You should get a written warranty window, a set number of days after launch in which the studio fixes anything that is broken at no charge. How long it runs varies. One agency guide calls 30 days the industry standard, another calls a three month warranty the 2026 norm. The number matters less than the definitions behind it, because a long window with vague terms protects you less than a short one with clear terms.
The word that does the work is bug. A bug is behaviour that departs from what was approved when you signed the site off, like a contact form that does not send. That gets fixed for free. If a studio told you in writing that the form would send to your inbox and it lands nowhere, nobody should be quoting you for the repair.
A change request is anything new. A filter you did not ask for, a page you now want laid out differently, a flow you have rethought since launch. Those are quoted and billed, and that is fair, because the studio is doing fresh work. Small content corrections sit in between. One studio says around ten typo fixes is reasonable, while rewriting whole pages is extra work. Ask where your studio draws that line before you need it.
Some things sit outside the warranty even though they feel like bugs. Hosting problems, domain issues, a payment gateway or API changing its rules, a plugin breaking after an update, edits made by your own developer. This is why 30 days is so common. Browsers, server software and devices keep changing under a finished site, and no studio can promise it keeps working at no cost for ever. Longer windows of 45 or 60 days can be negotiated, but you pay for the extra cover.
Expect real issues in the first month. They don't mean the build was poor. The usual ones are email that does not arrive, a bug in one browser, an odd behaviour on a particular phone, a third party tool that behaves differently live, and content mistakes nobody spotted in review. One studio points out that many bugs only appear after six to eight weeks of real traffic, which is the argument for a longer window.
Your job that month is to use the site hard. Submit the contact form, run a test purchase, practise edits in the CMS on a test page, and read your analytics. Send problems in one batch rather than one email at a time, so the studio can fix them properly. Don't panic if Google is slow. Its own guidance says indexing can take from a day or so to a week or two, and a request does not guarantee a page appears.
When you compare two quotes, check four things. When does the warranty start, and is it the day you sign off or the day the site goes live? How fast are fixes, by severity? One sample contract promises blocking bugs in 24 hours and major ones in five days. Which browsers and devices are covered? And who owns the hosting, domain, code and admin accounts? A quote that is silent on all four is usually the cheaper one for a reason.
Day 31 is the bit people forget to plan. After the warranty, you can keep the studio on a monthly retainer, pay by the hour, or run the site yourself. Published maintenance ranges differ by market: one US guide says 100 to 1,000 dollars a month, one European guide says 60 to 400 euros. Decide before the window closes, not after. Next step: ask any studio you are talking to for the warranty length, the bug definition and the exclusions in writing. Have them put all three into the quote.