Website Neglect Is Costing You: Invest in Craft CMS Health to Protect Your Business

There are a few reasons our clients engage us: they seek a new partner to fuel growth through holistic digital strategy; they need proposals to tackle an upcoming project; or their website has deteriorated into what they describe as a "dumpster fire."

This article is about those dumpster fires—and what it really takes to put them out for good.

When clients come to us with a neglected website, they almost always have a good reason. Marketing teams often depend on already-stretched IT teams to update the CMS, patch or remove vulnerable plugins, keep accessibility on track, and handle a long list of ongoing site needs. Those IT teams are also responsible for internal initiatives that (understandably) take priority. Marketing manages as best they can, but eventually the cracks begin to show.

Another common path to a neglected site is a poor build from the start. We see this when big, traditional agencies inch into digital work, over-promise, or lean on outsourced teams to deliver what they do not fully understand. The client is left holding the bag on a website that is barely usable, unfinished, or impossible to maintain without breaking something.

Getting on a call with these clients to understand their situation and start mapping a way out is one of my favorite parts of the job. To channel my inner Marie Kondo: I'm excited because I love mess.

It is unfortunate that any company ends up here, but we have seen it often enough to know exactly how to fix it. In fact, our Craft CMS Health Check grew directly out of helping clients recover from neglected or poorly built websites. We put out the fires, plan a path forward, and build a stronger foundation to support long-term goals.

Before we talk about the Health Check itself, it helps to understand the real risks of website neglect—and the upside of treating your website as a long-term investment instead of a one-time project.

Why Do I Need to Keep My Website Updated?

There are many reasons to keep a website updated, but one spans all of them: it is a better investment. Letting a site slide into neglect comes with hidden costs, including heightened security risks, customers abandoning slow experiences, compatibility issues, broken functionality, and lost opportunity.

Many clients shy away from ongoing maintenance and improvement packages because the monthly cost feels high. (Ours typically start around $1,600 per month.) What those numbers do not show is the cost of recovering from a security breach, cleaning up after an outage, or rebuilding trust with customers who have been burned by a broken experience. The cost of neglect is high—and it compounds over time.

Security Risks

According to Sucuri's Website Threat Research Report, more than half of all CMS applications were outdated at the point they became infected, and over a third of compromised websites had at least one vulnerable plugin or theme. The picture is especially rough for small and mid-sized businesses: more than sixty percent were targeted by cyberattacks in 2021, and eighty-seven percent of small businesses hold customer data that could be exposed in an attack.

Older CMS and plugin versions are an open invitation to attackers. When your site contains known vulnerabilities, automated tools can find and exploit them in minutes. The consequences range from data theft and downtime to embarrassing defacements and ransomware-style lockouts where your own site is held hostage until you pay.

Regular updates and security checks provide an immediate defense for Craft CMS sites. That is why our first step when helping new clients recover from website neglect is to bring Craft and all plugins up to date, close obvious gaps, and harden the environment.

While this article focuses on Craft, we also support health checks for other content management systems, including WordPress, when that is the right fit for a client's stack.

Performance & User Experience

Think about the last time a website started to load…and then kept loading. Five, six, seven seconds went by. Did you stick around? Most people do not. Every second matters to your users, and the faster your site, the better their experience—and your results.

According to Portent, B2B sites that load in one second have a conversion rate roughly five times higher than sites that take ten seconds. Google's 2023 research showed the chance of a visitor bouncing increases by thirty-two percent when load time jumps from one to three seconds—and by around ninety percent when it goes from one to five seconds.

Performance also feeds directly into search visibility. Google has been clear that it cares about real-user performance, not just lab scores. We use a combination of Core Web Vitals—like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)—and user-focused reviews, such as our Content Structure Analysis, to build a complete picture of how a site actually feels to visitors.

Outdated CMS and plugin versions, bloated databases, accumulating plugins, and shifting browser requirements all drag performance down over time. Left unchecked, those small penalties stack into a slow, frustrating experience. The good news is that the same issues that are expensive to fix after years of neglect are relatively simple (and cheaper) to stay ahead of month to month.

Compatibility & Functionality

We recently met a client whose outdated website was in rough shape: frequent outages, duplicate orders being placed on behalf of customers, and a grab bag of user experience issues driven by browser incompatibilities. None of that was intentional—and none of it was obvious from the outside until things started breaking in ways customers could feel.

We often ask clients to imagine their website more like a building than a brochure. The analogy holds up: a thoughtful design and solid construction matter for the initial build, but foundations settle, fixtures break, neighborhoods change, and codes evolve. An outdated CMS is much easier to ignore than a leaky roof—until it is suddenly the most urgent problem on your list.

Testimonial: A Site That Lasts a Decade

Website overhauls are expensive—for good reason. Sometimes you truly need to realign your site with a new business strategy, new audiences, or a major shift in what you offer. But a full rebuild is not the only option.

An iterative approach to improvement, paired with a clear maintenance strategy, can keep a site healthy and effective for years longer than most teams expect. We have used this model to help clients keep sites operating strong for five to ten years without a disruptive overhaul, even as content, features, and expectations evolved.

Craft CMS Health Check

If you are reading this and thinking, "Sure, I get why maintenance matters—but I still have a broken site right now," you are exactly who we had in mind when we designed our Craft CMS Health Check (and our broader Website Health Check). We love helping clients navigate out of sticky situations, and those emergency starting points often grow into some of our best long-term partnerships.

In our Craft CMS Health Check, we review a comprehensive set of metrics to ensure your site is running smoothly and optimized for both users and search engines. Our review includes:

• Google Core Web Vitals scores: We review your Core Web Vitals to understand how real users experience your site and where performance is holding you back.
• Content structure analysis: We assess your use of heading tags (H1, H2, and beyond), page structure, and internal linking patterns that affect SEO and user navigation.
• Site speed grading: We analyze page load times and recommend specific changes to make your Craft site faster and more consistent.
• Internal link check: We run audits using SEO tools to surface broken internal links and redirect issues that frustrate users and search engines alike.
• SEO index check: We verify your sitemap configuration in Google Search Console and make sure key pages are actually being indexed.
• Plugins check: We identify plugins that need updates, those that can be removed, and opportunities to simplify your stack for better security and performance.
• Craft CMS settings review: We review Craft's configuration to spot misaligned settings, caching issues, and other hidden problems that affect stability or author experience.
• Security & code health review: We look for common vulnerabilities, fragile patterns, and code-level risks that could impact reliability or open the door to attacks.
• Accessibility review: We identify accessibility errors, color contrast issues, and keyboard or mobile barriers that keep users from completing key tasks.

At the end of the audit, we deliver our findings alongside a prioritized roadmap of tactics to improve your site's capabilities and performance. The goal is a website that feels stable, trustworthy, and aligned with your organizational goals—not another short-term patch.

Fix the Foundation

The cost of neglect is simply too high for organizations that rely on their websites to drive revenue, support customers, or tell their story. But there is a way to stop the bleeding, regain control, and move confidently into the future with a site that is an advantage instead of a liability.

Our Craft CMS Health Check is a comprehensive diagnostic tool that shows you exactly where things stand and what to do next. It is the first step toward a site that supports your ambitions for growth and resilience—without waiting for the next emergency.

FAQs: Craft CMS Health Checks & Website Maintenance ROI

1. What's the real cost of skipping website maintenance?

Neglect leads to outdated CMS versions, vulnerable plugins, slow load times, and broken features—all of which erode revenue and customer trust. Fixing those issues in crisis mode is almost always more expensive than steady, proactive care.

2. How can a Craft CMS Health Check protect my site?

It diagnoses risks across security, performance, accessibility, and stability before they turn into outages or breaches. You get a clear picture of where you stand and a prioritized action plan to shore up your foundation.

3. What security risks come from an outdated CMS?

More than half of CMS breaches happen on outdated versions, where known vulnerabilities are easy for attackers to scan and exploit. Regular updates and security reviews close those gaps before they are used against you.

4. How does site speed impact conversions and bounce rates?

B2B sites that load in about one second convert dramatically better than those that take ten seconds, and slow pages can see bounce rates spike by up to ninety percent. Faster, more stable performance keeps people on your site long enough to take action.

5. Can poor website builds make maintenance harder?

Yes. Weak or overly complex builds slow down every future change, increase the odds of new bugs, and make simple updates feel risky. A Health Check helps surface those structural issues so you can address them deliberately instead of papering over symptoms.

6. Is a Health Check only about fixing current problems?

No. It is just as much about prevention and performance as it is about repair. You get a roadmap for keeping your site secure, fast, and maintainable over time—not just a list of fires to put out today.

7. How often should I schedule a Craft CMS Health Check?

At minimum, once a year—or sooner if you notice slowdowns, security alerts, major content changes, or a growing backlog of "we'll fix that later" issues. Regular checks keep small concerns from snowballing into emergencies.

8. Why is proactive maintenance cheaper than reactive fixes?

Emergency repairs usually mean downtime, lost revenue, and urgent developer hours at the worst possible time. Proactive maintenance spreads costs out, reduces surprises, and lets you invest in improvements on your schedule instead of a hacker's.