Website emergency services

I’m a freelance designer and I’ve built a website for a real estate broker. The broker has many employees/agents that rely on the website. As such, if the site goes down for any reason, they need to fix it fast.

As I said, I’m a designer, not a programmer. I’ve hired freelance programmers to help me with the programming. So I’m wondering what my options are. Does anyone use those “website emergency repair” companies? Or should I just contact some freelance programmers when the time comes, and hope they reply quickly?

I should mention it’s a Wordpress site.

Thanks
Ak

As the Designer, why would you be involved with site maintenance at all?
I would think it would be up to the site owner to put together his own solution, and not something within your jurisdiction you need to be worried about.

Agree with @mittineague.

As long as things are clear with the owner of the site, you should have no problem. And if you do the maintenace of the site… that doesn’t mean that you will have to do troubleshooting for them.

You and your client need to understand what the scope of your work is. And maintenance may be simply doing some photoshoping for new pictures or adding a design for a new category or maybe helping publishing some articles.

Now, if you do have to troubleshoot and will charge for that, then I assume is because you have teamed up with a programmer that knows his stuff and knows how to do it (and, of course, he’s reliable and trustworthy and goes the extra mile for excellent customer service)

To answer your question, if it was me I’d keep in touch with a good freelance programmer - have a go-to person for such issues, definitely not a “repair” company.

I do have the same thought as the other replies - why is it your problem? Are you contractually obligated, or something?

Option 1: If it’s a WordPress site, and you want to fully control the relationship with this client, maybe you can put your client on a monthly support and maintenance contract, and hire one of the many companies who specialize in WordPress website maintenance. One of them that comes to my mind right now is WPCurve. Charge more than them because you add value to your client with your presence.

Option 2: you can tell the client to hire a such a company directly and call you only when their request is about design.

In the long-term, you’ll earn more with option 1, because your client will learn that you can solve any problem for them, and they will call you for anything they need (they probably already do). This will only work if the client pays you monthly to be at their disposal. If they have many agents, they must be able to afford decent maintenance.

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You must keep a professional website maintenance company on a contract basis to avoid such issues later. If you’re not a programmer, keeping companies in your hand is mandatory.

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No it isn’t. Read the replies above. You may consider it to be a good idea - depending on your contract with the client - but it certainly isn’t mandatory.

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