Website Maintenance Checklist for 2026

I'm going to give you the website maintenance checklist I actually use for my clients. Not a vague list of "keep your site updated" advice — an actual, usable checklist you can print out, bookmark, or hand to whoever manages your website.

Most website maintenance guides are written by people trying to scare you into buying something. This one is written by someone who does this work every day and wants you to understand what actually matters, what can wait, and what you're probably overthinking.

Let's break it down by frequency.

Weekly Tasks

These are the things that need attention every single week. They're quick — maybe 30 minutes total if nothing's broken — but skipping them is how small problems become expensive ones.

• [ ] Check uptime monitoring alerts — Your site should have uptime monitoring running 24/7. If it went down this week and you didn't know about it, that's a problem. Tools like UptimeRobot or Pingdom can alert you within minutes of downtime. If you don't have monitoring set up, stop reading and go do that first.

• [ ] Review security scan results — If you're running WordPress, check your security plugin dashboard. If you're on a custom site, review any security monitoring reports. You're looking for failed login attempts, file changes you didn't make, or malware warnings. Most weeks this will be clean. The one week it isn't, you'll be glad you checked.

• [ ] Verify backups completed successfully — Having backups configured isn't enough. You need to confirm they actually ran. I've seen businesses discover their backup system silently failed three months ago — right when they needed a restore. Check the timestamps. Make sure the backup files are actually there.

• [ ] Scan for visual issues — Pull up your site on your phone and your computer. Click through the main pages. Does everything look right? Forms working? Images loading? Links going where they should? This takes five minutes and catches things automated tools miss.

• [ ] Check contact forms and lead capture — Submit a test through your contact form. Does it arrive? Does the confirmation message display? I've seen forms break silently after server updates, and the business owner doesn't realize they haven't received a lead in two weeks. Test it. Every week.

Monthly Tasks

These tasks need more attention but don't need to happen every week. Block out an hour or two each month for these.

• [ ] Apply software and plugin updates — If you're on WordPress, this means core updates, plugin updates, and theme updates. If you're on a custom-coded site, there's significantly less to update — maybe a dependency or two. Either way, don't let updates pile up. The longer you wait, the higher the chance of compatibility issues and security vulnerabilities.

• [ ] Run a broken link check — Links break. Pages get moved, external sites go down, URLs change. A site full of broken links looks abandoned and hurts your SEO. Tools like Screaming Frog, Broken Link Checker, or even the free version of Ahrefs can crawl your site and find dead links. Fix them or remove them.

• [ ] Run a speed test — Head to Google PageSpeed Insights and test your homepage and a couple of interior pages. Compare the scores to last month. If performance is dropping, something changed — maybe a new image that's too large, a script that's slowing things down, or a plugin that's misbehaving. We've covered speed optimization tips in detail if you want to dig deeper.

• [ ] Review analytics — Log into Google Analytics (or whatever you're using) and look at the basics: traffic trends, top pages, bounce rate, and where your visitors are coming from. You don't need to become a data scientist. You're looking for anything unusual — a sudden traffic drop, a page with an abnormally high bounce rate, or referral traffic from suspicious sources.

• [ ] Review and update content — Is your pricing still accurate? Are your hours correct? Did you add a new service you haven't listed yet? Outdated content is worse than no content because it actively misleads potential customers. Review your key pages and make sure everything is current.

• [ ] Check mobile responsiveness — Open your site on at least two different phones or use Chrome's device emulation. Resize the browser. Make sure nothing is broken, overlapping, or unreadable on smaller screens. If you've added any new content this month, this is especially important.

• [ ] Review spam and security logs — Check for spam form submissions, suspicious user registrations (if applicable), and any security log entries. If you're seeing a spike in spam or brute force attempts, it might be time to add additional security measures.

Quarterly Tasks

Every three months, take a deeper dive. These are the tasks that prevent the slow decay most websites experience over time.

• [ ] Full security audit — Go beyond the weekly scans. Review user accounts and remove any that shouldn't have access. Check file permissions. Verify your SSL certificate is valid and not expiring soon. Test your login process. If you're on WordPress, review your plugin list and remove anything you're not actively using — every plugin is a potential security hole.

• [ ] Comprehensive SEO review — Check your Google Search Console for crawl errors, indexing issues, and keyword performance. Are your meta titles and descriptions still relevant? Are there new pages that haven't been indexed? Has a competitor started outranking you for key terms? This is where you catch SEO problems before they compound. For local businesses, local SEO is especially worth reviewing quarterly.

• [ ] Full analytics review — Go deeper than the monthly check. Look at trends over the quarter. Compare to the same quarter last year if you have the data. Which pages are converting? Which ones are dead weight? Where are people dropping off? This is how you make data-driven decisions about your website instead of guessing.

• [ ] Cross-browser and cross-device testing — Test your site on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Test on iOS and Android. Test on a tablet. Browsers update constantly, and sometimes those updates break things. A quarterly check across all major browsers keeps you covered.

• [ ] Review hosting performance — Is your hosting still meeting your needs? Check server response times, storage usage, and bandwidth. If your site has grown, your hosting plan might need to grow with it. If your host has been having reliability issues, it might be time to shop around.

• [ ] Database optimization — If your site uses a database (WordPress, e-commerce, membership sites), it accumulates junk over time — post revisions, spam comments, transient data, orphaned metadata. Clean it out quarterly. Your site will thank you with faster load times.

• [ ] Review and test backups — Don't just check that backups exist. Actually test a restore. Download a backup and verify you can rebuild the site from it. I've seen backups that looked fine but were corrupted or incomplete. The only backup that matters is one that actually works.

Annual Tasks

Once a year, zoom out and look at the big picture. These are strategic tasks, not just maintenance.

• [ ] SSL certificate renewal — Most SSL certificates auto-renew through Let's Encrypt, but verify this. An expired SSL certificate triggers scary browser warnings that will immediately drive visitors away. Set a calendar reminder 30 days before expiration, just in case.

• [ ] Domain name renewal — Check your domain registration expiration date. Turn on auto-renewal if you haven't. Losing your domain name because you forgot to renew it is one of those mistakes that's completely preventable and absolutely devastating. I've seen it happen to businesses that had to rebrand because someone else snatched up their domain.

• [ ] Hosting review and renewal — Evaluate your hosting provider. Are they still competitive on price? Has reliability been good? Have you outgrown your current plan? The hosting landscape changes quickly, and what was a great deal two years ago might be overpriced or underpowered now.

• [ ] Full design review — Look at your site with fresh eyes. Does it still represent your brand accurately? Does it look current or dated? Web design trends evolve, and what looked modern three years ago might look tired now. You don't need a full redesign every year, but you might need some refreshes — updated images, current typography, modern layouts.

• [ ] Comprehensive content audit — Review every page on your site. What's outdated? What's missing? What can be consolidated or removed? This is also the time to check that your copyright year is updated (yes, people notice when it says 2023), your team page reflects current staff, and your portfolio or case studies are current.

• [ ] Legal compliance review — Privacy policies, terms of service, cookie notices, ADA compliance — these requirements evolve. GDPR, CCPA, and ADA standards have all seen updates in recent years. Make sure your site is current with applicable regulations. This is especially important if you collect customer data through forms, e-commerce, or user accounts.

• [ ] Evaluate your tech stack — Is your CMS still the right choice? Are there tools or integrations that could improve your site? Are you paying for services you no longer use? Once a year, take stock of everything that powers your website and make sure it's still the right foundation.

How to Actually Use This Checklist

A checklist is only useful if you actually use it. Here are a few ways to make that happen:

Option 1: Do it yourself. Copy this list into your project management tool (Notion, Trello, Google Docs, whatever you use) and set recurring reminders. The weekly tasks need to become habit. The monthly, quarterly, and annual tasks need calendar blocks.

Option 2: Delegate to someone on your team. If you have a tech-savvy team member, assign them the weekly and monthly tasks. Keep the quarterly and annual reviews for yourself or bring in a professional.

Option 3: Hire a professional. This is what website maintenance services exist for. A good maintenance plan covers all of these tasks so you can focus on running your business instead of babysitting your website.

The right option depends on your technical comfort level, your available time, and how critical your website is to your business. For most small business owners I work with, they start with Option 1, realize after three months that they've been skipping most of the tasks, and switch to Option 3. There's no shame in that — it just means your time is better spent elsewhere.

What Happens When You Skip Maintenance

I don't want to be dramatic, but I also don't want to sugarcoat it. Here's what I've seen happen to sites that go unmaintained:

Month 1-3: Nothing noticeable. This is why people think maintenance doesn't matter. The site works fine. Updates pile up. No big deal.

Month 3-6: Speed starts degrading. A plugin or two becomes outdated enough to have known vulnerabilities. Maybe a broken link appears. Still nothing catastrophic.

Month 6-12: Security vulnerabilities are now well-documented and being actively exploited. Site speed has dropped noticeably. Google has started ranking you lower because of performance issues. Some content is outdated enough to confuse visitors.

Year 1+: This is where things get ugly. Sites get hacked. Customer data gets compromised. Google blacklists the domain. The cost to fix everything is now several times what ongoing maintenance would have cost. I've seen businesses spend $3,000-$5,000 cleaning up a hacked WordPress site that a $100/month maintenance plan would have prevented.

Maintenance isn't exciting. But recovery is expensive.

The Tools I Actually Use

For transparency, here's what I use for my own clients' sites:

• Uptime monitoring: UptimeRobot (free tier works great for small sites)
• Speed testing: Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix
• SEO monitoring: Google Search Console (free, essential)
• Broken link checking: Screaming Frog (free for up to 500 URLs)
• Security scanning: Depends on the platform — Sucuri for WordPress, custom monitoring for static/custom sites
• Backups: Platform-dependent, but always automated with off-site storage
• Analytics: Google Analytics 4

None of these are affiliate links or sponsored recommendations. They're just what works.

FAQ

How often should I maintain my website?

At minimum, weekly for basic checks (uptime, backups, security) and monthly for deeper work (updates, speed tests, content reviews). The full breakdown is the checklist above. If you're only doing maintenance when something breaks, you're doing it wrong — that's like only going to the dentist when you have a toothache.

What's the most important website maintenance task?

Backups. Everything else can be fixed, but only if you have a backup to restore from. A good backup strategy means automated daily backups stored in a separate location from your hosting. If your server catches fire (figuratively or literally), you can rebuild from the backup.

Can I automate website maintenance?

Parts of it, yes. Backups, uptime monitoring, and security scanning can all run automatically. Software updates can sometimes be automated, though I prefer to test updates manually before applying them — automated updates occasionally break things. Content reviews, design evaluations, and strategic decisions still require human judgment.

How much does website maintenance cost if I hire someone?

Anywhere from $50 to $500+ per month depending on the scope. We've written a full breakdown of website maintenance costs if you want the detailed numbers. For most small businesses, $100-$200/month covers everything you need.

What happens if I just ignore website maintenance?

In the short term, probably nothing visible. In the long term, your site gets slower, less secure, and less effective. Worst case: it gets hacked, Google flags it as dangerous, and you lose both your search rankings and your customers' trust. The cost to recover from a hacked site is always more than the cost of ongoing maintenance. Always.

Stop Guessing, Start Checking

A website isn't a poster you hang on the wall and forget about. It's more like a car — it needs regular maintenance to keep running well. Skip the oil changes long enough and the engine seizes.

If managing this checklist feels overwhelming, that's normal. You didn't start a business to babysit a website. That's what website support services are for. Whether it's us or someone else, find a partner who handles this so you can focus on what you actually do best.

Ready to hand off your website maintenance to someone who actually does this stuff? Let's talk about what your site needs.