I’ve had this come up before with clients, who don’t want to pay for a service contract because they can get cheaper hosting elsewhere. While it’s true, that you can do the work yourself to pay 5 bucks a month for hosting, there are a lot of issues with doing so. For example, I’ve seen a lot of hosting companies go belly-up; are you sure about the company you’re signing up with? Also, do you even know what to look for in a webhost? And finally, the fact is that a web design company that doesn’t sell their service contracts, likely won’t stick around.

Why does it matter to you what happens to that design company if you have your own hosting? Because now every time you go to change something or update something on your website, you’ll end up having to find a new web designer. And it means that the web designer that built your site probably wasn’t an expert in the field, but was doing it as a side job. There’s a good chance then, that your site will need extensive overhauls, or just completely rebuilt in order to keep up with future technology trends (which equals out to new devices not being able to see your site, or search engines not finding your site anymore). Or at the very least, the new web designer will have to charge you more just to make small edits, because of the outdated code structure.

When you sign up with a maintenance contract, you’re not just keeping your own site healthy, you’re now part of a relationship with a company that has a foundation. And that means they’re far more likely to still be around five or ten years from now.