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Breitloh

Support after launch, from the person who built it

A site is not finished on launch day, it has just started. Most of the changes your team makes itself, because it was set up that way. What is left is the things you would rather not do, the things that break at inconvenient times, and somebody to ask.

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One site served from several places at once, with the annual running cost falling

This is for you if

  • You want one person to email, who already knows how the site is built
  • Nobody internally wants to own hosting, domains, and certificates
  • Changes come up every month and you would rather they were done properly
  • You have been burned by a retainer that bought a report nobody read
  • You need to know somebody is watching the site when nobody is looking at it

It is not for you if

  • You want a guaranteed response at three in the morning: I am one person and I will not pretend otherwise
  • You want marketing, ads, and campaigns bundled in: that is a different supplier
  • You want a retainer to sit unused as insurance, which I would rather you did not pay for

What is included

Changes, done when you ask
New pages, changes your team would rather not make, and the awkward ones that touch several places at once. Small things happen the same week, larger ones get a date rather than a place in a queue.
Hosting kept in your account
Set up in your name, on your card, watched by me. That means you can leave at any point without extracting your site from somebody else's server, and it means nobody is reselling you a commodity with a margin on it.
Uptime and certificates watched
Monitoring that tells a person, certificates renewed before anyone notices, and DNS kept tidy. The failures that take sites down at weekends are usually one of these three, and all three are preventable.
Email deliverability kept honest
New tools get added to your authentication records rather than failing quietly, and DMARC reports are read rather than filed. This is the part that silently rots on most sites six months after launch.
An email answered the same working day
By me, not by a triage system. If something you rely on has broken, saying so in the first line puts it in front of everything else that day.

How it runs

  1. 01

    Start with what you actually need

    Some clients need changes and nothing else. Some need somebody to own the hosting and the worry. The arrangement is written to fit which one you are, rather than sold in bronze, silver, and gold.

  2. 02

    One route in

    An email address that reaches me. No portal, no ticket reference, no reply telling you your query is important. If it is urgent, say so in the first line.

  3. 03

    Changes quoted before they start

    Anything beyond the ordinary gets a price and an effect on the timeline before I write any of it. Nobody discovers the cost of a change on an invoice.

  4. 04

    A short note when something has been done

    What changed and what it means, in a sentence or two. Enough to forward to whoever asked for it, without anyone having to translate it.

  5. 05

    Leave whenever you like

    No minimum term and no exit fee. Everything is already in your accounts, so leaving is a matter of removing my access. That is the discipline: I have to be worth keeping every month.

How long it takes

A date sits beside the price from the start, and you get a note every week saying whether it still holds.

Same working day for a reply
Weekdays, 09:00 to 17:30. Broken things go to the front of that day rather than into a queue.
Same week for small changes
Copy, images, new pages, and the ordinary run of things. Larger pieces of work get a date, agreed rather than assumed.
Monthly, with no minimum term
It renews because it is worth renewing. If a quiet three months means you should stop, I will say so rather than let it run.

The parts of support that go wrong are boring and predictable: an expired certificate, a domain nobody renewed, a mailbox that quietly stopped authenticating. Ten years running systems in FTSE 100 and government environments is where I learned to watch those rather than react to them.

The parts around the website

Support usually turns into one of these within the first year. Each is written up properly rather than treated as an add on.

Questions I get asked about this

The ones that come up on almost every first call. If yours is not here, ask it and you will get a straight answer.

What does a website care plan actually cover?

Changes, hosting, monitoring, and somebody to email. What it does not cover, and what most plans quietly are, is patching a fragile platform. A site with no plugins and nothing to update does not need that, so you should not be paying for it.

Is there a minimum term?

No, and there is no exit fee. Everything already sits in your accounts, so stopping is a matter of removing my access. I would rather be kept because the arrangement is useful than because leaving is awkward.

What if we want to run the site ourselves?

Then do, and the site was built so that is genuinely possible rather than technically possible. Plenty of clients take the walkthrough, run it themselves, and come back for a piece of work once a year. That is a perfectly good outcome.

How quickly do you respond?

The same working day, weekdays, 09:00 to 17:30. I am one person, so I will not promise a three in the morning response and I would be wary of a one person studio that did. What I will do is tell you honestly when something can be looked at.

Do you host the site, and do you charge for it?

It is hosted in your own account, on your card, and I do not add a margin to it. For a site built this way that bill is usually small. What hosting should cost sets out the honest numbers.

Do you support sites you did not build?

Sometimes, and it depends what it is built on. A modern site, usually yes. A WordPress site held together by fifteen plugins, usually no, because I would be charging you to maintain something I think should be replaced. In that case a rebuild is the honest recommendation.

What happens if the site goes down?

Monitoring tells me within a couple of minutes, usually before anyone in your organisation notices. Static sites on a global network fail rarely, and when something does break it is normally DNS or a certificate rather than the site itself.

Can you keep our email working properly too?

Yes, and it is one of the more valuable parts. Authentication records drift as tools are added, and nothing warns you. Email deliverability covers the setup, and keeping it right afterwards is part of this.

The other three things I do

Tell me what you have now

Half an hour on a call, and a straight answer about whether this is the right job and whether I am the right person for it.

Book a callhello@breitloh.com