Bedrock — proactive website maintenance
Bedrock is the stable platform every Nine Stones engagement sits on — proactive website maintenance from £250 a month that prevents problems rather than waiting for them.
Bedrock keeps your website out of trouble.
A website that loads slowly, crashes unexpectedly, or falls behind on security patches isn't just an inconvenience — it's a commercial risk. Lost visitors, damaged trust, and potential compliance failures all carry a real cost. Yet most businesses only address these issues after something has already gone wrong.
Bedrock is our entry package, and the stable platform every Nine Stones engagement sits on. From £250 a month, it buys developer hours to keep your site maintained — performance, security, accessibility, plugin and CMS updates — alongside continuous uptime monitoring and an automated monthly report, so you always know where you stand. We prevent problems, not just fix them.
What Bedrock covers
Bedrock is structured around five core disciplines, delivered as a single blended retainer.
- Core Web Vitals & performance tuning
- Continuous benchmarking and optimisation against Google's speed and user-experience signals — both lab and field data.
- CMS upkeep & plugin management
- A staged update workflow for plugins, themes, and core versions — assessed for risk, tested, and deployed during low-traffic windows.
- Security patching & vulnerability monitoring
- Patches applied promptly when issues are disclosed, with periodic automated scans and hardened configurations across your stack.
- Uptime monitoring with SLA guarantees
- Synthetic monitoring across your key pages and critical journeys, with defined response and resolution targets by severity.
- Accessibility monitoring & WCAG compliance
- Automated and manual audits against WCAG 2.2 Level AA, integrated into your regular maintenance cycle.
Beyond maintenance: bolt-on projects
Bedrock keeps the site running. When you need more than upkeep — a new landing page, a campaign microsite, a one-off audit — that work runs as bolt-on projects at £150 an hour, scoped and quoted before anything starts.
Clients on one of our marketing retainers — Fieldstone, Cornerstone or Keystone — get bolt-on work at £125 an hour. If you find yourself buying bolt-ons most quarters, that gap is usually the sign it's time to move up to a retainer.
Why a retainer beats ad-hoc fixes
Ad-hoc maintenance is reactive by nature. You notice a problem, raise a ticket, wait for availability, and pay a premium for urgency. A retainer inverts that model. Your site receives scheduled attention, your updates are tested before deployment, and our team already understands your platform when something unexpected arises.
The result is fewer emergencies, faster resolution when issues do occur, and a website that consistently performs at its best. For businesses that depend on their digital presence for leads, sales, or reputation, that consistency is invaluable.
The pieces, in order.
Core Web Vitals & performance tuning
Continuous benchmarking and optimisation against Google's speed and user-experience signals — both lab and field data.
CMS upkeep & plugin management
A staged update workflow — assessed for risk, tested in staging, deployed during low-traffic windows.
Proactive security patching & vulnerability monitoring
Three layers of defence — vendor monitoring, automated scanning, and hardened configurations across your stack.
24/7 uptime monitoring & SLA guarantees
Synthetic monitoring across your key pages, fast alerting, and SLA-backed response targets by severity.
Accessibility monitoring & WCAG compliance
Automated and manual audits against WCAG 2.2 Level AA, integrated into your regular maintenance cycle.
Thirty minutes. No pitch deck.
We'll tell you honestly whether we can help. If we can't, we usually know someone who can.
What the thirty minutes covers: what you're trying to grow, what's worked so far and what hasn't, and an honest view on whether we're the right team to own it.