What to keep an eye on every month
Most website problems don't happen suddenly. They creep in. A certificate quietly nears expiry. A plugin drifts out of date. A form fails silently for weeks, and nobody notices.
A short monthly routine catches these early, while they're still easy to fix. It costs you twenty minutes. The alternative — finding out from a customer, or a bounced email — costs a lot more, in lost trust as well as lost business.
The 20-minute monthly routine
| Check | What you're looking for | Free tool |
|---|---|---|
| Uptime | Was the site down at any point this month? | uptimerobot.com (free tier), or ask your host for their status log |
| Certificate and domain | Days left until each renews; is auto-renew still on? | Your domain registrar's dashboard; the padlock in your browser |
| Contact form | Send yourself a test enquiry; did it arrive? | Your own email inbox |
| Speed | Has load time crept up since last month? | pagespeed.web.dev |
| Updates | Are your CMS, theme and plugins on their latest version? | Your site's admin dashboard |
| Backups | Is there a backup newer than a week old? | Your host's backup panel |
| Google profile | Do hours, phone and address still match the website? | Search your business name on Google |
| Reviews | Any new reviews needing a reply? | Google, and wherever else you're listed |
Why each one is worth ten minutes
Uptime matters because downtime you don't know about is downtime that's costing you customers right now, silently.
Certificate and domain renewals are the classic surprise. Miss one and your site can vanish, or scare visitors with a warning, overnight.
The contact form is the easiest thing to break without noticing. A plugin update, a changed email address, and enquiries quietly stop arriving.
Speed drifts as you add photos, plugins and tracking codes over time. None of these feel like a big change on their own. Together, they add up, and a monthly check catches the slide before visitors do.
Updates close security holes. An out-of-date plugin is one of the most common ways small sites get hacked.
Backups are only useful if they exist and are recent. Check this before you need it, not after.
Your Google profile is often the first thing a customer sees, before they ever reach your site. A stale one loses you calls even when your website itself is perfectly fine.
Reviews shape trust more than almost anything else on the page. A month of silence on a bad review reads badly.
Making it a habit
Put a recurring date in your calendar — the first Monday of the month works well. Keep a simple note of what you checked and what you found. It takes two minutes, and it saves you guessing next time.
If you share the job with someone else, write down who's doing the check that month. A routine only works if it's clearly someone's job, not a vague shared one.
Sitecomb can run the technical side of this monthly check for you, in one report, for €9.99. That's security, speed, broken links, and renewal dates. One caveat: it's a check you run yourself each time, not an always-on monitor.