What does WordPress maintenance include?

WordPress sites depend on many moving parts: the core software, a theme and often dozens of plugins from different developers. Each gets feature and security updates, and updates can conflict with each other. A maintenance plan typically covers:

• Updates: core, theme and plugin updates, tested on staging or with a backup ready, so a bad update can be rolled back.
• Backups: scheduled off-site backups, with occasional test restores to prove they work.
• Security: a firewall, login protection, malware scanning, and removing unused plugins and old admin accounts.
• Monitoring: uptime checks and alerts, plus regular tests that lead forms still send.
• Performance: caching, image optimisation and database clean-up.
• SEO checks: confirming that updates haven't changed search visibility settings, sitemaps, redirects, structured data or page titles.

Ask any provider exactly what's included, how quickly they respond to problems, and whether support hours or fixes are capped each month.

Plugins are the most common source of trouble. Keeping only well-maintained plugins you actually use reduces both security risk and page weight.