What a website care plan should cover (and when it isn't worth it)

You’ve had a quote for a website, and underneath the build price there’s a monthly fee. It might be called a care plan, a maintenance package or support. The quote lists a few words like “hosting” and “updates”, and you’ve no way of telling whether the monthly figure is a bargain or a rip-off.

The name tells you nothing. What matters is the list of jobs someone is promising to do, how quickly they’ll do them, and what happens when you stop paying. This article goes through that list so you can hold any plan up against it, ours included.

Hosting and the padlock

Every site needs somewhere to live. Hosting is the server that sends your pages to whoever asks for them, and most plans include it. Check it’s included in the monthly price rather than billed separately later.

The SSL certificate is the bit that puts the padlock in the address bar and lets the site load over HTTPS. Certificates expire and have to be renewed. If one lapses, Chrome shows visitors a “Your connection is not private” error, and most of them will close the tab rather than click past it. A good plan renews it automatically and notices if renewal fails.

Security updates and monitoring

Any software on the server needs patching when its makers publish fixes. A WordPress site has the core, the theme and every plugin to keep current, and out-of-date plugins are a common way in for attackers. A static site has far less running on the server, so there’s less to patch, but it still isn’t zero.

Ask two things. Who applies the updates, and how often? And does anyone watch the site, so that if it goes down at 9pm on a Friday someone knows before your customers do?

Backups, and whether anyone has tested one

Almost every plan says “backups”. Fewer say how often they’re taken, how long they’re kept, or where they’re stored. A backup sitting on the same server as the site doesn’t help much if that server fails.

The question most people never ask is the useful one: have you ever restored a site from these backups, and how long did it take? A backup nobody has tried to restore is a hope, not a plan. If the answer is a pause and a change of subject, you’ve learned something.

Small changes, and what counts as “small”

Most plans include some content changes. The trouble is the word “small”. Pin it down before you sign. Swapping a price, adding a photo, changing your opening hours or adding a line about a new service are small by anyone’s measure. A new page with its own layout is not, and neither is a booking system.

Ask for a few examples of what’s included and what would be quoted separately. Ask too whether there’s a monthly limit, measured in hours or in number of requests, and what happens to unused time.

Who answers when something breaks

When the contact form stops sending, you want to talk to a person who knows your site. Find out who that is. A named person you can phone is a different service from a ticket form that promises a reply within two working days, even if both get called “support”.

Ask how you get hold of them and how fast they normally respond.

What a plan normally doesn’t include

Expect these to be quoted separately, whoever you use:

• New pages or new sections with their own design
• A redesign or a rebuild
• New features, such as online booking or a shop
• Third-party fees: your domain renewal, email mailboxes, paid plugins or a booking tool’s subscription

None of that is a trick, but it should be written down.

Paying per fix instead

A monthly plan isn’t the only way. Some people pay a developer by the hour whenever something comes up. For a simple site that rarely changes, with an owner happy to keep the backups and renewals in hand, that can work out cheaper over a year.

It tends to go wrong in two ways. Updates and certificate renewals slip because nobody’s being paid to remember them, so you find out from a customer. And when something does break, you’re ringing round to find someone free, who then bills you for learning how the site works before they fix it. A plan makes sense when you’d rather pay a known amount for someone to keep all that on their list. If your site is two pages you never touch and you’re comfortable managing it, you may not need one. What a small business website costs in the UK runs the numbers over five years.

Ours, for comparison

Our small business websites are built for a fixed price agreed before work starts. After that, a monthly care plan covers hosting, security updates, backups, the SSL certificate, small changes like new prices or a fresh photo, and phone support from the people who built the site.

You own the code, the content and the domain, all in your name. If you stop the plan, you keep the site and can take it anywhere, which is the reason we wrote own your website.

If you’d like a second opinion on a plan you’ve been quoted, or one you’re already paying for, send it to us and we’ll tell you what it covers.