A Guide to Drupal Website Maintenance and Support

Note: This blog was first published on October 5, 2022, and has been updated to reflect new information and insights.

Takeaway: Choosing the right Drupal website maintenance and support strategy is crucial for public sector organizations, where downtime can cost upwards of $5 million per hour. Our tiered support approach—from Basic security essentials to comprehensive Ignite coverage—ensures your site remains secure and high-performing.

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The hidden cost of neglecting website maintenance

When organizations skip regular website maintenance, the impact can be severe. This is an enlightening article from Atlassian on the costs of downtime. A pertinent quote:

The industries with the highest risk include banking/finance, government, healthcare, manufacturing, media and communications, retail, and transportation/utilities. One 2016 study found that the average cost for downtime in these industries was upward of $5 million per hour.

Core components of Drupal website support plans

Understanding the layers of Drupal website support helps you make informed decisions about your maintenance strategy. Based on our extensive experience with state & local government and higher education sector websites, we've developed four comprehensive support tiers that align with different organizational needs.

Basic support: Foundation for security

Our Basic plan focuses on essential security maintenance, providing:

• Drupal core and module highly critical security updates
• Stage environment updates ready for UAT within 24 hours
• Fast response to critical security threats
• Priority-based issue resolution

This tier is ideal for organizations seeking fundamental security coverage without additional maintenance features.

Read: 5 Essential Cybersecurity Questions to Ask IT Vendors

Protect: Enhanced security and monitoring

Building on the Basic tier, the Protect plan adds:

• Critical and moderately critical security updates at your convenience
• Monthly scorecard reporting for tracking site health
• Status calls as requested
• Automated testing post-updates with remediation
• Flexible scheduling for non-critical updates

The Protect tier suits organizations needing robust security with regular performance monitoring.

Extend (most popular): Comprehensive coverage

Our most selected tier, Extend offers:

• Accelerated security update timelines (18-hour UAT readiness)
• Quarterly non-critical and functional updates
• Weekly scorecard reporting and status calls
• Both automated and manual testing post-updates
• Bi-annual heuristic reviews
• Critical security updates within 48 hours

This plan balances proactive maintenance with strategic improvements.

Ignite: Premium support experience

Our highest tier of support delivers:

• Fastest response times (12-hour UAT readiness)
• Monthly non-critical and functional updates
• Twice-weekly scorecard reporting and status calls
• Quarterly heuristic reviews
• Comprehensive testing protocol
• Critical security updates within 24 hours

All support tiers can be enhanced with optional services including:

• Site enhancements
• Customized automated testing
• Analytics dashboard implementation
• SEO recommendations
• Broken link detection
• ADA compliance scans
• Performance testing
• User testing

Each plan represents an annual commitment with monthly billing cycles, ensuring dedicated resource availability for your organization's needs. For specific requirements, we also offer block-hour options without long-term commitments.

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Choosing the right support structure

The ideal maintenance approach aligns with your organization's specific needs and capabilities. Some organizations manage basic updates internally while partnering with agencies for complex maintenance tasks. Others opt for comprehensive support plans that cover everything from routine updates to emergency response. The key is finding a balance that ensures site stability while optimizing resource allocation.

Why support for open-source CMS platforms work

The topic of open source vs. proprietary software for government websites—or any website—is the source of a lot of conversation and consideration these days.

Very often, it’s website maintenance and support that proves to be the key differentiator. With proprietary software, support is wrapped up in the licensing fees. The upside of such an arrangement is minimal decision-making or the need to weigh multiple factors relative to the selection of a support partner.

The downside: you get what you get.

Websites that are built on proprietary platforms are supported and maintained by the company that owns the software. Period. Wherever the level of support falls on the spectrum of excellent to abysmal, the relationship is locked in.

As an open-source CMS, Drupal sites also need support and maintenance. The difference is choice. Site owners have the option to contract with any Drupal support provider, they can handle Drupal support in-house, they can work out a hybrid arrangement, and they can switch it up if Plan A does not prove to be meeting their needs.

As such, Drupal support providers need to add value and bring their A-game to every interaction.

Clients have choices and they know it.

Frequently asked questions

When selecting an optimal Drupal support arrangement, many factors come into play and the right solutions are not one-size-fits-all. There are lots of questions and much to be clarified before moving forward.

Here are the kinds of questions that we frequently hear concerning Drupal website maintenance.  

If my Drupal site was built well in the first place, does it still need to be supported and maintained?

Absolutely yes.

In our current digital climate, your website is the window into your organization. It’s a vital digital asset that calls for well-calibrated care.

Stakes are high for keeping data secure and heading off security breaches as threats are identified within the Drupal community. There is no end to the bad actors out there, who view compromising web security as a sport. At Promet, we’re constantly monitoring the Drupal community message boards, and when issues arise, we’re on it.

Whether you need to accomplish something slightly outside of your internal team’s skill set or just need to supplement your team from time to time, a good Drupal support relationship is key to the peak performance of your site along with value-added alignment with your organizational goals and objectives.

Wait a minute. Isn't open-source software free?

It’s essential to keep the concept of "free" in perspective. Open source software is freely available, the code base can be inspected, modified, or enhanced, and there are no licensing fees associated with its use.

Proprietary software, on the other hand, is owned and managed by an organization that holds exclusive rights to the source code. Licensing fees cover upgrades and security fixes—but on a preset timeframe determined by the company that owns the code.

The flipside for freely available open-source is that keeping the site secure and up to date requires ongoing monitoring. Drupal support relationships are enhanced by the the collective brainpower of the worldwide Drupal community whose members share information about both vulnerabilities and fixes as they are detected.

What percentage of support hours are devoted to security updates vs. enhancements, design tweaks, etc.?

That depends. Some clients opt to purchase a bare-bones support agreement, to simply ensure that their site does not miss out on the latest security update. While we can’t predict the number and types of security threats and Drupal updates that will occur over the course of a month or a year, we advise clients to build wiggle room into support agreements to allow for unexpected needs for updates and enhancements that can emerge.

What does stellar Drupal support look like?

An optimal Drupal support relationship is a partnership that's devoted to peak website performance.

The result is the assurance of a consistent user experience, opportunities to augment staff expertise, and confidence that site functionality will remain on the leading edge of what’s new, next, and needed tools such as an online support portal, a Jira ticketing system, automated testing, regularly scheduled reporting, and online chat capabilities provide a multiple means of connection, ensuring that lines of communication remain open, and the integrity of their site isn’t compromised.

Get reliable Drupal website maintenance and support with Promet Source

Promet’s Drupal support clients have the advantage of a well-oiled machine of predictable, repeatable support and maintenance processes. Plus: Access to a deep bench of expertise and capabilities that they can tap into as needed.

At Promet, our passion to ignite and fuel new digital possibilities hinges on the assurance of a secure, high-functioning site.

We’ve devoted a depth and breadth of resources toward expectation-exceeding support, and welcome the opportunity to start the conversation concerning the impact we could have on your site and within your organization. 

GET COMPREHENSIVE DRUPAL SUPPORT AND MAINTENANCE