Hosting and maintenance aren't the same thing.

The short answer: hosting is where your website runs. Maintenance is the work that keeps it working well. Your domain, business email, backups and content updates can all have different owners and costs. A single monthly price does not tell you which of those jobs are included.

Five things people lump together

Think of your domain as the address, hosting as the space where the site runs, and maintenance as someone checking that things still work. The details depend on how the website was built. For realistic build costs, see my Manitoba website pricing guide.

What should maintenance actually cover?

A simple informational website may need less routine software work than a store or a site running several plugins. But even a small site can have broken forms, expired service accounts, outdated hours, or problems visitors notice before you do.

• Checking that the site is reachable and important forms still work.
• Reviewing security and applying updates where the platform requires them.
• Making agreed text, photo or business-hours changes.
• Managing backups and knowing how a restore would work.
• Keeping the domain, hosting and any paid third-party accounts current.

Those are questions to ask, not a promise that every provider or every plan includes all five. A backup is not the same thing as a successfully tested recovery. Ask about the actual scope, frequency, limits and response arrangements.

Managed care or a website you host yourself?

With managed care, you pay someone to handle the agreed ongoing responsibilities. With a self-hosted handoff, you control the provider accounts and take on the hosting, renewal, maintenance, security and recovery work yourself — or arrange help separately.

Sites by Mike currently lists Basic Website Care from $50 CAD/month before tax, subject to an agreed written scope and delivery verification. A supported self-hosted option has no mandatory monthly hosting fee paid to Sites by Mike when you select no ongoing SBM services. Your own domain, hosting, mailboxes, payment tools and other provider charges can still apply.

For current options and limitations, check the full website pricing and care breakdown. The published figures are indicative quote options, not a service activation or guarantee of a particular backup or support arrangement.

What counts as an ordinary update?

Changing store hours or swapping a photo might fit an agreed content-change allowance. Adding online checkout, rebuilding a booking system or connecting inventory to another service is a different project. The difference should be explained before anyone starts the work.

The same goes for SEO. A working sitemap and sensible page titles are part of the technical setup; researching keywords, improving pages and publishing new material are ongoing work. Nobody can guarantee where Google will rank a page.

Seven questions worth asking before you sign

1. Who registers and controls the domain name and hosting accounts?
2. Which monthly or annual costs go to outside providers?
3. What monitoring, software updates, and form checks are included?
4. What is backed up, how long is it retained, and who can restore it?
5. How many content requests are included and what costs extra?
6. What happens if the site breaks outside normal working hours?
7. Can I move the website and access my content if we part ways?