]

I don't do maintenance unless the client asks for it. 

[paulk7737514]

Good, I thought I was the only one! I have bid on a website for a non-profit whose current web design company has monthly maintenance contracts that START at $350 a month!! And custom websites starting at $10,500!!!

[osgood_]

I don't offer maintenance contracts because how much work is involved. I always find that either one party or the other gets ripped off if you provide a set price without any kind of guidance to what it covers and how many hours. In my experience it all tends to go wayward as 'taking advantages' i.e. that was not what was agreed,  tends to come into play.

I now just charge an hourly rate when the client come to me and says they want this or that.

Depending on what kind of website the current design company is offering 10k might be reasonable considering all the hours of work and testing which needs to be allocated to producing even the simplest of websites these days.

[paulk7737514]

Thanks, that what I will do in the future in all my proposals, just add my hourly fee under "Maintenance"...

[Ben M]

I work with monthly maintenance contracts, but most of my work is with a firm so we have people who routinely maintain the sites.  Most of the time companies that are including those costs are agencies and are looking to cover overhead costs.