IT management and website maintenance
Broadbent Host sells two kinds of looking-after, and they are easy to mix up. Website maintenance is the site: the content system, the plugins, the backups of that site, the small edits, and the security checks on the site. IT and server management is the office and the servers: the help desk, the laptops, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Linux, and the hours of support on the plan. Neither one is included with shared hosting. A Plesk login does not create a maintenance contract, and a maintenance contract does not create a mailbox.
This article is the long form of both, plus the neighbouring services people book at the same time: SFTP backup and hardware firewalls. Prices on several of these plans are confirmed at checkout rather than printed as a single number in the plan file, so this page quotes the hours, the storage and the response times that are printed, and leaves the pound figure to the plan page.
Website maintenance, plan by plan
Basic is for a small site or a blog. It includes 3 hours a month, monthly core updates, monthly plugin updates, daily backups kept for 7 days, basic security monitoring, email and phone support, a 48-hour response time, Google Merchant Center monitoring, Google Search Console monitoring, a staging environment and CDN configuration.
Standard is the middle plan. It includes 5 hours a month, core and plugin updates every two weeks, daily backups kept for 14 days, advanced security monitoring, email, phone and WhatsApp, a 24-hour response time, weekly performance monitoring, Merchant Center and Search Console monitoring, internal uptime monitoring, staging and CDN configuration.
Enterprise includes 8 hours a month, weekly core updates, weekly plugin updates, daily backups kept for 30 days, premium security monitoring, priority email, phone and WhatsApp, a 12-hour response time, daily performance monitoring, dedicated 24/7 uptime monitoring, Merchant Center and Search Console monitoring, emergency support, staging and CDN configuration. The FAQ says emergency support exists on the plans and that Enterprise is the fastest response. The printed response on Enterprise is 12 hours. That is the number to plan around, not a hope of an instant page.
Critical security patches are applied when they are available, on every plan, not only on the plan's normal update day. Monthly on Basic means the routine core and plugin pass. It does not mean a known critical patch waits a month.
What the site work actually is
The systems named on the service are WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce, and custom sites where the stack allows it. Core updates are tested on staging before they go on the live site. Plugins, themes and extensions are updated, and unused or deprecated ones can be removed. Security monitoring covers scanning for malware and suspicious activity, firewall configuration for the site, login security and the usual threats. Performance work covers speed, uptime, database optimisation, caching and resource use. Content updates cover text, images, new pages and form changes, inside the hours. Backups of files and database are scheduled, stored off the live copy, tested, and used when a restore is required. Browser and device checks are part of the service description.
You ask for a change through the client portal, by email, or by phone. Each plan includes a number of hours, and further requests are billed at the standard hourly rate. The FAQ does not print that hourly rate on the same page as the plan hours. Ask for it when you are about to go past the included hours, rather than assuming the next hour is free.
Upgrades start immediately. Downgrades start at the end of the current billing cycle. There is no penalty on the FAQ for changing plan. Month-to-month and annual billing both exist. Annual is discounted against monthly. You can cancel. There is no long-term contract requirement in that FAQ. We can work with most other hosts. If the current host is the thing breaking the site, a move can be recommended, and we can help with that move.
What website maintenance does not include
The FAQ list is specific. Not included: a complete redesign, major feature development, new content such as blog posts or product descriptions, custom integrations or plugins, SEO services, email setup, domain registration or transfer, hosting setup or migration, security audits or vulnerability assessments, and anything else not listed on the plan. Those can be added separately, or scoped into Enterprise. SEO Toolkit inside Plesk is a panel tool. It is not this exclusion being waived. Search Console monitoring on the plan is monitoring. It is not a campaign, and it is not copywriting.
A new product description is new content. Changing an existing sentence can be a content update inside the hours. The line is the one on the FAQ. If you need a catalogue written, say so as separate work. If you need a plugin built, that is custom development, not the monthly plugin update. If you need the mailbox created, that is email hosting, not maintenance.
IT and server management
The IT plans are sized by users and by hours. Micro is for a startup that needs basic IT support: 4 hours a month, help desk, remote workstation support, business-hours coverage, basic Microsoft 365 management, basic Google Workspace management, a 12-hour response, monthly security updates, automated monitoring, and email and phone support.
Small is for up to 10 users: 8 hours a month, the same help desk and remote workstation support, business-hours coverage, a 4-hour response, a basic SFTP backup solution, and email and phone support. Standard is for up to 25 users: 16 hours a month, extended-hours coverage, a 2-hour response, Microsoft 365 management, basic Linux server management, a standard SFTP backup solution, monthly network security scans, email, phone and chat, and a quarterly IT review. Enterprise is for 25 or more users: 24 hours a month, priority help desk, extended-hours coverage, a 1-hour response, an enterprise SFTP backup solution, monthly network security scans, priority email, phone and chat, a monthly IT strategy meeting and a dedicated account manager.
The hours are the cap on the plan. A month with a new starter, a lost laptop and a mail migration can use Small's 8 hours quickly. The plan does not grow because the month was busy. Extra work is a conversation before it is done, the same way website hours are.
Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Linux
Microsoft 365 management on the FAQ covers user provisioning and deprovisioning, licence management, security and compliance settings, Exchange Online administration, SharePoint sites and permissions, Teams configuration and governance, OneDrive deployment and policies, multi-factor authentication, and regular security reviews. Google Workspace support covers user accounts, Gmail, Drive organisation and sharing, Meet, Calendar and resources, security and authentication, app deployment, mobile device management, and data migration and backup. Linux distributions named are Ubuntu Server, CentOS and Rocky Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Debian, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Amazon Linux. The work on those servers is monitoring, hardening, updates, users, service configuration, backup management and troubleshooting.
Remote office support on the same FAQ is the help desk by phone, email and remote access, workstation and laptop faults, software installation, device setup, network connectivity, VPN access, remote printing and collaboration tools. The stated aim is that a person working away from the office gets the same sort of help they would get in the office. It is remote support. It is not a promise of a van on site. Co-location remote hands, for equipment in the Colchester rack, are a different line and are charged separately from this help desk.
SFTP backup and firewalls
SFTP backup is its own product as well as a line on the IT plans. The standalone plans are Basic at 50 GB SSD with 24/7 email support and SSH key authentication, Standard at 250 GB SSD with 24/7 email and chat and one sFTP Client Cloud licence, and Enterprise at 600 GB SSD with 24/7 priority support, a dedicated account manager, SSH key authentication and two sFTP Client Team licences. The Small IT plan says a basic SFTP backup solution, Standard IT says a standard one, and Enterprise IT says an enterprise one. Read the IT checkout and the SFTP product as the two places that line can be satisfied, and do not assume the 600 GB enterprise backup is inside Micro.
Hardware firewalls are Cisco appliances in the racks: a Cisco ASA plan and a Cisco Firepower plan. They belong with a dedicated server, a co-located rack, or a database that selected a dedicated self-managed Cisco appliance. They are not a rule inside Plesk and they are not the website firewall mentioned in maintenance. Database hosting has its own choice: no extra firewall, the managed cluster firewall where you add rules, or that dedicated Cisco appliance. Pick the one in front of the thing you are protecting.
How the services fit a normal company
A small company with one WordPress site and five laptops does not need all of this on day one. Shared hosting runs the site. Email hosting or Microsoft 365 runs the mail, and those are different. Website maintenance Basic covers the monthly updates and 3 hours. IT Micro covers 4 hours of help desk. Add SFTP backup when the copies need to live off the laptop. Add a firewall when there is a rack.
A company with an application on Kubernetes and a MariaDB or PostgreSQL instance still has a marketing site and an office. The namespace is not maintained by the website plan. The database backups are the database plan's daily or hourly copies, not the website's 7-day file backup. The office laptops are the IT plan. Keeping those bills apart is how you notice which hours were used.
Linux server management on the IT plan is for servers we are asked to look after, including the distributions listed. It is not the same as managed Kubernetes, where we keep the cluster and you run the namespace. It is not the same as a self-managed VPS, where root access is yours. If the server is self-managed, the IT hours are available when you ask for them. They are not a silent takeover of root.
A sensible first month
Write down the sites, the content systems, and who may ask for an edit. Put the site on the maintenance plan that matches the update rhythm you want: monthly, every two weeks, or weekly. Confirm staging exists before the first core update. Write down the users, the laptops, and whether mail is Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or a Broadbent mailbox. Put the office on the IT plan that matches the headcount: Micro, up to 10, up to 25, or 25 and above. Note the response time on that plan, because a 12-hour Micro response and a 1-hour Enterprise response are different products.
Then list what is explicitly absent. No redesign. No new blog posts. No SEO campaign. No domain transfer inside maintenance. No assumption that hosting includes any of it. The topic IT and website maintenance is the landing page for the same split. The plans themselves are the pages to order from.
Security on the two plans
IT management describes a layered approach: regular patches, firewall configuration and monitoring, antivirus and anti-malware, multi-factor authentication, user access controls, security policies, and the reviews that go with them. Website maintenance describes scanning, site firewall configuration, login security and the removal of unused plugins. They overlap in the word security and they do not overlap in the machine. A laptop patch is the IT hour. A WordPress patch is the maintenance hour. A Cisco appliance in a rack is the firewall product. Counting one hour against all three will exhaust the smaller plan and still leave two of the jobs undone.
Monthly network security scans appear on the Standard and Enterprise IT plans, not on Micro. Premium security monitoring and 24/7 uptime monitoring appear on website Enterprise, not on website Basic. Read the line on the plan you are buying. A scan you expected, which is printed on a larger plan, will not be assumed onto a smaller one because both are called maintenance in conversation.
Ask for changes in the channel the plan names. Website changes go through the portal, email or phone. IT support goes through the help desk on the plan: email and phone on the smaller plans, chat as well on Standard and Enterprise, WhatsApp on the website Standard and Enterprise plans. Have the site name or the username ready, and say whether the fault is the public site, a mailbox, or a laptop. Those are three queues even when one company pays all three invoices.