Website Administrator: Who They Are, What They Do, and What Maintenance Costs

I meet a lot of business owners who buy a new car, drive it for a while, and then see a warning light come on the dashboard. The first question in their head usually isn't "what broke?" but "who do I take this to?" Some go back to the dealership that sold them the car. Some take it to their usual garage. Some already have a maintenance team on staff and just ask their own people to look at it. And when they ask what the repair will cost, the answer is never one fixed number, because it depends on the model, how serious the problem is, and how quickly they need it back.

Business websites raise exactly the same set of questions. Once a site has been live for a while, the owner starts hearing that "someone needs to look after this on an ongoing basis" — and then wonders the same three things the car owner does: who is this person, what do they actually do, and what does it cost? This article answers all three in one place.

What is a website administrator?

A website administrator is the person or team responsible for looking after a website after it goes live. That isn't always the same person who built it in the first place. The two jobs can be completely separate — much like the builder who puts up a house and the tradesperson who comes back later to repair it. They can be different people, if that's how your business has set it up.

In practice, I see business owners choose between three main options. Some keep the team that built the site on to maintain it, because there's no learning curve on a system they already know. Some hire a separate freelancer, because the monthly cost is lighter. Some already have their own IT staff and simply add the website to their responsibilities. None of these is automatically right or wrong. It depends on the size of your business, your budget, and how much of the work you want to oversee yourself.

What does a website administrator actually do?

The core job is keeping the website running continuously, securely, and up to date. The work I see most often is applying security patches every time a new vulnerability is discovered, taking regular backups with a recovery plan in case something goes wrong, checking that the server and critical functions such as the contact form are still working properly, fixing bugs that surface in real-world use, and making small content or image changes whenever the business asks for them.

If you want a more detailed breakdown of the scope of this work, I've written it up in full in Why Website Maintenance & Support Matters for Business.

Why does a finished website still need someone looking after it?

Because a website isn't something you build once and then leave to sit still. New security vulnerabilities are discovered all the time. Data accumulates in the system until it starts to affect speed. And content has to be kept in line with what the business actually does. Without anyone maintaining it, a website that once worked well gradually gets slower, riskier, and more outdated — often without the owner noticing at all. If you'd like to read more about keeping a website current, I've covered that separately in Is It Time to Update Your Website?

What does a month of website maintenance look like?

Many people can't quite picture what day-to-day website maintenance involves. Here's a rough outline. Most months are quieter than you'd expect. Monitoring systems check server status in the background around the clock, and if nothing is wrong, the maintenance team simply runs backups on the agreed schedule and watches for new security patches to apply.

Then there are months where the client's business changes a promotion, wants product prices updated, wants a new homepage image, or runs into a small bug in real use — a button that doesn't respond on certain phones, say. That kind of work comes in at irregular intervals. The team takes the request, traces the cause, and fixes it within the agreed timeframe.

Not every month brings something big.

But in the month when something big does happen — the site going down in the middle of a promotional campaign, for example — that's when you understand why someone needs to be prepared in advance, rather than scrambling to find help after the problem has already hit.

How much does website maintenance cost?

I understand that business owners want a straight number they can compare against other quotes. I'd like to give that simple answer too. But honestly, there is no fixed price for website maintenance that applies to every site, because it comes down to three main factors.

The first is how complex the existing system is. A website built on an off-the-shelf platform and one built with custom code are not maintained the same way, and a more complex system naturally takes more time to look after. The second is the scope of work you need. Basic security maintenance costs differently from full-service maintenance that also includes bug fixes and content updates. The third is how fast you need problems resolved — what's usually called the SLA. The faster you want issues fixed, the higher the cost of keeping a team ready to respond at all times.

If you're currently deciding between commissioning a custom-built system and buying an annual subscription licence, these same factors apply to that decision too. I've compared the two in detail in Custom Software vs. SaaS Subscription: Which Is Better for Your Business?

The most accurate approach is to have the team that will actually do the work assess your system directly, rather than comparing against numbers you've seen in some article. Every website comes with its own conditions, and no two are alike.

Who should maintain your business website?

All three options — the team that originally built the site, a freelancer, or in-house IT staff — can keep a website running. But the team that built the site from the start usually maintains it more accurately and more quickly, because they already understand the code structure and the system architecture. They don't have to learn the system from scratch the way an outsider coming in fresh would.

If your website is getting old and you're weighing up whether to improve what you have or rebuild from scratch, I've put together a checklist in New Website vs Fix Existing: 5 Keys for SMEs. That may well be a decision to make before you decide who maintains it.

TumWebSME maintains the websites our own team has developed, because we understand the code structure from the outset. If you'd like to talk through a package for a new website, or get advice on maintaining your current one, you can see the details on the TumWebSME packages page — or just message us first and tell us how your website is doing right now.

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