DIY site updates vs. hiring it out

There are many times in life when you have to make a decision to DIY or hire an expert. Whether it’s a tile backsplash in your kitchen or updating your WordPress website there are pros and cons to both doing it yourself as well as outsourcing the work.

We were recently talking to a client about the reasons why other clients trust us to handle their WordPress site updates on an ongoing basis. There are two main reasons and benefits of handing off this recurring task.

First would be timing and consistency. We recommend doing updates on a weekly basis because in the WordPress world things evolve and move quickly. This is beneficial from both a security standpoint as well as functionality (security being the more timely of the two). A lot of our clients either simply don’t want to take the time to keep their site up-to-date or have good intentions to do so but just can’t keep up with it on a consistent basis. Outsourcing this work is one less thing for them to do or think about each week. If you feel comfortable keeping your site up-to-date and have the bandwidth to do so, then it’s certainly possible for you to run site updates yourself.

Second would be for the peace of mind that comes with the knowledge that we will fix anything that breaks immediately. If you run the updates and something breaks then you have the “down time” of your site not working / being stuck in maintenance mode / an aspect of the site looking bad or missing until we are able to fix it. While we’re here for you regardless of whether it breaks while you are updating it or we are updating it… if we are the one performing the updates we can provide an intimidate fix. If you are the one doing the updates then you’ll have to reach out to us and obviously that would cause some time delay depending on day of the week / time of day / what other projects or meetings we have going on at that time.

Ultimately the choice is up to you and how you want to approach things. We offer a monthly maintenance plan (where we update your site weekly and any and all fixes that arise from these updates are included at no additional cost) to all of our clients OR you can take a DIY approach. We are always available at our hourly rate — whether that’s helping you run the updates on a one-off basis when you reach out for assistance or whether that’s you running the updates on your own and us hopping in to fix something if something breaks. We’ll be here for you either way 🙂

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