Before I talk about updates and why a website crashes because of them, I want to clarify things. Every website requires maintenance. Maintenance can mean changing a banner on the homepage, fixing bugs, or patching security flaws.
Without a development team, you are limited to the initial features of your website. Some features may have bugs that were not discovered during testing, and the most critical aspect is that you will have outdated software with security exploits and flaws.
The maintenance cost varies depending on factors like code quality, how many features your website has, how frequently you add features to your website, etc.
I hope that you now understand the importance of actively maintaining your website and that without it, sooner or later, your website will crash.
WordPress today is just a content management system developed and maintained by the WordPress community. The design is conceived as a theme, and every custom feature is a plugin. Every theme and plugin you use has a development team that maintains it.
Therefore, every theme and every plugin will receive minor updates more frequently. Instead of receiving significant updates now, the modular nature gives WordPress its versatility and makes it suitable for every type of website.
It is true that from time to time, themes and plugins may be out of sync with WordPress’ core and will result in your website crashing. The solution is to postpone the updates until every component is compatible. Usually, this will happen in a couple of days.
Receiving frequent updates means that bugs that you did not know existed were fixed, and any security flaw or exploit discovered was patched. Updates can and will crash your website, but with a capable development team, your website will be up and running in no time.