What actually breaks
Contractor websites rarely fail loudly. They degrade, and the owner finds out from a customer months later.
- Forms stop delivering. An email provider changes something, or a plugin updates, and submissions go nowhere. The form still says thank you.
- SSL certificates expire. Browsers put a warning in front of your site and most visitors leave.
- Plugins accumulate and conflict. A WordPress site with twenty plugins has twenty things that can update badly on a Tuesday.
- Sites get compromised. Usually through an outdated plugin, and usually to serve spam that Google eventually flags.
- The site gets slower. Images uploaded at full camera resolution, one at a time, until the thing takes eight seconds on a phone.
Static hosting removes most of that
Most contractor sites do not need a database. They need pages that load fast, forms that deliver, and a phone number that works on a tap.
Built as static files, there is no login to brute force, no plugin to exploit, and nothing to update on a schedule. Pages come off a content delivery network, so a homeowner on a weak signal in a basement gets the page rather than a spinner.
There is a real tradeoff and it is worth saying. You do not get a dashboard to log into and change your own copy. Changes come through us. For most contractors that is a feature, because the alternative is a dashboard they log into twice a year, but if you want to edit your own pages daily this is the wrong setup.
What $59 a month covers
- Hosting on a content delivery network with SSL kept current
- Form delivery monitored, so a broken form gets caught rather than discovered
- Content edits as needed, sent over and handled
- Uptime monitoring
- Backups
- Google Search Console kept connected so indexing problems surface
What it does not cover is SEO. No new pages, no Google Business Profile management, no content, no rankings work. This is keeping a site alive and working. If you want it to grow, that is a plan.
The domain stays in your name
This one is not negotiable and it is worth explaining why.
Plenty of web outfits register the domain in their own name. It sounds like a convenience and it functions as a hostage. When the relationship ends, and eventually it does, the contractor discovers the thing their entire online presence is built on belongs to someone else.
Your domain gets registered in your name, on your email, and you keep the login. If you leave, you take it and everything on it. I do not need your registrar password and will not ask for it.
Bringing an existing site
If you already have a site you like, it can usually be moved. What happens depends on how it was built. A straightforward WordPress site can generally be converted to static, which makes it faster and removes the maintenance surface. Something heavily dependent on plugins for booking or e-commerce may need to stay where it is.
The honest answer requires looking at it. If moving does not make sense, I will say so rather than move it and hope.
Related
Starting from scratch: contractor website design. If you want the site to actually grow: SEO for contractors.