WordPress care plans that a real engineer runs
Quick answer
A WordPress care plan is a monthly website maintenance plan: a person tests and applies your updates, keeps offsite backups with verified restores, watches uptime and security, and fixes what breaks. Our care plans are Care $99, Care Plus $199, Commerce $349 and Scale $799 a month. Every plan is month to month, includes malware cleanup, and gets a human reply within 8 to 12 hours. Updates are tested on staging by a human, not pushed by a script, and you keep your own hosting.
We look after a fleet of 150 plus WordPress sites. The work is the same on every one of them: test the update before it goes live, prove the backup restores, and catch the broken form before your customers do.
30 day money back on every plan. Month to month, cancel any time.
Reviewed by Ali Yasin Jatoi · Updated
What a care plan includes, and what DIY or plain hosting leaves out
Most site owners already pay for something. Hosting keeps the server running. A plugin can run updates on a timer. Neither one looks at your site after the update to see whether the checkout still works. That gap is what a care plan covers.
Here is the checklist we run for every site on a plan, set against doing it yourself and against what a typical host does for you.
| Task | Care plan | Doing it yourself | Plain hosting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plugin, theme and core updates | Tested on staging by a human, then applied | You click update and hope | Core only, sometimes automatic |
| Backups | Daily or hourly, offsite, restore tested | Whatever the plugin keeps | Server snapshots, rarely tested |
| Uptime monitoring | Checks every 5 minutes down to 30 seconds | You hear from a customer | Server level only |
| Security and malware | Daily scans, cleanup included | Free scanner, cleanup is extra | Account suspended if infected |
| Broken forms and checkout | Tested after changes | Found when sales stop | Not covered |
| Someone to ask | A human reply within 8 to 12 hours | Forums | Ticket queue about the server |
Not Ready to Pick a Monthly Plan Blind? Start With Phase 1: The $249 Website Takeover Review
Most smart business owners want an engineer to audit their site and fix immediate risks before committing to a monthly retainer. For a flat $249, I personally review your entire WordPress setup and hand you a prioritised written report (Critical, Important, Minor):
- Access and Licence Ownership Check: I verify that your domain, DNS, hosting, and paid plugin licences (like Elementor Pro or Divi) are in your own name, not locked inside a previous developer's account.
- Staging Clone and Backup Test Restore: I set up a safe staging copy and run a test restore of your backup so we know your recovery process actually works.
- Security, PHP, and Plugin Conflict Audit: I inspect your server logs, PHP version compatibility, database health, and hidden admin accounts.
Once Phase 1 is complete, you can keep the report and walk away, or move smoothly onto the monthly Care Plan that fits your site.
The care plan ladder, priced in public
These are the same four plans published on our pricing page. Prices are per site, billed monthly, with no setup fee. If a plan stops being the right shape, you move up or down at the end of the month.
| Plan | Price | Best for | Edits included | Uptime checks | Backups |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Care | $99/mo | One small business site under 5,000 visits a month | Billed hourly | 5 minute checks | Daily, 30 days kept |
| Care Plus | $199/mo | Growing and lead generation sites up to 50,000 visits a month | 30 minutes a month, rolls forward | 1 minute checks | Daily, 60 days kept |
| Commerce | $349/mo | WooCommerce, membership and LMS sites | 2 hours a month | 30 second checks | Hourly, 90 days kept |
| Scale | $799/mo | Multi site, high traffic and regulated businesses | 6 hours a month | 30 second checks plus real user monitoring | Hourly, 12 months plus cold archive |
Every plan: tested updates, malware cleanup, a human reply within 8 to 12 hours, 30 day money back, cancel any time.
You Own Everything in Your Own Name
I am Ali Yasin Jatoi, and I do not hold client websites hostage. Your domain registrar, DNS, hosting account, and paid plugin licences (including Elementor Pro, Divi, and WooCommerce extensions) stay registered in your own name and billed to your own card. On day one of our work together, I give you a one-page Ownership and Access Ledger that lists every login, where it lives, and who controls it. If you ever cancel your care plan or move on, I hand over a clean local backup of your files and database and step out cleanly.
Building a New Website? Keep Your Current Site Safe With 90-Day Pre-Redesign Life Support ($199/month)
If you are launching a brand-new website in three to six months, you should not pay to rebuild your current WordPress site twice, and you cannot afford to let it get hacked or go offline while your new build is in progress.
I offer a fixed 3-month Pre-Redesign Life Support term at my standard Care Plus ($199/month) rate for business owners and creative agencies:
- I keep your live WordPress or WooCommerce site safe, tidy, and running while your new site is being built elsewhere.
- Every necessary security patch and plugin update is tested on a staging copy first, with backups verified by test restores.
- No redesign work, no unnecessary structural changes, and zero long-term lock-in once your new site goes live.
What Your Monthly Written Report Covers
Every month, I send you a short written report written in plain English by me (Ali), not an automated plugin PDF. It shows five things so you know what you paid for:
- Backup Verification and Test Restore: The date and result of your latest offsite backup test restore onto a private staging server, confirming your backup actually works if an emergency ever hits.
- Staged Updates Applied: Every WordPress core, theme, and plugin update I tested on your staging copy and pushed live, plus notes on any update I held back due to a known bug or conflict.
- Revenue and Lead-Path Checks: Confirmation that I manually tested your live contact forms, mobile navigation menu, and (on store sites) your WooCommerce cart and checkout flow after updates went live.
- Security, Uptime, and PHP Health: A summary of firewall blocks, login protection, SSL certificate validity, PHP version status, and any vulnerable plugins patched from my live vulnerability feed.
- Speed, Database, and Next-Month Recommendations: Your current mobile and desktop Core Web Vitals status, database cleanup notes, and my plain-English advice on anything your site needs next.
How I Update Your Site Without Breaking It
- 1.
Clone to Staging: I copy your live files and database to a private staging server so no untested update ever touches your production site first.
- 2.
Update and Check Key Flows: I run all core, theme, plugin, or PHP updates on staging and manually test your checkout, forms, mobile menu, and GA4 tags.
- 3.
Verify the Offsite Backup by Test Restore: Before touching your live site, I take a fresh offsite backup and test-restore it to confirm we have a working rollback point.
- 4.
Push Live and Send the Written Report: I deploy the verified updates to your live site, re-check your key pages, and email you a short written report of everything done.
Monthly website maintenance packages: what is billed monthly and what is not
People searching for monthly website maintenance packages usually want to know one thing: what will the bill look like in month three. Here it is in plain terms.
Billed monthly: the plan price above, nothing else. That covers updates, backups, monitoring, security scans, malware cleanup and the edit time listed for your plan. Billed separately, only if you ask: larger projects such as a redesign, a migration or new features, quoted as a fixed price before we start. Emergency work for sites that are not on a plan is a flat $249.
There is no contract term. You can cancel at the end of any month and keep everything: your hosting, your logins, your backups and your site. We do not move you onto our servers, so leaving is a matter of revoking our access.
- One price per site, per month, published
- No setup fee and no minimum term
- Unused edit time on Care Plus rolls forward
- Fixed quotes for anything outside the plan
- Your hosting stays yours, no lock in
- 30 day money back on every plan
Direct, Written Engineering Support (No Ticket Queues, No Spam)
When you hire WebCare Studios, you deal directly with me, Ali Yasin Jatoi, by name. I do not employ cold callers, I never send unsolicited WhatsApp messages, and I do not put a fake 24/7 chatbot on my website to stall you. I work asynchronously so I can stay focused inside server logs and staging environments without interruption. You will receive a clear, written engineering reply from me within 8 to 12 hours, and every diagnostic finding, code change, and update on your site is documented in writing so we always have a permanent record.
Which website maintenance plan fits your site
Pick by what an outage would cost you, not by the size of the site. A brochure site that sends two enquiries a week is well served by Care. A site that books calls or sends leads every day needs the faster monitoring and edit time in Care Plus. If the site takes payments, Commerce is the honest pick because checkout and payment monitoring is the part that protects the money.
Scale is for businesses running several sites or heavy traffic, where two named engineers who already know the setup matter more than the price. If you are unsure, book the free review and we will tell you which plan we would choose if it were our site.
Care, $99
Brochure and small business sites. Tested updates, backups verified by test restores, monitoring, cleanup included.
Care Plus, $199
Lead generation and booking sites. Named engineer, 30 minutes of edits a month, 1 minute checks.
Commerce, $349
Online stores and membership sites. Checkout monitoring, hourly backups, 2 hours of edits.
Scale, $799
Multi site and high traffic. Lead and backup engineer, 6 hours of edits, monthly call.
Commerce plan, $349 a month
Store checkout already failing? A $249 WooCommerce Checkout Rescue fixes the active fault first, then Commerce keeps it stable.
Why Does wp-admin Take 90 Seconds to Load (And Why Caching Plugins Will Not Fix It)?
If your public pages seem fine to visitors because they sit behind Cloudflare or a caching plugin, but your /wp-admin/ dashboard takes 30 to 90 seconds to load even with plugins disabled, you have a server-side or database bottleneck. In busy WooCommerce stores, this often shows up when you update product pricing and your assigned product categories uncheck themselves or fail to save unless you repeat the save two or three times.
This is not a job where someone can just install a caching plugin or compress a few images. Logged-in admin requests bypass page cache entirely. To fix a slow backend, an engineer has to read your server logs, PHP slow logs, autoloaded wp_options rows, object cache configuration, and database query bottlenecks.
I clone your site, trace the exact query, cron lock, or PHP memory limit choking your dashboard, and fix it at the root so your team can actually work in the backend again.
Care plan, maintenance or management: is there a difference?
The words get used loosely. In practice, maintenance is the routine work: updates, backups and checks. A care plan is maintenance sold as a monthly package with a named person responsible and a promise about how fast they reply. Management usually adds content edits and looking after the tools around the site, such as forms, email and analytics.
Our plans cover all three. Care is mostly maintenance. Care Plus and above add the edit time and the named engineer that most people mean when they say management. For the longer explanation, read what WordPress maintenance actually involves.
Why a human tested plan beats a cheaper script
The market runs from about $39 to over $2,000 a month. The cheapest plans are usually a script that runs updates with nobody checking the result. The most expensive ones often bundle their own hosting, so leaving means moving your site. We sit in the $79 to $149 corridor for agencies and start at $99 for direct clients because that is where a human can still test every update without the price climbing.
That is the whole offer: a person does the work, updates are tested on staging first, you keep your hosting, and the price is on the page. If you want to see the wider market, our cost benchmarks page lists published prices from nine providers with sources.
Questions people ask us
What is a WordPress care plan?+
A monthly plan where a person keeps your WordPress site updated, backed up, monitored and secure, and fixes problems when they appear. Ours start at $99 a month and every plan gets a human reply within 8 to 12 hours.
How much is a website maintenance plan?+
Our plans are Care $99, Care Plus $199, Commerce $349 and Scale $799 a month per site. Across the market, published prices run from about $39 to over $2,000 a month depending on what is included.
Are there monthly website maintenance packages without a contract?+
Yes. Every plan is month to month. You can cancel at the end of any month and keep your hosting, backups and logins.
What is not included in a care plan?+
Larger projects such as redesigns, migrations and new features are quoted separately as a fixed price. Emergency work for sites not on a plan is a flat $249.
Do I have to move my hosting?+
No. We work on your existing hosting. If your host is the cause of repeated problems we will say so and help you move, but it is never required.
How fast do you reply?+
A human engineer replies within 8 to 12 hours on every plan, routine or emergency.
What if a plan is not right for me?+
Every plan has a 30 day money back guarantee, and you can switch plans at the end of any month.
Keep reading
Pricing and plan comparison
Every plan side by side, with the full feature table.
WordPress support services
What our engineers handle day to day.
Emergency WordPress help
Site down or hacked right now. Flat $249.
White label WordPress maintenance
Care plans you resell under your agency brand.
Cost benchmarks
Published prices across the market, with sources.
Maintenance packages compared
A closer look at what each package tier includes.
Talk to the engineer who will look after your site
Book a free 20 minute review. We look at your site, your hosting and your plugins, then tell you plainly what it needs. A human replies within 8 to 12 hours.
30 day money back on every plan. Month to month, cancel any time.
What stays with you on every plan
- Licence custody transferred to you at onboarding.
- At onboarding we check your email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), so contact-form and order emails actually arrive.
- Documentation of everything we change.
- A named engineer, not a queue.
- Backups verified by test restores.
- Updates tested by a human on staging first, on every plan.
The company behind the plans
WebCare Studios is a WordPress maintenance company founded and run by Ali Yasin Jatoi, a WordPress specialist with seven years of experience who looks after more than 150 client sites. The plans on this page are how that work is done for your site. Every update is applied first on a staging copy, checked by a person against your key pages and forms, and only then pushed live with a backup ready to restore. A named engineer owns your site, writes down what changed each month, and replies within 8 to 12 hours on every plan.
For donation forms, class listings or care while a relaunch is being prepared, see care for nonprofits and education.
Maintenance is not a search strategy. For that work, see WordPress SEO services. Our maintenance request statistics explain the buyer patterns behind our focus on security, support and verified restores.
Looking after client sites? See agency care from $79 a site per month.
Related services
- Website hosting and maintenance in one relationship, not five invoices.
- Website maintenance services that keep your site alive, fast, and current
- Website repair, same-day fix, $249 flat.
- Website support services with a real engineer on call
- Managed WordPress support with a real engineer on call
- Outsource WordPress maintenance to a named engineer, from $79 per site