Yea for sure. My '85 Daytona has a life time warranty battery - I had replaced it (free) countless times - but only once since I started using a maintainer on it and that one was not on a maintainer for its first year or two of life. The only issue I ever had with a maintainer was using a 2 amp maintainer on my '82 Gold Wing battery - it only extended the life by one year - but when I replaced it with the same battery I read in the manual that 2 Amp is the maximum charger you should use so it was probably too high in current when it was charging before maintenance mode. I now use a 0.75 Amp maintainer (this one is actually a Battery Tender brand unit) on the bike.

My career was in two way radio and cellular telephone systems and networks. Every radio or cell site installation had lead acid back up batteries. Expected life is 20 years. The charging systems on those battery banks for years have had 3 modes - charge, float and equalize. Charge is well charge. Float is what the auto units now call a maintenance mode. Equalize is a mode someone mentioned above that can actually reverse the sulfation in the battery and help recover it. Important to note that a battery maintainer does not charge the battery in maintenance mode. Charging is a current function - even a trickle charger drives a certain level of current into the battery - once the battery is full if that continues it will over charge the battery and damage it. In charge mode the voltage will increase to continue the charge current flow. A maintenance mode is a constant voltage (float voltage) function - it floats the battery at a constant voltage with current variable as needed to maintain the float voltage.

Oh and those sites are all unmanned - and never heard of a fire blamed on the battery or charger / maintainer - but they are more expensive systems although bets they do use at least parts made in China now if not assembled there.