Good or bad, your website is out there representing your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year (366 on leap years). And considering you've invested good money to make sure your website is going to do a great job representing your business, why would you stop taking care of it after it's built?
Security, performance, 24/7 monitoring, backups, and much more - the list of tasks needed to keep a website secure and up to date can seem overwhelming. And with a record number of hack attempts happening around the world every second, websites have never been at greater risk of being compromised.
Once you are on our care plan we can help you with any WordPress support and feature requests.
If your website is built on the WordPress platform, then the answer is yes.
It really isn't WordPress's fault. The platform grew incredibly fast and there are, currently, more than 55,000 WordPress add-ons (aka plugins). Currently, WordPress powers over 43% of the web.
This makes it one of the biggest hacker targets on the planet.
Additionally, all websites require some routine maintenance. Just like cars, you must change the oil, rotate the tires, and put in required repairs if you want to reliably get from point A to B. That's what our care plans provide.
In our experience, a solid WordPress Care Plan must include:
Plugin updates are a roll of the dice. We've had to emergency patch four plugins in a week to a website that had "zero-day" security vulnerabilities.
Other times, there are only five security issues per year on certain websites.
Barring security patches (of which there are many), there are two factors that dictate how often your website plugin needs to be updated.
It is common for a business website to have between 15 and 30 plugins installed and require 10 to 20 individual updates per month.
There are over 55,000 plugins to choose from and some need to be updated on a weekly basis.
In the two years since we've provided weekly plugin updates for 60+ clients, we have had two security issues that got through. Both websites were fixed within four hours with zero data loss.
Top 10 care plan usage requests since 2016:
When we onboard your website onto your care plan, a lot of effort goes into making sure you are set up properly, all software is updated and stable, and there are no major skeletons in the closet.
We require a three-month commitment for our care plan to cover the time and effort we spend getting you up to speed.
After that, you can cancel at any time before the end of your billing cycle.
We give a 10% discount for 501(c) organizations.
We partner with Kinsta, one of the top two managed WordPress hosting companies in the world. We will select a data center that is closest to your target audience (for speed) and can enable a content delivery network for a major performance increase.
Why do we partner with Kinsta? Well to put it plainly, GoDaddy, Hostgator, Bluehost, and other cheap solutions aren't in the same league as Kinsta when it comes to performance, security, and support. They aren't even playing the same game!
Hosting your email with a web design agency is so 1999.
We recommend hosting your email with an cloud solution such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google Workspace.
We use Google Workspace here, and are happy to assist you if you'd like to use them too. However, you will be paying them directly so you get their best rates and also have access to their support systems.
Don't forget, your email should always be from the same URL as your website, and that means no free Hotmail or Gmail accounts.
Our team is headquartered in Seattle, WA, with our team working from their home-based offices in the USA, UK, and Australia, but generally support requests go to a US based team member to make sure action is taken quickly.
You can email us at [email protected] or call (206) 451-7326 for support.
We will set you up in two to three business days.
We love WooCommerce and gladly support the extra care plan activities necessary, however these sites incur charges ranging from $60 to $100 per month in addition to the base care plan, depending on the complexity of the site build.
Almost certainly.
Domain name renewal notices usually only come in email and should be sent from your existing domain registrar.
(To verify where your domain name is registered please visit WHOis and type in your domain name.)
Your domain name is your most valuable online asset, even though it only costs $15 or so a year for a dotcom. If someone else gains access to your domain, your entire online persona can be ruined.
When in doubt please contact your existing domain registrar. If you don't know who that give us a call and we'll look into it (for free). We can't stand the idea of anyone losing their domain name.
ps. If the domain name renewal is more than $30 a year for a dot com, it's either a scam or an unethical domain provider.
We believe our clients should always take direct ownership and make payment of their domain name.
A domain name is the most important point of access to your website and more valuable than the website itself (if the website is backed up somewhere that is). After all, if someone else takes control of your domain, they can point it anywhere. And your emails wouldn't work anymore.
Since a domain name typically costs $15 or less per year we recommend renewing your domain name for five (5) years at a time and putting several notices in your calendar about the future renewal.
It really is so important.
99% of the time these are robots blasting out automated emails with a generic list of issues (which usually aren't even happening on your site), and then offering to fix those issues in the hopes of landing you as a client.
If you're in doubt, please contact your web designer or developer to check whether it's legitimate, after all no website is perfect and it's best to have someone you know and trust to look into it.
