Maintenance & Updates

Most WordPress sites get neglected until something breaks. Plugin updates stop happening, security patches get skipped, backups silently fail, performance degrades, and the next time anyone looks at the site closely is when it goes down. Maintenance plans exist so that doesn’t happen.

Mine aren’t generic “we’ll click update on Tuesday” plans. They’re handled by a senior developer who knows what to do when an update breaks something — which it sometimes does — and how to fix it without panic.

What’s Included

• WordPress core updates — applied within 48 hours of release, tested on staging first when changes are significant
• Plugin and theme updates — weekly review and application, with rollback plans for anything that breaks
• Security monitoring — malware scanning, login attempt monitoring, file change detection, suspicious activity alerts
• Daily off-site backups — stored independently of your hosting, with one-click restoration tested monthly
• Uptime monitoring — site checked every 5 minutes from multiple geographic regions, immediate alerts on downtime
• Performance monitoring — Core Web Vitals tracked monthly, regressions investigated
• Monthly content updates — typically 1-2 hours of small content changes (text edits, image swaps, link updates) included in standard plans
• Annual security audit — full review of user accounts, file permissions, security headers, exposed endpoints
• Monthly report — what was updated, what was monitored, what (if anything) needed intervention

How It Works

1. Initial audit — Free review of your current setup: what’s installed, what’s outdated, what’s risky, what backups exist
2. Onboarding — Backups configured, monitoring deployed, staging environment set up if needed
3. Ongoing care — Weekly maintenance cycles, monthly reports, immediate response to alerts
4. Annual review — Bigger-picture review of the site’s health, performance trends, and recommendations for the year ahead

Is This Right for Your Business?

Maintenance plans make sense if your site generates revenue or leads (every hour of downtime costs you something), if you don’t have an in-house developer keeping the site updated, if you’ve been bitten by a hack, a botched update, or a missing backup, or if you just want to stop thinking about WordPress maintenance forever.

If you have an in-house developer who actively maintains the site, you probably don’t need this. If your site is a personal blog with no commercial stakes, the included WordPress auto-updates are usually enough.

Why Work With Me on Maintenance

The competition for WordPress maintenance is mostly two extremes: cheap-and-cheerful agencies running automated update scripts and charging $30/month, and high-end agencies running the same automated scripts and charging $500/month. I sit between — actual senior developer attention, but at sensible pricing because there’s no agency overhead.

What you’re really paying for isn’t the routine maintenance (which any decent host or automation can do). You’re paying for what happens when something goes wrong — a botched plugin update, a hack attempt, a sudden performance drop, a database that needs optimising. Most cheap plans don’t include hands-on intervention. Mine does. Often combined with performance optimisation for sites where speed needs ongoing attention.

Pricing & Timeline

Standard maintenance plans start at $150/month for brochure sites, $250-$400/month for sites with more complexity (custom plugins, e-commerce, membership). Onboarding is one-time, usually free with a 6-month commitment. Monthly billing, no long contracts, cancel anytime with 30 days’ notice.

Ready to Talk?

Free 30-minute call to discuss your current setup and what you’d actually need covered. I’ll do a free audit before the call so we both know what we’re talking about. Schedule a call.