What is a website care plan, and do you need one?

A website care plan is an ongoing arrangement, usually monthly, where the person who looks after your site keeps it current and makes the changes you ask for. You probably need one if your business changes faster than your website does. You may not need one if your site rarely changes and you’re comfortable making updates yourself.

What a care plan covers

There’s no standard definition, so always ask what’s included. Most of the work falls into two piles.

Changes you ask for. New hours. A new price. A staff photo. A fixed typo. A holiday notice. Each one is a small job, but somebody has to do it.

Upkeep you never see. On a WordPress site, that means software updates and backups. WordPress’s own security guide says you should “always keep up to date with the latest version,” keep your plugins updated, and back up your data regularly. It also says older versions don’t get security updates.

How much upkeep a site needs depends on how it was built. The new sites I build don’t run on WordPress, so there’s no list of plugins to keep updated. They still need someone keeping an eye on them.

How mine works

My care plans are built around change requests.

1. You tell me what you want in plain words. “Update our holiday hours.” “Swap the photo on the About page.”
2. I show you a preview of the change.
3. You approve it.
4. It goes live.

The preview matters. You see the change before your customers do, so a wrong price or a typo can be caught first.

Today, requests come in by email. I’m also rolling out a client portal where you can send a request and watch its progress in one place.

Signs you need one

• Your website still shows old hours, old prices or people who’ve left
• You’ve been meaning to fix something on the site for months
• The person who built your site is hard to reach
• Nobody knows the login, or nobody wants to use it
• Your site runs on WordPress and you can’t say when it was last updated
• Customers check your site for your hours before they drive over

Signs you probably don’t

• Your site is a few pages that almost never change
• You or someone on your team is comfortable logging in and making edits
• Someone already handles updates and backups, and you trust them

If that’s you, save your money. A care plan should take work off your plate, not add a bill for nothing.

Can you just do it yourself?

Often, yes. On most sites, WordPress applies small security updates by itself, and bigger updates take a click. Its instructions add one piece of advice: back up your website first, so you can restore it if something goes wrong.

The steps are simple. Keeping up with them every month, while you run a business, is the hard part.

Don’t forget your Google listing

Your website isn’t the only place your hours live. Google says businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results, and it lists business hours, including special hours, as part of that. So when your hours change, update your website and your Google Business Profile together. Ask whoever runs your care plan whether they handle both.

Questions to ask before you sign up

Ask these of anyone who offers you a care plan, including me.

• What’s included every month, and what costs extra?
• How do I ask for a change?
• Do I see the change before it goes live?
• How fast will it get done?
• If I don’t use everything in a month, does it carry over?
• If I cancel, what happens to my site and my domain name?

Get the answers in writing. A good plan is boring to read and easy to understand.

The short version

A care plan is for owners who would rather run the business than log in to a website. If your site is already out of date, that’s your answer.

Want to talk through whether one fits your business? Send me a note. You can also see how my care plans work.