What a Website Care Plan Actually Covers, and What It Should Cost

Websites do not break all at once. A plugin update does not run. Then a form stops sending. Then it turns out the backups have been failing for five months, and nobody finds out until the day somebody needs one. Every one of those is cheap to catch and expensive to discover, and the only thing standing between the two is somebody looking on a schedule. That is what a care plan is.

What should happen every month

Updates, tested. Core, theme and plugins updated against a staging copy first, so an update never takes the live site down. Backups taken daily and kept off the server, because a backup living on the machine that failed is not a backup, and one that has never been restored is a hope. Security and uptime monitored, so if it goes down somebody knows before you do. Speed checked, because sites get slower on their own as content and plugins pile up. And the forms tested by sending one, because a form that quietly stops delivering is the most expensive fault a business website can have.

What it should cost

Mine are priced on time. Essential is two hours a month at £90, which covers the checks above and a small job or two. Standard is five hours at £225, which is where most people land, because it carries time for the small changes that otherwise sit on a list for a year. Priority support is ten hours at £450 for sites that a business genuinely cannot afford to have down. Hosting and domain can be looked after alongside for £25 a month.

How to tell a real one from a monthly charge

Ask three questions. When was the last backup restored, not taken, and where is it kept. What happens when an update breaks something, and is there a staging copy it is tested on first. And what do you get each month that tells you what was done. If the answers are vague, you are paying for the word maintenance rather than the work.

When you do not need one

If the site is a simple brochure, rarely changes, sits on decent hosting and you are comfortable checking updates and backups yourself once a month, you may not. Plenty of people do it themselves fine. The plan is for businesses where the website brings in enquiries and nobody in the office wants to own the updates.

Full detail on the care and maintenance page.