Long-lived rather than large
Not every good TYPO3 project is a large one. In Lower Franconia many sites are modest and built to last: a chamber of commerce, an association, a family business in its third generation. Sites like that do not get rebuilt every two years; they are meant to carry ten.
That changes the priorities. What matters is not the most spectacular effects but a structure people understand, an editing interface still usable after a six-month gap, and an operating plan that works without constant attention.
When nobody in-house is responsible
The most common situation in smaller organisations: the website matters but is nobody’s main job. How it is built then decides whether it gets maintained or falls idle.
We deliberately build sparingly for this case: few, clearly named content elements rather than a collection of blocks you can get lost in. What is not needed never reaches the backend.
Public bodies and accessibility
With the university, the hospitals and municipal institutions, BITV 2.0 applies to many sites here. We build accessibility into the foundation rather than patching it on afterwards; retrofitting is considerably more work when the markup structure is wrong.
Running a site without an IT department
At chambers, associations and family businesses there is rarely anyone whose job is the website. It matters, but it belongs to nobody, and that is what sites founder on, not the technology.
So the way it is built decides. Few, clearly named content elements rather than a collection of blocks. Sensible defaults, so the usual job works without anyone having to think about it. And a backend that holds only what is needed.
We take on the technical part with the ongoing maintenance: following security advisories, updates in planned waves, backups with a tested restore. What genuinely protects and what mainly reassures is set out under securing TYPO3.
The hosting question is worth asking early
In smaller organisations in particular, hosting has often grown historically: signed up for at some point and untouched since. That comes back at the first update.
Four points decide whether an environment carries you: a suitable PHP version, an adequate database, the ability to use Composer, and a reproducible way of putting a new state in place. Without the last one, every update becomes manual work, the most common reason a cheap package ends up costing more. The full list is under hosting requirements.