Website Care Plan

Website Care Plan

The Care Plan is a flat annual fee that covers two things: the core software licenses your site needs to run, and the routine maintenance that keeps it healthy. It is for clients who want the site looked after without thinking about it, and who would rather receive one invoice per year than manage a stack of vendor renewals.

You will not need to log into anything, approve anything, or remember anything. That is the point.

What the plan actually covers

The core licenses. Every WordPress site runs on a small set of premium tools — the theme, the block library, and the forms plugin. These require annual licenses to receive updates and security patches. The Care Plan covers them on your behalf. You never see a renewal notice, because there is no renewal notice to see.

The automated maintenance. The plan uses a management platform (WP Umbrella) to run checks and updates on a schedule. It is the same category of tool agencies use to look after dozens of client sites at once, which means your site gets the benefit of a system built for volume rather than a manual checklist someone remembers to run on a quiet afternoon.

What that looks like in practice:

  • Safe updates applied on a schedule, with a backup taken first and an automatic rollback if anything breaks
  • Uptime monitoring that checks whether the site is reachable, and alerts me if it is not
  • SSL and domain expiry tracking, so neither quietly lapses
  • Vulnerability monitoring for known WordPress security issues
  • A monthly or weekly report (depending on your tier) confirming what was checked and what was done

The report is worth a sentence on its own. It arrives as a short, plain document. You do not need to read it every month. It exists so that if you ever wonder what you are paying for, the answer is on one page rather than in a vague memory of a conversation.

Two tiers, and why only two

Most care plan providers offer four or five tiers with names like Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum, and the difference between them is usually a list of things you did not know you needed. I have kept it to two, because the honest distinction is frequency, not features.

Standard — $350/year

  • Core software licenses covered
  • Monthly maintenance checks and safe updates
  • Monthly report
  • Uptime, SSL, and domain monitoring
  • Vulnerability monitoring
  • Email support for Care Plan questions

Elevated — $475/year

  • Everything in Standard
  • Weekly maintenance checks and safe updates
  • Weekly report
  • Priority scheduling if something needs attention

The weekly tier exists for sites where a few days of downtime or a missed form enquiry would actually cost money. If your site is a brochure that receives a handful of enquiries a week, Standard is the right choice. If you run bookings, registrations, or anything where a broken form on Tuesday is a problem by Wednesday, Elevated is worth the difference.

There is no tier above Elevated. If you need more than weekly checks, you need a retainer, not a bigger care plan.

What this does not include

  • Hosting and domain renewal (these remain in your name with your host, paid directly by you)
  • Content updates, new pages, or design changes (see Website Maintenance or Monthly Retainers)
  • Emergency recovery from malware or a hack (quoted separately if it ever happens)
  • Ecommerce debugging that requires developer-level investigation

The exclusions are here so that nothing arrives as a surprise invoice. If something falls outside the plan, I will tell you before doing any work.

How it works, plainly

  1. You choose a tier when the site launches, or at any point afterward.
  2. I connect the site to the management platform. This takes a few minutes and does not affect how the site looks or behaves.
  3. The checks run on schedule. Updates are applied safely, with a backup taken first and a rollback if something breaks. Monitoring runs continuously.
  4. You get a report on the schedule your tier specifies. It tells you what was checked and what was done, in language that does not require a glossary.
  5. If something needs a human, I am the one who gets the alert, not you. That is the entire value of the arrangement.

You are not buying software. You are buying the absence of a certain kind of administrative worry.

Pricing and payment terms

Standard: $350/year, invoiced annually.
**Elevated:** $475/year, invoiced annually.

The fee is flat and does not change based on how many individual licenses are in use or how many updates happened that month. It renews twelve months from the date of enrollment.

Terms:

  • Invoiced annually, due within 14 days.
  • You may switch tiers at renewal. Mid-year upgrades are prorated; mid-year downgrades take effect at the next renewal.
  • If you cancel, the plan remains active until the end of the paid year. The site itself is yours, and you keep it. The licenses are held on my account, so you would start fresh with your own licenses if you move to another provider.
  • The Care Plan does not replace a retainer for content work. It is upkeep, not development.

Who this is for

Clients who want the site maintained with zero administrative effort on their side, and who do not need ongoing content changes. It suits brochure sites, portfolios, and small business sites where the priority is that the site stays online, secure, and quietly up to date.

It does not suit sites that are actively changing every week. Those clients need a retainer, and the Care Plan can sit underneath it as the maintenance layer.

Frequently asked questions

What is WP Umbrella, and do I need to do anything with it?
WP Umbrella is the platform I use to run the checks and updates. You will never log into it, and you do not need to know it exists. It is infrastructure, like the hosting server. You only need to know that it is doing its job, and the monthly or weekly report is the evidence.

Will the updates break my site?
The platform takes a backup before updating and can roll back automatically if something goes wrong. In practice, most updates are uneventful. When one is not, the rollback happens before you would have noticed anything.

What happens if my site goes down at 2am?
The monitoring catches it and alerts me. You will likely find out from the report, or from a message saying it was handled. You will not find out from a client telling you the site is broken.

Does the Care Plan cover every plugin on my site?
It covers the core licenses your site needs to run. Specialized development tools used to build the site are part of the build service and are not billed separately. If a future project needs a specialized tool, that is quoted with the project rather than added to your Care Plan.

Can I just pay for the licenses and skip the maintenance?
Yes, but it is not a configuration I recommend. Licenses without updates are just receipts. The value is in the updates being applied safely and someone noticing when something fails. If you want the licenses only, that is a conversation, but it is a different and smaller service.

Does this cover content changes?
No. Adding a page, changing text, or adjusting a form is maintenance work or retainer work. The Care Plan keeps the site healthy; it does not change what the site says.