What Is a Website Care Plan, and Do You Need One?
A website care plan covers the monthly work after launch: updates, backups, monitoring, small changes. What is in one, what is not, and what it should cost.
In this article· 6 sections
Your website launched, the developer wished you luck, and the site became your problem. Not a dramatic problem. A slow drip: an update notice here, a plugin renewal there, a Saturday-morning text that the site “looks weird on my phone.”
Short answer: A website care plan is a monthly plan for that drip: updates, backups, security, monitoring, and a person to email for small changes. Mine include the hosting too, from $99 a month. The website care plan page has the details, and the hosting cost calculator prices your current arrangement next to it.
The work a website needs every month
A launched website is not finished; it is maintained or it decays. Software updates arrive weekly, backups need to exist and be restorable, certificates renew, forms break quietly, and small facts, hours, prices, photos, go stale.
None of those jobs is hard. All of them are easy to postpone, because the site looks fine right up until it does not. The cost shows up later as one of three invoices: the emergency cleanup, the freelancer’s hourly bill for a two-line change, or your own evening spent afraid to click Update.
A care plan is buying those jobs a owner. One monthly price, a named person, and a standing instruction: keep it current, keep it backed up, tell me before it costs extra.
What a care plan should include
Hosting and SSL, updates applied for you, daily backups stored apart from the site, uptime and security monitoring, and a set amount of small-change time each month, with the overage rate stated before you sign.
Judge offers by what happens on the bad day. If an update breaks the site, is the fix included or invoiced? Is there a backup from before the break, and has anyone tested restoring it? If the site goes down at night, who finds out first, you or your customer? On Managed Website Hosting & Care, a fix or a backup restore on my watch is included in every plan, and monitoring runs around the clock.
Also judge by the exit. You should keep your domain and your content, be able to ask for a complete copy of the site any time, and cancel without a term contract. A care plan that makes leaving painful is a hostage arrangement with better marketing.
What it should not quietly include
New pages, redesigns and features are project work, not care. A plan that implies unlimited building at a care-plan price is either lying or about to bill you. Project work should come with a fixed price before it starts.
My line is simple. Plan time covers small changes: text, photos, hours, prices, a new post or a section. Anything bigger gets a number first. Past the included time (30 minutes, 1 hour or 3 hours by plan), changes are $125 an hour and I tell you before going over. Unused time does not roll over.
What it costs, and which size fits
Essentials is $99 a month for a site that changes a few times a year. Business is $249 a month with staging-tested updates and an hour of changes. Priority is $499 a month with 3 hours and 24/7 outage response.
| Plan | Price | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $99 a month | Hosting, SSL, daily backups, updates, 30 minutes of changes, response within 2 business days. Malware cleanup is $125 an hour. A fix or backup restore is included. |
| Business (most popular) | $249 a month | Everything in Essentials, 1 hour of changes, updates tested on a staging copy before they go live, malware cleanup included. |
| Priority | $499 a month | Everything in Business, 3 hours of changes, a dedicated server, 24/7 response if the site goes down. |
All three are monthly, billed through Stripe, and you can cancel any time. See the plans.
When you do not need one
If a person on your team already applies updates, keeps tested backups, watches uptime and makes small edits promptly, you already have a care plan. It is called their job, and mine would be a second one.
You also do not need care for a site that earns nothing and would not be missed for a week. And if the site needs rebuilding first, because the template fails on phones or the business has outgrown it, care comes after the rebuild, not instead of it. That is web development work, quoted as a fixed price.
What happens after you pick a plan?
Pick a plan and check out. I email you within 1 business day to start. Moving one standard site is included, or I run the same plan on your current host. After that, send changes to michael@michaelheredia.com.
Not sure which size fits? Send a question with your site address. I will look at what is actually there and tell you, including if the answer is the free tier of doing nothing.
FAQ
What is a website care plan? +
A monthly plan that covers the recurring work of owning a website: hosting, updates, backups, security, monitoring and small content changes. It replaces the mix of a host bill, your own hours and emergency freelancer invoices. My plans run $99, $249 or $499 a month.
What is not included in a website care plan? +
New pages, redesigns and custom features. Those are quoted as fixed-price work before they start. Plan time covers small changes: text, photos, hours, prices, a new post or section. On my plans that is 30 minutes on Essentials, 1 hour on Business and 3 hours on Priority.
Do I need a care plan if my site rarely changes? +
Rarely changing is when owners get caught: the site still needs updates and backups even when the content is static. If someone already does that work reliably, you do not need a plan. If nobody does, the site is one bad update or one expired card away from an emergency invoice.
Can I cancel a website care plan? +
Mine, any time. The plan runs to the end of the month you paid for. Before it ends you get a full copy of the site and help pointing your domain to a new host. You keep the domain and the content throughout.
