14 clear signs it's time to change your website maintenance agency

Updated 28 December 2025

You rely on your website to win work, serve clients and prove that your organisation is credible.

Yet many teams end up with an agency that cares more about launches than what happens after go live.

Tickets sit unanswered. Small fixes take weeks. Downtime is brushed off as “one of those things”. Security and compliance feel like your problem, not theirs.

If this sounds familiar, you are probably not dealing with a one‑off bad week. You are living with a maintenance model that is not set up for the level of risk your organisation carries.

The good news – switching website maintenance agency is far more common and far safer than most people think.

This guide walks through 14 clear signs that your current web agency is neglecting website maintenance, what a good website maintenance SLA looks like for UK SMEs, and how to switch agency without downtime or data loss.

Why website maintenance is where agencies often fall short

Most digital agencies are organised around projects. They put their best people on redesigns, migrations and new builds. After launch, your site moves into a shared support bucket with limited time, unclear ownership and little long‑term thinking.

That creates a gap between what you need and what you get:

• Availability and uptime – modern sites are expected to be online almost all the time. Moving from 99.9% to 99.95% uptime cuts monthly downtime from around 43 minutes to about 22 minutes, which matters if you depend on online leads or transactions (Source: Umbhost).
• Security and compliance – UK GDPR requires you to process personal data securely using appropriate technical and organisational measures, including controls that protect confidentiality, integrity and availability of systems (Source: ICO). Article 32 of GDPR explicitly calls for keeping systems resilient and recoverable after incidents (Source: GDPR.eu).
• Performance and SEO – page speed and stability influence both rankings and conversion. Google data shows bounce probability can increase by 32% when page load time rises from 1 to 3 seconds.

A maintenance‑first partner treats these as ongoing responsibilities, not side projects. Strong website maintenance plans usually include software updates, security monitoring, tested backups, uptime and performance monitoring, incident response and room for minor enhancements (Source: Growcreate).

When any of that is missing, the symptoms are easy to spot.

14 signs you need to change your web agency

These are the practical signs we hear most often from SMEs, marketing leaders and technology teams when they come to Growcreate for a maintenance takeover.

You do not need to see all 14. If several resonate, it is worth your options.

1. You spend more time chasing updates than getting them

You send a support request and hear nothing for days. You are left guessing whether anyone has even read your email.

A good maintenance agency will acknowledge tickets quickly, triage them by priority and set clear expectations for the next update. If you are always chasing, it is a sign support is under‑resourced or deprioritised.

Business takeaway: if communication feels like hard work, incident response will be even harder when something breaks.

2. Support response times are slow and unpredictable

If your site is down or transactions are failing, waiting hours just for an acknowledgement is not acceptable.

Many UK website maintenance SLAs commit to responding to critical issues within 30–120 minutes and lower‑priority requests within 1–3 working days, with resolutions targeted from the same day for high‑priority incidents to 1–2 weeks for minor tasks.

If your agency refuses to define any response times or regularly misses them, you have no real operational safety net.

Business takeaway: without clear response commitments, you cannot plan around incidents or explain risk to stakeholders.

3. There is no clear maintenance SLA

You might have a nice proposal and a hosting invoice, but nothing that spells out uptime targets, response and resolution times, maintenance windows or escalation paths.

An SLA is not just legal paperwork. It is how you make sure both sides agree what “good” looks like in terms of availability, cover hours and responsibilities.

Business takeaway: if it is not written down, it will not be measured – and it will not improve.

4. Incidents keep repeating

The same bug keeps reappearing. You have the same outage every few months. The agency fixes symptoms, not causes.

Modern maintenance should include post‑incident , root‑cause analysis and small pieces of follow‑up work that stop issues coming back.

Business takeaway: if you keep reliving the same incident, you are paying for the same fix again and again.

5. Security updates feel like an afterthought

You rarely hear about patching. Nobody can tell you when the CMS, .NET runtime or key packages were last updated. Certificates almost expire before anyone renews them.

Security under UK GDPR is not optional. Organisations are expected to maintain measures that keep systems confidential, available and resilient, which includes timely updates, encryption and tested backups (Source: ICO, Source: ComplyDog).

Business takeaway: if your agency cannot talk confidently about patch windows and security controls, regulatory risk lands on your desk.

6. You have unplanned downtime and vague explanations

“Something happened with the host” is not a satisfactory incident report.

Every outage should come with a clear timeline, impact summary and a plan to reduce the chances of it happening again. For revenue‑critical sites, aiming for a 99.95% uptime target instead of 99.9% can halve annual downtime minutes, which is why many teams pair higher SLAs with better monitoring and architecture.

Business takeaway: vague explanations today often hide deeper fragility that will hurt you later.

7. Small changes take months to ship

You ask for a new landing page template, a minor UX fix or a form improvement and it disappears into the backlog.

Healthy maintenance teams reserve time for enhancements alongside fixes. They can tell you where your request sits, how it will be delivered and when to expect it.

Business takeaway: if low‑risk enhancements cannot get out of the door, your site will drift behind competitors.

8. There is no proactive maintenance plan

Your agency only logs in when you raise an issue. There are no regular checks, no performance , no roadmap for updates.

A modern website maintenance plan should cover prevention, detection and response – from updates and vulnerability checks through to uptime monitoring and incident (Source: Growcreate).

Business takeaway: reactive support always costs more than prevention in the long run.

9. The agency lacks DevOps and cloud expertise

Your platform runs on Azure or another cloud platform, but conversations never cover deployment pipelines, monitoring, backup strategy or cost control.

For business‑critical .NET and CMS platforms, you need an agency that understands infrastructure as well as code. At Growcreate, for example, Azure managed services include defined SLAs, 24/7 monitoring, patching and cost optimisation for workloads on Microsoft Azure (Source: Growcreate, Source: Growcreate).

Business takeaway: without DevOps and cloud skills, your agency cannot meaningfully improve uptime, security or cost.

10. You never meet a dedicated maintenance team

Everything goes through a single account manager. When you ask who is actually responsible for support, you get a different name each time.

For stable operations you should know who is on your maintenance team, when they are available and how handovers work between project and support squads.

Business takeaway: if maintenance is everyone’s job, it is usually no one’s priority.

11. Reporting is thin or non‑existent

You rarely see data on incidents, response times, performance or SEO health. You are asked to trust that things are “being looked after”.

Structured maintenance should come with regular reporting so you can see trends in uptime, incident volume, Core Web Vitals and fix rates (Source: Growcreate).

Business takeaway: without data you cannot prove value, justify budget or spot risks early.

12. You cannot see the ROI

Retainer costs creep up but you still experience outages, slow response times and slow pages.

A maintenance‑first agency links activity to metrics – uptime, incident reduction, page speed and organic traffic. For example, Growcreate’s website maintenance guidance shows how better uptime and performance can protect visibility and revenue (Source: Growcreate).

Business takeaway: if you cannot connect spend with improved stability, performance or growth, it is time to switch agencies.

13. Your agency is more interested in the next redesign than today’s risks

Every conversation drifts back to “maybe it is time for a full rebuild”. Meanwhile, the current platform creaks under the weight of small issues.

Sometimes a redesign is right. Often, you can get years of extra value from your existing site with focused maintenance, performance work and controlled upgrades.

Business takeaway: if you feel your current site is being neglected to make room for a future project, look for a partner who values maintenance work.

14. Your gut says you would not choose them again

If you were selecting an agency today, would you pick the same one based on their maintenance approach alone?

If the honest answer is no, that is a clear sign to explore alternatives.

Business takeaway: your instinct is informed by every late ticket, outage and awkward conversation. It is worth listening to your gut.

What good website maintenance SLAs look like for UK SMEs

When you compare website maintenance SLAs as a UK SME, the difference between basic support and operational assurance quickly becomes clear.

A strong SLA should reflect the risk profile of your platform, not just generic response promises. At Growcreate, SLAs are designed around how critical your site is to revenue, compliance and reputation.

There are three fundamentals to look for.

1. Clearly defined incident priorities (P0–P3)

A credible maintenance SLA distinguishes between inconvenience and genuine business risk. At a minimum, priorities should be clearly defined and consistently applied:

Critical incidents

Full site outage, failed transactions, security incidents or data risk.

High-impact issues

Core functionality degraded (for example forms failing or major features unavailable).

Standard requests

Content changes, layout tweaks, minor bugs or low-risk enhancements.

Without this structure, everything becomes “urgent” — and nothing is handled well.

Business takeaway: if priorities are vague, response will be inconsistent when pressure is highest.

2. SLA response and resolution targets that match business impact

Good SLAs define both response and resolution targets, and vary them by severity.

Based on Growcreate’s website maintenance packages, typical expectations look like this:

Higher-risk platforms typically move beyond basic business-hours cover. For always-on systems, Growcreate clients commonly operate with:

• 24/7 monitoring
• P0/P1 responses within 15–30 minutes
• Clear escalation paths and runbooks
• Uptime targets aligned to business risk (often ~99.95%)

Business takeaway: response times without resolution intent are meaningless. You need both.

3. Defined coverage, uptime targets and escalation paths

A maintenance SLA should make it explicit:

When support is available

(9–5, extended hours or full 24/7, including bank holidays)

Who responds first

(engineering-led triage, not just account management)

How incidents escalate

(from monitoring → engineer → senior escalation)

What uptime is being targeted and measured

Growcreate’s maintenance tiers scale from business-hours coverage through to full 24/7 support with critical incident SLAs, backed by real-time monitoring, automated alerts and Azure-based recovery patterns.

Business takeaway: if uptime targets and escalation paths are not written down, they will fail when you need them most.

Ask for our full SLA

How to switch website agencies without downtime or data loss

Switching agency does not have to be a high‑risk move. A structured handover protects uptime and data while you transition.

Here is a safe pattern Growcreate and other mature support teams follow.

1. Map access and current obligations

• List domains, hosting accounts, DNS, certificates and third‑party services.
• Check your contract for notice periods and any restrictions on access.
• Confirm who owns the code repository and deployment pipelines.

This gives your new maintenance partner a clear picture of what they are taking on.

2. Take full backups and test restores

Before anyone makes changes, ensure there are complete backups of code, databases and assets, and test that they can be restored to a non‑production environment. Regular backup and restore testing is a core part of GDPR‑aligned technical measures for availability and resilience (Source: GDPR.eu, Source: ComplyDog).

3. Run a structured health check

A good incoming agency will run a detailed audit of your platform. Growcreate’s SupportCheck, for example, runs 60+ diagnostics across code, hosting and operations before maintenance begins (Source: Growcreate, Source: Growcreate).

The goal is to stabilise the platform, fix obvious risks and create clear runbooks before the old agency steps away.

4. Overlap support where possible

If you can, keep your existing agency in place for a short overlap period while the new team comes up to speed.

During this phase:

• New engineers take over monitoring and first‑line response.
• Old and new agencies agree who handles which incidents.
• You early tickets together to refine priorities and runbooks.

5. Switch control in stages

Rather than a single “big bang” cutover, move control in controlled steps:

1. New agency takes over monitoring and alerting.
2. Then incident response and patching.
3. Finally, deployments and DNS or hosting management.

With tested backups, staged handover and clear SLAs, switching maintenance agency can be done with minimal risk and no unplanned downtime.

How Growcreate approaches website maintenance takeovers

Growcreate is a maintenance‑first digital agency. We design and support .NET and Umbraco platforms that need to be online, secure and fast for the long term.

For teams that feel neglected by their current agency, we follow a structured takeover model:

1. SupportCheck® diagnostic – 60+ checks across code, hosting and operations to surface risks, performance issues and quick wins (Source: Growcreate).
2. Stabilise and secure – priority fixes for uptime and security, patch baselining and monitoring set‑up.
3. SLA and runbooks – agreed response times, escalation paths and documented runbooks so incidents are handled consistently.
4. Enhance and evolve – performance tuning, technical SEO, backlog shaping and support for new features.

Operations are underpinned by ISO/IEC 27001 and Cyber Essentials, 24/7 monitoring and Azure‑based recovery patterns, giving you credible assurance for boards, auditors and regulators (Source: Growcreate, Source: Growcreate).

If you are considering a switch, we typically start with a short call to understand your stack, risk profile and current pain points, then recommend an onboarding path that balances risk and speed.

Next steps if you are ready to change agency

If several of the signs in this article feel uncomfortably familiar, it is worth exploring a different way forward.

Here is a simple way to move:

1. List your top three frustrations – for example slow responses, repeated incidents or security worries.
2. Gather the basics – contracts, current SLAs, hosting details and a list of integrations.
3. Shortlist maintenance‑focused agencies – prioritise those with clear SLAs, security credentials and experience taking over existing platforms.
4. Have one exploratory conversation – use the questions above to compare their maintenance model with what you have today.

If you would like to see how a maintenance‑first approach could work for your organisation, you can:

• Book a support consultation with the Growcreate team and talk through your current platform and support set‑up (24/7 support) (Source: Growcreate).
• Read more about what a modern website maintenance plan should include and typical UK pricing bands for different risk levels (website maintenance services and costs) (Source: Growcreate).

With the right partner and a careful handover, it is often the simplest way to reduce operational risk, improve performance and get your digital platforms working as hard as you do.

Speak with an engineer