Maintenance vs support
Two halves of one service,
and why the difference matters.
Most agencies use "support" as a catch-all for whatever's left after design and development. Ours is a defined scope with a response time attached, so you know what you're getting before something goes wrong, not after. It's the reactive half of our website maintenance services.
| Maintenance | Support | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Scheduled, proactive upkeep that runs whether you ask or not. | Reactive help: you ask for a change or report a problem, and we act on it. |
| Who starts it | We do, on a schedule. | You do, or a monitoring alert does. |
| Examples | Staging-tested updates, daily off-site backups, uptime and SSL monitoring, security scans. | A form that stopped sending, a broken layout, a content change, an error after an update. |
| How it's covered | Every plan. | Monthly hours on Care + Secure and Store Care, or extra hours on Care. |
| Where you see it | The monthly report. | The monthly report, request by request. |
Response times
What website support covers,
and how fast it's answered.
Many website maintenance and support services promise a "swift response" without a number. These are ours.
Business hours are 9am–6pm US Eastern Time (ET), Monday to Friday. Response times are measured from when your email or form message arrives. These are the service levels in our maintenance agreement.
How a request moves
A support request,
start to finish.
The part most website support services leave vague: what happens between "I've reported it" and "it's fixed".
You report it
One email or form message. No ticket portal login. A screenshot or the page address helps, but isn't required.
We triage against your plan
Covered by your plan, billable from hours, or out of scope. You're told which before any work starts.
We fix it, or explain why not yet
Quick fixes are simply done. If it needs investigation, you get short updates rather than silence until it's resolved.
It shows up in the report
Every request, what it was and how long it took, so support stays visible instead of disappearing into an inbox.
Examples
What typical support
requests look like.
Illustrative examples of how common requests are triaged and handled. They show the process, not real client tickets.
Scope
What website maintenance
support covers, in practice.
The rule of thumb: support restores or keeps the site working as it was. Changing what the site does is a project.
Not support: new features, redesigns, new page templates and content writing. Those are scoped and quoted separately, never quietly drawn from your support hours. See where the line sits on each plan →
Ways to get support
Website maintenance and support services:
with a plan or without.
Who you're dealing with
Who answers your
support requests.
You're handing someone the keys to your website. You should know who they are.
Naveen Kumar
Founder & lead engineer · Based in Chennai, India, working 9am–6pm US Eastern with clients across the US, UK, Europe and Australia
I built and ran WordPress, WooCommerce and custom-coded sites for clients directly for years before starting PixelGravitas — writing the code, managing the servers, staying on call when something broke. If your site goes down, you're talking to the person who fixes it, not a support queue. More about how I work →
Questions, answered
Website maintenance & support:
common questions.
Is website maintenance and support one service or two?
One service with two halves, sold as one plan. Maintenance is the scheduled, proactive work: updates, backups, monitoring. Support is the reactive half: you ask, we answer or fix. Every plan includes maintenance; Care + Secure and Store Care add a monthly allowance of support hours (2 and 3 hours) and an emergency response target.
How fast do you respond to a support request?
Every request gets a first response within one business day from the lead engineer. Business hours are 9am to 6pm US Eastern Time (ET), Monday to Friday, and times are measured from when your email or form message arrives. On Care + Secure and Store Care, emergencies such as a site that's down, hacked or failing at checkout have a target of 2 hours in business hours and 4 hours outside them.
What counts as an emergency?
A site that's down, hacked or defaced, or a checkout or payment that's failing: anything that stops customers reaching or paying you right now. Everything else, including layout glitches, slow pages and change requests, gets a first response within one business day.
How many support hours does each plan include?
Care includes 2 hours a month for content changes; technical work on Care is quoted first or billed as extra hours with your approval. Care + Secure includes 4 support hours a month for content and technical changes, and Store Care includes 6. Extra hours are billed by the hour, only after you approve them. Plan prices and the hourly rate are published on the pricing page.
Do unused support hours roll over?
Yes, for one month. Hours you don't use carry into the next month; anything still unused at the end of that month expires. You get flexibility in a quiet month without hours piling up.
What does website support cover?
Small changes and content edits, plugin and form configuration, broken layouts, errors after an update, email and form delivery problems, and "is this normal?" questions. Anything that restores or keeps the site working as it was.
What isn't covered under support?
New features, redesigns, new page templates and content writing. Those are scoped and quoted separately as projects or a growth retainer, never quietly drawn from your support hours.
Do I need a ticket portal or a login?
No. Email or the contact form is enough. We'd rather lower the friction to telling us something's wrong than make you learn a helpdesk.
Can I get website support without a monthly plan?
Yes. Small jobs are quoted as one fixed price before we start. Without a plan there's no emergency response target and nobody is watching the site in between, which is exactly what a plan exists to fix.
What happens to support requests that turn out to be bigger than expected?
You're told before any extra work starts. We triage every request as covered by your plan, billable from hours, or out of scope, and confirm which with you first. Nothing appears on an invoice you didn't agree to.
Is website management support different from website maintenance help?
They're usually the same request under different names. Website management support tends to mean day-to-day changes such as content, pages and users; website maintenance help tends to mean something has broken. Both are handled by the same engineer, under the same response times, from support hours or extra hours.
Who actually answers?
A named engineer, not a ticket queue or a sales team. The person who replies is the person who understands how your site is built.
Do you support sites you didn't build?
Yes. Supporting a site someone else built is a normal starting point. The free assessment checks the site's current state first, so support starts from an accurate picture rather than guesswork.