Managed Services
Managed Services - Launch Is the Midpoint, Not the Finish Line
Our managed services keep websites and applications fast, secure, and improving after launch: security patching, dependency and CVE management, performance monitoring, uptime and incident response, backups, and a rolling roadmap of improvements - all under a defined SLA with named contacts.
What's Covered
Digital platforms decay without stewardship. Dependencies age into vulnerabilities. Content sprawls and slows pages. Third-party scripts accumulate. Nine months of neglect turns a proud launch into a support burden, and eighteen turns it into a rebuild proposal. Managed services exist to prevent that arc - and they're the cheapest maintenance plan available, because the alternative is a forced rebuild you didn't budget for.
Security
Core, plugin, and dependency patching; CVE watch; hardening reviews; incident response.
Performance
Core Web Vitals monitoring, caching and asset tuning, regression alerts.
Availability
Uptime monitoring, alerting, escalation, and post-incident reports.
Data Safety
Automated backups with tested restores - an untested backup is a hope, not a plan.
Platform Currency
Framework and runtime upgrades planned before end-of-life, not after.
Improvement
A monthly pool of hours for enhancements, driven by a shared roadmap.
Reporting
Monthly reporting on uptime, performance, security, and work delivered.
How Our Retainers Work
Tiered by criticality and response time, with hours for improvement work included rather than bolted on. Every retainer has named engineers who know your platform - because the alternative, re-explaining your architecture to a new ticket handler each time, is how support becomes slower than doing it yourself.
We support platforms we built and platforms we didn't. Takeovers start with a technical audit: code quality, security posture, performance, infrastructure, and documentation gaps, followed by a stabilization plan. We'll tell you honestly if a platform is beyond economic maintenance rather than billing you monthly to postpone the conversation.
Nobody looking after your platform right now?
Security, performance, and dependency status reviewed - with a prioritized action list, no retainer required.
What Neglect Actually Costs
Platform decay is invisible until it isn't. The sequence is consistent:
Months 1–6
Confidence Grows
Dependencies age. Nothing visible happens. Confidence grows.
Months 6–12
Debt Accumulates
Disclosed vulnerabilities accumulate in unpatched components. Performance drifts as content and third-party scripts accumulate. Small bugs go unfixed because nobody owns them.
Months 12–24
Upgrades Become Projects
A framework or runtime reaches end of life. Upgrading is now a project rather than a task, because several major versions have passed. Third-party integrations break as their APIs move on.
Beyond 24 Months
Rebuild Proposed
The platform is materially harder to change than to replace, and someone proposes a rebuild - paying again for capability you already owned.
Every step of that is preventable with routine work that costs a fraction of the rebuild. The most expensive maintenance strategy is not having one.
Our Takeover Process
For platforms we didn't build, we don't accept a retainer blind:
Technical audit - code quality, security posture, dependency currency, performance profile, infrastructure, and documentation gaps
Risk register - what could fail, how likely, how bad, sorted by exposure rather than by ease
Stabilization plan - the work needed before the platform is safe to leave running, and what it costs
Honest verdict - including the uncomfortable one. Some platforms cost more to maintain than to replace, and we'd rather say so in week one than bill you monthly to postpone the conversation.
Only then do we agree a retainer, sized to reality.
Reporting That Earns Its Place
Most maintenance reporting is unread because it reports activity rather than state. Ours covers: uptime against target with any incidents explained; Core Web Vitals trend, not just a current score; security posture - patches applied, vulnerabilities disclosed and addressed, outstanding risk; dependency currency and what's approaching end of life; work delivered against the improvement roadmap; and the recommendations we'd act on next, with reasoning.
The goal is that someone non-technical can read it and understand whether their platform is getting better or worse. That question is the whole point of a retainer, and it's the one most reports never answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Dependencies age into disclosed vulnerabilities, performance drifts, and frameworks reach end of life - until upgrading becomes a project rather than a task and a rebuild starts to look inevitable. That sequence typically plays out over eighteen to thirty months and costs far more than routine maintenance would have.
Yes, following a technical audit and stabilization plan. We'll also tell you if a platform costs more to maintain than to replace - that verdict belongs in week one, not in month twelve of a retainer.
Security patching and monitoring, performance monitoring and tuning, uptime and incident response, backups with restore testing, platform version upgrades, and an allocation of hours for improvements - governed by an SLA.
A managed retainer typically costs a small fraction of the original build per year and substantially extends a platform's productive life. Unmaintained platforms accumulate security and performance debt until replacement becomes the only option - the most expensive outcome available.
Yes. We begin with a technical audit and a stabilization plan. Most inherited platforms need triage before new feature work, and we're direct about that sequencing.
Response and resolution targets are tiered by severity and business criticality, defined in the SLA. Critical production incidents carry the fastest targets, with defined escalation paths and named contacts.
Yes - retainers include improvement hours prioritized against a shared roadmap, so your platform gets better every month rather than merely surviving.