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Guide

What does a care plan cover?

What a website care plan includes each month and what it leaves out, with the prices of our three plans.

Published ยท 5 min read

In short

A care plan covers the upkeep a live website needs: monitoring, backups, security and dependency updates tested before they go live, and a set number of hours for small changes. It never covers hosting or the domain, which stay on your own accounts. Ours run from $169 to $499 a month.

Definition

Website maintenance: Website maintenance is the work that keeps a live site safe and working after launch, as distinct from building new pages or features. It means watching that the site stays up, backing up its files and content, applying the security and library updates its code relies on, fixing what breaks when a browser or a connected service changes, and making small edits to what is already there. A site nobody maintains often keeps running for a while, then fails in ways that are slow and costly to trace.

What each plan includes

In short

Every plan covers the same upkeep at a different depth: monitoring, backups, tested updates and an allowance of hours for changes. The larger plans add a monthly check of the pages and forms, and a standing slot for new work.

Keep, at $169 a month, is the plan every proposal of ours pre-selects: monitoring and uptime checks, backups, dependency and security updates, and one hour of changes each month. Grow, at $299 a month, adds more hours and a monthly check of speed, search and forms. Run, at $499 a month, adds priority response and a standing slot for new pages and small features.

Every update is tested before it reaches the live site. A change that fits inside the month's hours is simply done; one that does not is priced in writing before we start.

The three care plans, side by side
KeepGrowRun
Each month$169$299$499
Monitoring, backups and tested updatesIncludedIncludedIncluded
Hours of changesOne a monthMore each monthMore each month
A check of speed, search and formsNot includedMonthlyMonthly
Priority responseNot includedNot includedIncluded
A slot for new pages and small featuresNot includedNot includedIncluded

Swipe sideways to see every column

What a care plan does not cover

In short

A care plan never pays for hosting, the domain or software subscriptions, and it does not include new features. Those run on your own accounts at cost, or as work priced in writing before it starts.

Hosting, the domain and any software the site uses are billed to your own card by the companies that provide them, with no markup from us. That keeps the accounts in your name and the plan price about the work alone.

New pages and features are change orders, priced in writing and built only once you approve, or hourly work at $150 an hour with a four-hour minimum. Bugs in the first 30 days after launch are fixed under the warranty that comes with every build, whether or not you take a plan.

A custom app or CRM is looked after by a support retainer instead of a care plan, priced as a share of the build each year with a monthly minimum, because an app carries data, roles and connected tools that a brochure site does not.

Why a website needs upkeep at all

In short

A website is software built on libraries that keep releasing fixes, and some of those fixes close security holes. Left alone, a site falls behind and becomes harder and costlier to bring up to date.

The OWASP Top 10, a standard awareness document for web application security, ranks software supply chain failures third in its 2025 edition: breakdowns in building, distributing or updating software, often caused by flaws or malicious changes in the third-party code a site relies on. Applying and testing updates is the plainest defence a small site has.

Speed drifts too. Google's Core Web Vitals call a page good when its largest element appears within 2.5 seconds, it responds to a tap or click within 200 milliseconds, and its layout shift scores 0.1 or less, each measured at the 75th percentile of page loads. New photos, scripts and embeds push a page past those lines a little at a time, which is what the monthly check on Grow and Run catches.

What this means for a small business

In short

Take a care plan if you would rather not think about updates and backups, or if you change the site often. Skip it if the site rarely changes and someone you trust can apply updates, since the code and the accounts are yours either way.

Whoever looks after your site, ask what counts as a change and how updates are tested before they reach the live site. Then ask where the backups live, and have one restored once so you know it works.

Tell whoever looks after the site which pages matter most, such as the booking form or the menu, so the checks and the change hours go there first. In the Los Angeles area we can go through them with you in person.

Common questions

What is included in website maintenance?

Monitoring that the site stays up, backups, security and library updates tested before they go live, and small edits. Our Keep plan includes one hour of changes a month; Grow and Run include more.

How much does website maintenance cost per month?

Keep is $169 a month, Grow $299 and Run $499, each billed monthly after launch. None of them includes hosting or the domain, which you pay directly to the provider, at cost.

Is a care plan the same as hosting?

No. Hosting is the server the site runs on, on your own account and card. A care plan pays for the work of keeping the site healthy on that hosting.

Do I need a care plan if my site is on Wix or Squarespace?

Usually not for the software, because those platforms update themselves. A care plan like ours looks after a site built as code on your own hosting, so a builder site would need rebuilding first.

What happens if I cancel the care plan?

The site keeps running. The code and the accounts are in your name, so you or any developer can take over the updates, and any later work with us is priced in writing first.

Does a care plan cover bugs from the original build?

For the first 30 days after launch, bugs are fixed under the warranty that comes with every build. After that, a fix fits inside the plan's change hours or is priced in writing before we start.

Sources

  1. Web Vitals, web.dev, October 31, 2024
  2. A03:2025 Software Supply Chain Failures, OWASP Top 10:2025, OWASP Foundation, read September 24, 2026

Start with a written plan

Tell us about the business and what you need. We reply with questions, then a written plan that lists the work and its price, and nothing starts until you have read it.