Website Development vs Website Maintenance: What Is the Difference?

Many disagreements between businesses and web developers come from one misunderstanding: what counts as "maintenance" and what counts as "new work". Clearing this up early saves time, money and frustration.

Website development

Development is the project of creating something new: planning the structure, designing the pages, building them and launching the website. It also includes later additions such as new pages, new sections, new features or a redesign. Development work has a defined scope and is usually priced as a project.

Website maintenance

Maintenance keeps an existing website accurate, available and secure. Typical maintenance tasks include:

• Updating text, prices, timings and contact details
• Replacing images and banners
• Coordinating hosting and SSL renewals
• Checking that the website is available
• Fixing small problems within the existing design

Maintenance is ongoing, which is why it is usually billed monthly.

Where the line sits

A helpful test: does the request change what the website does, or only what it says?

• Changing the phone number on every page — maintenance.
• Replacing three photos in the gallery — maintenance.
• Adding a new page for a new service beyond your plan — development.
• Adding online payments — development.
• Changing the whole look of the site — development.

Why "unlimited changes" rarely works

Some providers promise unlimited updates for a low monthly fee. In practice, either requests wait for weeks or large jobs get refused anyway. A defined monthly support allocation is more honest: you know exactly what is included, and larger work is quoted before it starts.

At 10xTimes, each website plan includes a fixed amount of minor support time every month. You can read more on our website management page.