What actually breaks on Irish small-business sites
Across the sites we run and the ones we examine, the failure list is boringly consistent: updates that were never applied until one clashed, browser padlocks (SSL certificates) that ran out silently, contact forms that stopped delivering with no error, hosting moves that dropped a domain record, and WordPress installs running versions years out of date.
Almost none of it is exotic. All of it is preventable, which is the uncomfortable part: a repair bill is usually the invoice for watching that did not exist.
Repair versus upkeep
Repair is reactive: something is visibly broken, a specialist fixes it, you pay once. Upkeep is the reason repair never becomes urgent: updates on schedule, backups tested by restoring them, forms test-messaged by a machine, the padlock renewed before it runs out. If you are choosing between them, you are really choosing between paying for prevention monthly or paying for emergencies at emergency rates.
What a proper repair includes
- Diagnosis with evidence: what broke, why, and proof of the fix. Not "it should be grand now".
- A restore-tested backup taken before anything is touched.
- The cause fixed, not just the symptom: an outdated add-on gets an update policy, not just an update.
- A written note of what was done, so the next person (including future you) is not starting blind.