The test
A good maintenance plan is one you stay on because it is worth it. A bad one is one you stay on because leaving is too hard. The way to tell them apart, before you sign or while you are on one, is to ask what leaving would actually involve. If the answer is "cancel, receive your logins and a final backup, done", you have a service. If the answer involves losing your hosting, your domain, your plugins or your site, you have a lock-in.
Here are the questions to ask, and what the good answers look like.
Who owns the domain and hosting?
The most important question. If the domain is registered in the agency's account, or the hosting is their account with your site on it, you cannot leave without their cooperation, and their cooperation is what you are cancelling.
Good answer: the domain and hosting are in accounts in your business's name; the agency has user access. Leaving means removing their access.
Bad answer: "We host it for you as part of the plan." Ask what happens to the site on the day you cancel, and how the domain transfers. If the answers are vague, the plan is a lock-in.
What happens to the backups?
Backups made under the plan often live in the agency's backup service. When you cancel, do they hand them over, or do they disappear?
Good answer: you receive a full backup, files and database, on cancellation, and backups run on your hosting account or a service you can access throughout.
Bad answer: backups are in their system and their system only.
What happens to plugin licences?
Agencies often buy premium plugins on agency licences that cover many sites, and use them on yours. It saves you money while you are on the plan. When you leave, those plugins stop receiving updates unless you buy your own licences.
Good answer: they tell you which plugins are on their licence, what each would cost to license yourself, and give you a reasonable window to do so. Or the licences are bought in your name from the start.
Bad answer: you find out when the plugins stop updating.
What is the notice period?
Good answer: a month, or cancel at the end of the current billing period.
Bad answer: twelve-month contracts with automatic renewal and a notice window you have to hit exactly. Long contracts are not always wrong, but they should come with a discount that justifies them and a clear exit at the end.
Is there a handover?
When you leave, do they give you what a new developer needs?
Good answer: a handover document (or the one they gave you at the start, updated), all logins, the final backup, the list of licences, and a short call with your new developer if you want one.
Bad answer: "Everything is in the admin." It is not.
Who owns the code?
For bespoke themes, plugins or customisations built during the plan.
Good answer: you own it, in writing.
Bad answer: silence, or "it's licensed to you while you're a client".
Can you get access at any time?
Not only when you leave. Right now, today, could you log in to the hosting, the domain, the site admin as an administrator?
Good answer: yes, and here are the logins in the shared vault.
Bad answer: "You don't need to; that's what we're for." You do need to. It is your site.
What does the plan actually include?
A lock-in often hides behind vagueness. "Maintenance and support" could mean anything.
Good answer: a list. Updates on staging with a monthly report, daily backups tested quarterly, uptime monitoring, security scanning and firewall, a stated number of hours for changes, a stated response time.
Bad answer: a monthly fee with no itemisation.
Checking a plan you are already on
Go through the list. For each bad answer, ask the agency the question directly and in writing. Most will fix it when asked, because most did not set out to trap anyone; they set things up the easy way years ago. If you meet resistance on the domain or hosting ownership, treat it as urgent and start the recovery process while the relationship is still cordial.
Why a service does not need a lock-in
An agency confident in its plan makes leaving easy, because clients who could leave and do not are the ones worth having. Our care plan is month to month, everything is in your name, licences are listed, you have every login from day one, and cancelling gets you a final backup and a handover call. That is not generosity. It is what makes the plan a service rather than a hostage arrangement, and it is what you should expect from anyone who maintains your site.