What this service is
A care plan is a rolling monthly arrangement that covers the technical upkeep of your website and gives you a dependable person to call when something needs changing. It suits organisations that want their website looked after properly but don't have a developer on staff, which describes most of the small businesses, charities and firms we work with.
We care for websites we've built and, after an initial health check, websites built by others. The plan is flexible: you can change its level or cancel with notice, and you keep full ownership of your site and its accounts throughout.
When you might need it
- Your site runs on a content management system with plugins and themes that need regular updates.
- You've had a scare: an outage, a hacked page or an expired certificate you only found out about from a customer.
- Small changes build up because nobody on the team has time or confidence to make them.
- You want someone to keep an eye on speed, accessibility and broken links as content changes.
How the work runs
We start with a health check: we review hosting, software versions, backups, security settings, performance and accessibility, then fix anything urgent. After that, the routine runs every month. Updates are tested on a staging copy before going live, backups run automatically and are stored off-site, and uptime and security monitoring alert us before you notice a problem.
Each plan includes an allowance of time for small changes, such as adding a team member, updating a service page, creating a landing page for an event or swapping a photograph. You email or message your request and we confirm when it's done. At the end of each month you receive a short, readable summary of what we did and anything worth knowing.
The best kind of website maintenance is the kind you never have to think about until the monthly summary arrives.
What's included
- Initial health check and remedial fixes
- Tested software, plugin and theme updates
- Automated daily backups stored off-site, with restore testing
- Uptime, certificate and security monitoring
- Quarterly accessibility and performance spot checks
- A monthly allowance for small content and design changes
- A plain-English monthly report
Questions we're often asked
Can you look after a website you didn't build?
Usually, yes. We start with a health check to understand how it's built and flag any risks before taking it on.
What if we need something larger than the monthly allowance?
We'll quote for it separately before starting, so there are no surprises on your invoice.
How quickly do you respond if the site goes down?
Monitoring alerts us automatically and we treat outages as the top priority. The response times for each plan level are written into your agreement.
Does a care plan include hosting?
It can include managed hosting or work with hosting you already have. Either way, the accounts stay in your organisation's name.