Care & maintenance
The part most agencies stop doing after launch
A website is software. It needs updates, backups, monitoring and someone who notices when the contact form quietly stops sending. Most sites get none of that, and the first anyone hears about it is a customer mentioning that they emailed three weeks ago and never got a reply.
- Updates
- On staging, then live
- Backups
- Daily, offsite, restore-tested
- Monitoring
- Uptime, forms, SSL, vitals
- From
- $850 / month
The problem
Nobody notices a site going quietly wrong
A broken website announces itself. A degrading one does not. The form stops delivering because an SMTP credential expired. The certificate renews, except on the www subdomain. A plugin update changes a layout on one template nobody visits often. Backups have been running for two years and have never once been restored.
None of these produce an alert. They produce a slow, invisible loss that gets attributed to the market being quiet.
Worth checking this week
- When did you last receive a test submission from your own contact form?
- When was a backup last restored, as opposed to taken?
- How many days of plugin and core updates are currently pending?
- Who gets notified if the site goes down at 2am on a Saturday?
- Is anyone looking at the SSL expiry date, or is it assumed?
- If the site were compromised tomorrow, what is the actual recovery plan?
What is included
What a care plan covers
Keeping it safe
- Core, theme and plugin updates applied on staging and checked before going live
- Daily offsite backups, retained to a stated schedule
- Restores tested periodically, because an untested backup is a hope
- Security hardening reviewed, with malware scanning and file-integrity checks
- Vulnerability disclosures monitored for the components you actually run
Keeping it working
- Uptime monitoring with alerting to a human, not just a dashboard
- Contact and enquiry forms test-submitted on a schedule and confirmed delivered
- SSL certificate and domain renewal dates tracked ahead of expiry
- Broken internal links and 404s reviewed and redirected
- Database maintenance so the site does not slow down as it grows
Keeping it fast and findable
- Core Web Vitals field data reviewed, with regressions investigated
- Search Console coverage and crawl errors checked
- An accessibility regression check across the main templates
- Image and asset weight reviewed as new content is published
Keeping you in the loop
- A monthly report in plain language: what was updated, what was found, what was fixed
- A content-edit allowance each month for small changes
- A named person who answers, within a stated response window
- A quarterly call on what the site should do next — not just what broke
For reference
What happens, and how often
| Task | Frequency | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| Offsite backup | Daily | Confirmed in the monthly report |
| Uptime check | Continuous | Alert if it fails, plus monthly uptime figure |
| Core, theme and plugin updates | Monthly, on staging first | Itemised list of what changed |
| Form delivery test | Monthly | Pass or fail, with the fix if it failed |
| Security and malware scan | Weekly | Flagged only if something is found |
| Backup restore test | Quarterly | Stated in the quarterly review |
| Core Web Vitals review | Monthly | Field data trend, with regressions explained |
| Roadmap call | Quarterly | A short written list of what is worth doing next |
Our process
How onboarding works
Understand needs
Audit what you are handing us
Platform, hosting, plugin inventory, update backlog, backup state and existing monitoring. We need to know what we are taking responsibility for.
You get: Onboarding audit and risk list
Strategize
Clear the backlog, set the baseline
Outstanding updates applied safely, backups configured and restore-tested, monitoring connected, staging environment created if there is not one.
You get: Stabilised site and documented baseline
Create & build
Run the cycle
The monthly rhythm: updates on staging, checks run, issues fixed, your small change requests handled.
You get: Monthly report with everything logged
Optimize & grow
Improve, not just maintain
Maintenance keeps the site alive; the quarterly call is where it gets better. We bring what the data says is worth doing next.
You get: Quarterly roadmap review
Honest scoping
Who needs a care plan
Worth it if
- The site generates enquiries or revenue and downtime costs you real money
- Nobody internally owns the website as part of their actual job
- You are on WordPress, where update discipline matters most
- You want one number to call rather than a hunt for whoever built it
- You would rather pay a predictable monthly amount than an emergency rate
Probably not if
- You have an in-house developer who already does this and does it well
- Your site is a single static page that changes once a year
- You are expecting unlimited design and development work under a maintenance fee — that is a retainer, and we will quote it as one
- You want us to maintain a site built by someone else with no documentation, without an onboarding audit first; we would be guessing, and guessing is how sites break
Questions
Before you ask us
The things people ask about Care & Maintenance before they get in touch. If yours is not here, ask directly — you will get a straight answer rather than a brochure.
Ask a questionWhat if my site goes down?
Uptime monitoring alerts a person, not just a dashboard. We investigate, restore from backup if that is the fastest route, and tell you what happened and what we changed so it does not recur. Response windows are stated in the plan rather than left vague.
Do you maintain sites you did not build?
Yes, after an onboarding audit. We need to know what we are taking on — platform, plugin inventory, update backlog, backup state, whether there is a staging environment. Occasionally that audit finds a site in a state where honest maintenance is not possible without remediation first, and we would tell you that rather than quietly taking the monthly fee.
Are content changes included?
Each plan includes a monthly allowance for small edits — copy changes, swapping an image, adding a team member, publishing a post. Larger work like a new template or a new feature is quoted separately. The allowance does not roll over, which we would rather state plainly than bury.
Can I cancel?
Yes, monthly, with notice. Your site, hosting, repository and credentials are yours throughout — there is nothing to extract and no hostage situation. We will hand over cleanly, including the documentation.
Why not just let updates run automatically?
Automatic updates are better than no updates, and for security releases we generally want them on. But a plugin update that changes a layout on one template is exactly the kind of thing automation applies and nobody notices for six weeks. Applying on staging first and checking the templates is the difference between maintenance and hoping.
What does a care plan cost?
Plans start at $650 per month, scaled to the size of the site, the platform and the response time you need. See the pricing page for the current plans and what each includes.
Find out what state your site is actually in
Send us the URL and admin access and we will run the onboarding audit: update backlog, backup state, security posture, form delivery, performance. You get the findings whether or not you take a plan.