“What does maintenance involve?” has a different answer depending on where your website lives. A site on a hosted builder and a site running on your own code both need care — just not the same care.
AI tools make the question more common. Some generate a site inside a hosted platform; others produce code that you deploy yourself. Knowing which one you have is the first step to looking after it.
On a hosted builder, the platform does part of the job.
With a hosted website builder, the vendor runs the servers, updates the platform and usually handles security patches and certificates. That removes a whole category of technical upkeep.
What stays with you:
- Content, pages and layout changes.
- Apps, embeds and integrations you added, and the accounts behind them.
- Forms and where their messages go.
- Your domain, the subscription and who owns the account.
- Understanding what the platform lets you export, and what it doesn’t.
On your own code or hosting, more is yours.
A self-hosted CMS, a static site or a custom application gives you more control, and more responsibility. Depending on the setup, maintenance can include:
- Updating the CMS, frameworks and dependencies.
- The server or hosting configuration, runtime versions and certificates.
- Backups you control, and a tested way to restore them.
- The deployment process: how a change goes from a developer’s computer to the live site.
- Monitoring availability and errors.
Flexibility and lock-in cut both ways.
Hosted builders are quick to change within their limits, and those limits are real: some integrations, custom features or performance tweaks aren’t possible. Moving away can mean rebuilding rather than exporting.
Your own code can do almost anything, but every custom feature is something that needs looking after. Neither option is wrong. The right choice depends on what the website needs to do and who will care for it.
What stays the same either way.
- Someone should own the accounts and renewals.
- Important customer journeys need checking.
- Changes need a way to be reviewed and, if needed, reversed.
- Someone should know the website well enough to decide what to do next.
Those responsibilities don’t disappear on a hosted platform — they just shrink. That’s why the first part of any handover is the map of what you own.
Choosing care that fits.
Maintenance for a hosted builder is mostly content, integrations and checks. For a self-hosted or custom site it also covers the technical layer underneath. A good care arrangement starts by reviewing which one you have — including sites built with AI — and agreeing what’s covered. Tell us about your website and we’ll take a look. If it runs on WordPress, our sister service WPComfy has dedicated plans.
