Renewal Dates Do Not Wait for Something to Break

The Browser Vendors Move First

Web certificates issued on or after 15 March 2026 are capped at 200 days of validity. Before that date the cap was 398 days. It drops again to 100 days on 15 March 2027 and to 47 days on 15 March 2029. Those dates are already written into the Baseline Requirements that browser vendors and certificate authorities set together at the CA/Browser Forum. A certificate is the file behind the padlock in the address bar, and when it lapses your visitors meet a full page warning instead of your site.

So a chore that used to come around once a year comes around twice, and within a few years roughly every six weeks. Renewing by hand does not survive that cadence for long. Automating the renewal, and deciding whose inbox receives the alert when the renewal fails, is what the first clause of a maintenance agreement is actually for.

Apps run on the same kind of calendar. From 31 August 2026 Google Play requires new apps and updates to existing apps to target Android 16 (API level 36) or higher. Apps already published are not pulled down, but one left targeting below Android 15 (API level 35) stops appearing at all for new users on devices running a newer version of Android. If you are behind, Play Console opens a path to request an extension to 1 November. None of that adds a feature, and all of it comes back next year.

Warranty and Maintenance Sit in Different Clauses

Warranty work means the builder fixes what does not behave the way it was promised. Maintenance means keeping something that already works in working order. In a well written contract these live apart, and the warranty window is counted from acceptance, with its length and scope negotiated case by case.

The fight is almost never about the window. It is about the word “defect” having no definition in the document. Without one, the client reads every broken thing as a defect and the studio reads every unlisted thing as new work, and both readings are defensible. The fix is to have the contract name the file that settles it. A screen spec, a feature list, a signed scope note, whichever exists. If it does not behave the way that named file says, it is warranty work. If the file never mentioned it, it is a new request. Once both sides open the same document, that conversation happens once instead of monthly.

”How Fast Do You Fix It” Needs Two Numbers

Time to respond is how long until someone confirms they have seen it. Time to restore is how long until the thing works again. A line that says “24 hour response” has usually only promised the first one. A reply in an hour followed by a three day repair does not breach it.

How the clock runs matters just as much. Business hours only, or wall clock time including nights and weekends. For a shop whose checkout dies on a Friday evening, that distinction is the whole weekend. This is why severity tiers are worth the paragraph they take: the whole service is down, one feature is broken, something looks wrong but still works. Write a response and a restore target against each tier and you can attach out of hours cover to the tier that actually needs it. Bundle everything into the top tier and the cost of that promise ends up priced into the rest of the agreement.

Separate the Standing Work From the Requests

A monthly retainer normally carries a cap on hours. That cap immediately splits the work in two: what draws down the hours, and what has to happen every month regardless. The second list is the standing work, and it is the part most contracts leave blank.

• Confirming that a backup restores, not that a backup exists. Files accumulating and data coming back are two different checks.
• Security updates for the libraries and server software you depend on. Advisories keep arriving during the months nobody touches the product.
• Reviewing renewal dates for domains, certificates, and third party service agreements.

Whatever is left goes to requests. One more line is worth settling here: whether unused hours roll into the following month. Say they do and a quiet month becomes budget for the month with a redesign in it. Say they do not and both sides go looking for useful work every month. Either answer works. It is the absence of an answer that always costs the client.

The Calendar Comes Before the Contract

You can start this without a maintenance contract in hand. Weple’s site care work spends its first month gathering the expiry dates of whatever you hand over into a single sheet: domains and certificates, store accounts, payment providers, third party service agreements, each with the date it comes back around. Only then do we split the standing work from the requests. What a month covers is written out on the pricing page. If the developer who built it has already gone quiet, the order of operations in the first week after a developer goes quiet comes first. A domain registration email or a single billing receipt is enough to fill in the first row.