Support & growth
Most software problems are maintenance problems that were ignored
Software decays. Dependencies accumulate published vulnerabilities, browsers change behaviour, APIs get deprecated, certificates expire, and a database that performed well at ten thousand records slows badly at two million. None of this announces itself — it accumulates quietly until something visible breaks.
The pattern we see repeatedly: a business invests properly in a build, launches it, and then treats it as finished. Two years later it needs an expensive rescue project, and the total cost is several times what steady maintenance would have been.
Support work is not glamorous and it does not demo well. It is patching, monitoring, restore testing, dependency management and the small continuous improvements that keep a system fitting a business that keeps changing. It is also the highest-return spend in most technology budgets, precisely because it prevents the expensive events.
Alongside that we do technical growth work — site performance, structured data, crawlability, analytics that measure something you would actually act on. The engineering side of getting found and converting, rather than campaign management.
What we offer
The work, specifically
Six areas, packaged into a retainer sized to what you actually run.
Managed hosting and infrastructure
Cloud hosting configured for your workload with staging and production environments, automated deployment, SSL and certificate management, CDN and caching. Provisioned in your own cloud account under your billing, so you retain control and can move it without our involvement.
Monitoring, backups and incident response
Uptime and performance monitoring with alerts routed to a named owner, error tracking, automated backups with scheduled restore testing — because an untested backup is a hope rather than a plan — and incident response with defined times by severity.
Security patching and dependency management
Regular review and update of frameworks, libraries and infrastructure, tracked against published vulnerability advisories. Scheduled and tested rather than applied in a panic after a disclosure, with a written record of what changed and when.
Technical SEO and Core Web Vitals
Site architecture and crawlability, structured data implementation, internal linking, page speed and Core Web Vitals remediation, indexation troubleshooting in Search Console, and migration planning so a redesign does not cost you rankings you spent years earning.
Analytics and conversion tracking
Analytics configured to measure decisions rather than vanity — goal and event tracking, form and funnel analysis, server-side tracking where privacy requirements demand it, and a reporting view that answers a specific business question instead of showing everything.
Retained development capacity
A defined block of development hours each month for enhancements, fixes and improvements, with a prioritised backlog you control. Gives you predictable capacity without carrying a permanent developer, and unused urgency does not become a crisis.
Deliverables
What you actually receive
Support is only worth buying if the terms are explicit. Ours are written down.
| Deliverable | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Written service agreement | Response times by severity, inclusions and exclusions, escalation path, named contacts and out-of-hours arrangements. No implied scope. |
| Monthly report | Uptime, performance trend, incidents and their resolution, patches applied, hours used against the retainer, and recommendations for next month. |
| Security posture review | Quarterly review of dependency status, access control, certificate expiry and known vulnerabilities, with a prioritised remediation list. |
| Verified backup and restore | Automated backups plus periodic restore rehearsals with documented recovery time, so you know the number rather than assuming it. |
| Prioritised backlog | A shared, visible list of improvements and fixes that you order. Nothing gets built because it was convenient for us. |
| Search and analytics reporting | Indexation health, Core Web Vitals, organic visibility trend and conversion data — with commentary on what changed and why. |
Stack
What we build with
Standard, well-supported infrastructure and tooling, provisioned in your accounts.
- AWS
- Microsoft Azure
- Cloudflare
- Docker
- GitHub Actions
- Sentry
- Grafana
- Google Search Console
- GA4
- Lighthouse / CrUX
- Schema.org structured data
- WordPress
- Next.js
Why it matters
Maintenance is the cheapest line in a technology budget
Prevention costs a fraction of rescue. Steady patching and monitoring costs a predictable monthly amount. An emergency remediation after a breach or a major outage costs many times that, plus the incident response, the notification obligations and the reputational damage that has no invoice attached.
Search visibility is technical before it is editorial. If a site is slow, poorly structured or difficult to crawl, content quality cannot compensate. The engineering foundations determine the ceiling on everything a content or marketing effort can achieve afterwards.
Compounding beats relaunching. A system improved continuously stays aligned with the business. A system left alone for three years needs replacing, and you pay the full build cost again for something you already owned.
Questions
Digital Support & Growth, answered
What is actually covered by a support retainer?
Uptime and performance monitoring, security patching and dependency updates, backup verification with periodic restore testing, incident response within agreed times, and a block of development hours each month for small improvements. Everything is defined in writing — response times, inclusions, exclusions and escalation path — so there is no argument about scope during an incident.
Can you support a system somebody else built?
Usually. We start with a paid technical review covering code quality, dependency status, security posture, backup integrity and documentation gaps. That review tells you what supporting it will realistically involve. Occasionally we find something we cannot responsibly take on, and we say so rather than accepting a retainer for a system we cannot keep safe.
Do you do SEO, and is it any different from an agency?
We do technical SEO: site architecture, crawlability, structured data, Core Web Vitals, internal linking and content structure. We do not run link-building campaigns or manage paid advertising. Technical SEO is the part that overlaps with engineering, and it is the part that most content-focused agencies cannot execute because it requires changing the codebase.
How quickly do you respond to a production outage?
Under a support agreement, response times are defined by severity and written into the agreement rather than implied. A critical production outage gets a defined response window during business hours, with out-of-hours cover available where the agreement includes it. We would rather commit to something we can consistently meet than promise a number that sounds impressive.
Next step
When was the last time your backups were actually restored?
If the answer is uncomfortable, start there. We will review what you are running and tell you where the real risk sits.