Answer · WordPress Web Design
Do I Need a WordPress Care Plan?
The short answer
If your website influences sales for a $1M+ business, yes. Care Plans cover the maintenance that keeps WordPress sites secure, fast, and current — daily backups, plugin updates on staging, security monitoring, uptime checks. Our Standard plan runs $200/mo, Pro runs $800/mo.
№ 01The longer answer
A Care Plan isn’t a luxury — it’s the difference between a maintained WordPress site and a slowly-rotting one. WordPress core ships 4-6 major updates a year. Plugins ship 50-100 between them. Without active maintenance, your stack drifts toward broken, slow, and insecure within 18-24 months.
Our Standard Care Plan ($200/mo) includes: 2 hours of dev time, plugin/core/theme updates 2×/month on staging-first, daily off-site backups via BlogVault, uptime monitoring with SMS alerts, security plugin maintained, monthly health email, 24-hour business-day email support. Right for stable mid-market sites that don’t change much.
Pro Care Plan ($800/mo) adds: 8 hours of dev time, monthly performance report with CWV field data, quarterly security audit, priority 4-hour SLA, Slack with named technical contact, scope flexibility for small design tweaks and new sections. Right for active marketing-led sites.
Alternative: break-fix freelancer at $150/hr. For a typical mid-market site needing 4-8 hours/quarter of attention plus emergencies, annual cost is $2,400-$6,000 — comparable to a Care Plan but without proactive maintenance, predictable response, or named accountability. Care Plan retention rate after year 1 is 90%+ for a reason.
№ 02Can I cancel a Care Plan?
Yes — 30 days notice, no lock-in. Annual contracts at 10-15% discount available but month-to-month is the default.
№ 03Do unused hours roll over?
Standard: up to 4 hours / quarter. Beyond that they expire. Hours are budget, not a bank.
№ 04Is the Care Plan required if I use Kinsta hosting?
Kinsta handles infrastructure (server uptime, basic backups, core auto-updates). It doesn’t handle plugin update testing, content edits, security monitoring at the application layer, or development work. The plan and the host serve different functions.
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