Guide
Website maintenance plan for freelancers: what to include and how to report it
What a website maintenance plan should cover, what to promise and exclude, and a monthly report template that shows clients the work they are paying for.
Updated 9 min read
A maintenance plan is the part of freelance work that turns a one-off project into a steady relationship. It is also the part clients find hardest to see, because when it works nothing visibly happens.
This guide covers what to include, what to leave out and how to report it so the value is visible.
What should a website maintenance plan include?
Each item should be something you can do and show evidence of.
| Area | What you do | Evidence for the client |
|---|---|---|
| Monitoring | Watch uptime and certificates and respond to alerts | Uptime figure and incident list |
| Renewals | Track domains, certificates and plans | Upcoming renewals and who pays |
| Updates | Keep the platform, plugins and dependencies current | List of what was updated |
| Backups | Keep and test backups | Date of the last successful backup and restore test |
| Security | Review access and known issues | Short findings and actions |
| Performance | Check Lighthouse and Core Web Vitals | Scores and any change since last month |
| Search | Check Search Console for drops and errors | Clicks, impressions and anything unusual |
| Small changes | An agreed number of hours of edits | Hours used |
What should I leave out?
Be explicit. Write down that new features, redesigns, content writing, third-party costs and fixing damage caused by changes made by others are quoted separately. Clear edges protect the relationship as much as they protect your time.
What response times should I promise?
Promise something you can keep.
- Acknowledgement: within a set number of hours on working days.
- Start of work: within a working day for outages, longer for other issues.
- No promise to fix by a time. A host outage or a third-party failure is not yours to fix. Promise to communicate instead, and use message templates so updates are quick and calm.
What should the monthly report contain?
Keep it to one page.
- Uptime and incidents. The percentage for the month and a line for each incident with cause and duration.
- Renewals coming up. Domains, certificates and plans due in the next 60 days.
- Updates and changes. What was updated and what was deployed.
- Performance. Lighthouse and Core Web Vitals, with the change from last month.
- Search. Clicks and impressions with the change, and anything that needs attention.
- Hours used against the agreed amount.
- Next month. One or two recommendations.
How do I gather the report without spending hours?
The report is only cheap if the data is in one place. Pulling uptime from one tool, renewals from a spreadsheet, search from Search Console and deploys from the host, for every client, is the part that eats the margin. Put each client's signals on one project and the report becomes a copy and paste. Our monitoring checklist shows what to track.
What about accounts and access?
Decide early and write it down.
- Who owns the domain and hosting accounts, and how do they transfer if you stop working together?
- Who receives renewal notices?
- Which logins do you hold, and how are they stored?
Ownership problems are the most common reason a renewal is missed.
How should I price a plan?
Do not copy a number. Price it from the hours the checks and reports take, the risk of the site, the number of clients you can look after in parallel and what an outage would cost the client. A site that earns money directly justifies more than a brochure site.
Where Datumboard fits
Datumboard keeps each client site's health, deploys, renewals, search data and costs on one project, so the monthly report is mostly reading from one screen. It is in early access, and you can join the list below.
Frequently asked questions
What should a website maintenance plan include?
Monitoring and response to outages, certificate and domain renewals, software and dependency updates, backups, a periodic security and performance check, a search visibility check and an agreed amount of small changes. State what is excluded, such as new features and redesigns, so the plan has clear edges.
How do I show a client what a maintenance plan delivers?
Send a short monthly report with uptime and incidents, what was updated, renewals coming up, a performance and search summary and the hours used. A client who sees nothing cannot tell the plan from doing nothing.
Should a maintenance plan promise a response time?
Yes, but a realistic one. Promise a time to acknowledge a problem and a time to start work, not a time to fix it, since fixes depend on causes you may not control, such as a host outage.
Who should own the domain and hosting accounts?
Ideally the client, with you added as a user, so they can always recover access. If you own them for convenience, write down that you do and how they transfer if the relationship ends.
Keep reading
- ChecklistWebsite monitoring checklist for freelancersA practical checklist of what to monitor on every client website, from uptime and SSL to domains, deploys and search, and how often to check each.Read
- Use caseDashboard for managing multiple client websitesSee uptime, SSL and domain renewals, deploys, Search Console and costs for every client site on one screen, and hear about problems before your client does.Read
- TemplatesTell a client their site is down: templatesWhat to say, how fast and in what order when a client's website goes down, with copy-and-paste messages for the first notice, updates and the final summary.Read