How to measure whether your web partner is worth the money
A monthly fee deserves a yearly answer. Eight measures, half numbers and half questions, that show whether a partner earns the fee.
The short answer
A monthly fee deserves a yearly answer to the question “was it worth it?” The answer comes from eight measures. Four are numbers a partner should already be reporting every month: uptime and incidents, speed, security posture, and what the site produces in leads or sales. Four are questions you answer once a year: was the planned work delivered, were response times honoured, is everything in your name and documented, and what did you not have to think about? A partner who cannot supply the numbers is not measuring their own work, which is itself an answer.
The eight measures
| Measure | Where it comes from | Good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Uptime and incidents | Monthly report, monitoring | Incidents caught by monitoring, not by customers; each with cause and fix |
| 2. Speed | Real-user metrics per month | Stable or improving; regressions caught after changes |
| 3. Security posture | Monthly report: updates, scans, findings | Updates applied within days; findings closed; no surprises |
| 4. Leads, bookings, sales from the site | Analytics and your CRM | Measured, attributed, trending in the direction the plan intended |
| 5. Work delivered against the plan | Quarterly plan versus done list | Most planned items done; changes explained |
| 6. Response against the agreed table | Incident and request log with times | Critical in minutes, standard acknowledged same day, as agreed |
| 7. Ownership and documentation | Your own check | Every account in your name; a current one-page setup document |
| 8. What you did not have to think about | Your own memory of the year | Renewals, certificates, updates, backups: never crossed your desk |
Running the yearly review
- Collect twelve monthly reports. If they do not exist, that is finding one.
- Add up incidents: how many, how found, how long, how resolved. Compare with the response table.
- Compare speed and search metrics with a year ago.
- Check what the site produced: leads, bookings, sales, against the plan’s intent.
- Score the plan: what was promised each quarter, what was delivered.
- Do the ownership check yourself: log in to registrar, hosting, analytics; read the setup document.
- Write down the year’s non-events. Then price the alternative honestly.
When the answer is no
If reports are missing, incidents reach you before the partner, response times are not met, or accounts are not in your name, the fee is not being earned. Raise it once, specifically, with the measures above. If the next quarter does not change, the exit clause exists for this reason, and the hand-over should be clean if ownership was in order. If it was not, that is the first thing the next partner fixes.
What this means for you
Do not judge a partner on how busy they seem or how many hours they log. Judge them on eight measures: four numbers they should already report, four questions you answer yourself once a year. Add up the year’s non-events and price the alternative honestly. The answer is usually clear, in one direction or the other, and either way you will know what you are paying for.
Frequently asked questions
Our site has had no problems this year. Is that the partner, or luck?
Ask for the report: incidents caught by monitoring before you noticed, updates applied, backups restored, security findings closed. A year without visible problems on a maintained site is the product of that quiet work. A year without problems on an unmaintained site is luck, and luck has a shelf life.
How do we compare the fee with the alternative?
Price the alternative honestly: the hours someone inside would spend, the tools and monitoring you would buy, the cost of the incident you would not catch, and the project you would commission when neglect caught up. Do the sum before you judge the fee; if it comes out larger than the alternative, that is a real finding.
What if the numbers are fine but we feel we are not getting much?
That usually means the plan is stale: maintenance is working but nothing new is happening. Use the quarterly review to put improvements on the plan. A partner should be proposing them; if they only react, say so, and see whether the next quarter changes.