WordPress Care Plans

A website can appear to be working perfectly while updates, security vulnerabilities, expired certificates, email delivery problems or other issues are developing behind the scenes.

Regular preventative maintenance helps reduce these risks and can identify problems before they become more disruptive or expensive to resolve.

A Care Plan also means you already have someone familiar with your website to turn to when something does need attention.

Yes.

Before taking responsibility for an existing website, we may need to carry out an onboarding health check to understand its condition, configuration and any existing problems.

If significant faults, malware, outdated software or other issues are discovered, we will explain these before ongoing cover begins. Any substantial remedial work may need to be quoted separately.

We review the website and establish the information and access needed to maintain it properly.

Depending on the website, this may include checking WordPress, plugins and themes, backups, security, website email, SSL, hosting, Cloudflare/DNS and other relevant areas.

Existing websites may require a separate onboarding health check before ongoing maintenance begins.

Yes. Managed WordPress, plugin and theme updates are included across the Care Plans.

Updates are handled with consideration for the website rather than simply assuming every update should be installed immediately.

Some heavily customised, unsupported or outdated software may require additional investigation or development work.

Yes. Care Plans include automated website backups where the website and hosting environment support the required backup arrangements.

We also aim to have an appropriate recovery point available before higher risk managed changes where practical.

Backups significantly improve recovery options, but no backup system can guarantee against every possible form of data loss or third party failure.

We will investigate the issue and, where appropriate, restore the website, correct the problem or take another suitable course of action.

Straightforward problems arising from routine maintenance are normally handled as part of managing the website.

More substantial problems involving custom code, incompatible third party software, server problems or extensive redevelopment may require separately chargeable Development & Technical Support.

All Care Plans include security monitoring and an initial assessment if we believe the website may have been compromised.

We will investigate the situation, help contain the immediate problem where possible and determine what recovery work is required.

Security incidents can range from a simple malicious file to a serious compromise involving the website, hosting account, database, email, DNS or third party services. Extensive malware removal, reconstruction or incident recovery may therefore use included support time or require additional Development & Technical Support depending on the plan and circumstances.

No provider can guarantee that a website will never be attacked or compromised.

No. It would not be responsible for any provider to promise that.

Our role is to reduce risk, maintain appropriate protections, monitor for known problems and respond appropriately when an issue is identified.

Website security also depends on factors outside our control, including hosting providers, third party software, account credentials and external services.

Business, Commerce and Advanced Technical Care include a monthly allowance for smaller hands on requests in addition to routine maintenance and monitoring.

It can be used for appropriate tasks such as:

• supplied text or image changes;
• minor configuration adjustments;
• small styling changes;
  troubleshooting;
• minor technical SEO corrections;
• other small agreed website changes.

Routine Care Plan maintenance and monitoring do not use your support allowance.

No.

The primary purpose of a Care Plan is ongoing maintenance, monitoring, technical oversight and access to support rather than purchasing a bank of development hours.

Included support time is available during each monthly service period and expires if it is not required.

For work that needs a larger block of time, our Development & Technical Support service is more appropriate.

New pages are not included as routine Care Plan maintenance.

A simple page using supplied content and an existing layout may require relatively little development time, while another page could involve research, content development, SEO considerations, image preparation, custom layouts, responsive design and testing.

New pages are therefore handled through Development & Technical Support, allowing the work to be properly scoped according to what is actually required.

Routine updates using text and images supplied by you can use included support time where your plan provides it.

Creating new content, rewriting substantial amounts of existing content or developing content from an initial idea is different. This may involve understanding your business, researching the subject, planning the page, considering customers and search engines, preparing copy and carrying out revisions.

This work is therefore provided separately through Development & Technical Support.

Is SEO included with my Care Plan?

Relevant Care Plans include technical SEO health monitoring and can use available support time for appropriate minor SEO improvements.

This may include identifying or correcting issues involving indexing, redirects, metadata, sitemaps and similar website level concerns.

A full SEO campaign, keyword research, competitor research, content strategy, link building or substantial SEO project is not included as routine website maintenance and can be provided separately.

Business Care and above include relevant Google Search Console monitoring where access is available.

This can help identify important indexing, crawling or website quality issues reported by Google.

Search Console monitoring does not guarantee indexing, rankings or search engine traffic.

Yes. Commerce Care and Advanced Technical Care are designed for websites where WooCommerce, payments, orders, bookings or other transactional functionality is important.

These websites carry greater operational risk than a straightforward brochure website, so their maintenance includes additional attention to areas such as checkout, payments and other important customer journeys.

New shop functionality or substantial WooCommerce development is quoted separately.

Existing subscription and membership systems are supported under Commerce Care and Advanced Technical Care.

Routine maintenance and troubleshooting are covered within the scope of the plan, while new functionality, major changes, integrations or substantial restructuring are handled through Development & Technical Support.

Yes. Commerce and Advanced Technical Care customers receive higher priority assistance for important transactional problems.

We can investigate the website side of the problem and, where appropriate, help liaise with relevant hosting or service providers.

Payment gateways, banks and other external services remain outside our direct control, so we cannot guarantee the availability of third party systems.

Yes. We can help monitor and maintain the system used by your website to send important messages such as contact-form notifications, order emails or booking confirmations.

Where SMTP or another email delivery service is used, we can investigate website related delivery problems.

Because delivery also depends on mail providers, DNS, recipient systems and other third parties, successful delivery cannot be guaranteed.

Business Care and above include reasonable assistance dealing with hosting providers where this is required to investigate a website problem.

This can save you from having to translate technical information between different providers yourself.

Large server migrations, infrastructure projects or extensive hosting work may be separately chargeable.

Care Plans can include appropriate management of an existing Cloudflare setup used by the covered website.

Routine areas can include DNS, SSL, caching and website protection settings depending on the plan.

Large DNS migrations, Cloudflare Workers, complex firewall configurations, Zero Trust infrastructure or other specialist Cloudflare projects fall outside routine maintenance and can be provided separately.

Third party or paid Cloudflare charges are not included unless specifically agreed.

Care Plan customers have an established route for reporting important website problems, with higher plans receiving higher priority.

Emergency assessment does not mean that every problem can be immediately repaired, nor does a Care Plan provide a 24 hour, seven day a week guaranteed response service unless a separate arrangement has specifically been agreed.

For work requiring immediate interruption of scheduled work or assistance outside normal support arrangements, additional priority or emergency charges may apply.

The response target is how quickly we aim to acknowledge and begin assessing a support request during normal working arrangements.

It is not a guaranteed repair time.

Some problems can be corrected very quickly, while others require investigation, third party involvement, testing or more substantial work before the correct solution is known.

We will normally let you know before continuing with work that is clearly outside the Care Plan allowance or routine maintenance scope.

Larger changes can be completed through our Development & Technical Support service and, where appropriate, we can provide an estimated time allowance or separate project quotation.

This means your Care Plan remains focused on keeping the existing website maintained and supported rather than becoming an open-ended development contract.

Yes. If your website or business requirements change, we can review whether another Care Plan would be more appropriate.

For example, a website beginning to take online payments may need to move from Business Care to Commerce Care because the level of responsibility and monitoring required has changed.

Downgrades remain subject to the applicable plan and cancellation terms.

I recommend changing the present arrangement to:

Care Plans have an initial minimum term of three months. After the initial term, they continue monthly and can be cancelled with 30 days' notice.

This gives enough time to properly onboard and maintain a website while avoiding your existing rolling three month cancellation notice, which is unnecessarily restrictive for new customers.

Your monthly Care Plan price covers the services specifically included with your chosen plan.

Additional costs may apply for items such as:

• development outside the plan;
• extensive security incident recovery;
• new pages or functionality;
  premium plugin or theme licences;
• hosting or domain charges;
  paid Cloudflare services;
  third party software or services;
• substantial migrations or infrastructure work.

We will discuss separately chargeable work where appropriate rather than treating the Care Plan as permission for unlimited additional work.

As a simple guide:

Essential Care is suitable for smaller websites that primarily need professional maintenance, backups and security oversight.

Business Care is the best fit for many active business websites and adds broader monitoring, priority support and a small monthly support allowance.

Commerce Care is designed for websites where online orders, payments, bookings, subscriptions or other transactions are important to the business.

Advanced Technical Care is for complex, customised or business critical WordPress websites requiring closer technical oversight, greater priority and more reserved support capacity.

If you're unsure, you can contact us and we'll recommend the most appropriate level of cover based on your website rather than encouraging you to purchase more than you need.