Short answer: a website care plan is a monthly service where someone looks after your website for you: updates, backups, security checks, uptime monitoring, and a person to email when something goes wrong. It is largely the same thing as a maintenance plan. What matters is whether a real person is paying attention.
“Care plan” is a slightly odd name for something to do with websites.
It borrows its language from the caring professions. If you work in one, you might reasonably wonder whether it means something different from maintenance, or whether it is just a gentler word for the same thing.
It is mostly the same thing. The more useful question is what the “care” part should actually involve, and that is what this article is about.
What is a website care plan?
A website care plan is a monthly arrangement where someone else looks after the working parts of your website. They update the software it runs on, take regular backups and store them somewhere safe, watch for security problems, check the site is still online, and help when something breaks.
It exists because a website is software, and software does not stay still. A WordPress site is made of the WordPress core, a theme, and a collection of plugins, each written by different people and each updated on its own timetable. Left alone, that collection slowly drifts out of step with itself.
Most people who buy a care plan are not technical, or they are technical but have no time. Either way, the point is the same. The jobs still need doing, and it helps a great deal if doing them is somebody’s actual job.
My own Website Care Plan is £39 a month. On the live page it lists weekly updates to WordPress, the theme and plugins, daily vulnerability monitoring, a security scan and server-side firewall, daily off-site backups of the files and database, round-the-clock uptime monitoring, a monthly report, and phone and email support during working hours.
Is a website care plan different from a maintenance plan?
Mostly, no. The names are a choice of wording, and different providers use them in different ways.
You will see the same set of jobs sold as a maintenance plan, a care plan, a support plan or a management plan. There is no agreed definition behind any of those names, so you cannot tell what you are buying from the name alone. Read the list of what is included.
I have written separately about what a website maintenance plan should include and what maintenance packages cost in the UK. Everything in those two articles applies to care plans too.
If there is a real difference, it sits in one place: how much of the work is done by a person. Updates, backups and uptime checks can all be automated, and the cheapest plans are often exactly that, a plugin running on a schedule with nobody watching it. Automation is useful. It does not notice when an update has quietly broken a page, and it cannot decide that a plugin whose developer has stopped maintaining it should be replaced.
What does the “care” part actually mean?
This is the part you are really paying for, and the hardest part to see on a features list.
Care, in practice, is someone who knows your particular website. They know which plugin runs your booking form, which page brings in most of your enquiries, and what the site looked like last week. When something changes, they notice, because they have looked at it before.
A few things a person does that a schedule cannot:
- Looks at the site after updating it. Updates occasionally break something. The update log says “success” either way.
- Decides what to remove. A plugin nobody uses is one more thing to update and one more thing that can fail. Taking it out is often the most useful job on the list.
- Answers the email. When something looks wrong, you want to write to someone who already knows your site and can say “leave it with me”.
- Tells you what they found, in plain English, rather than sending a report full of version numbers.
There is a habit behind good care that I apply to my own tools as well. I run my business from a dashboard I built myself, and I keep it as two separate copies: one I build and experiment on, and one I actually work from. Nothing gets tried out on the one I rely on. It is the same instinct that makes a careful person test a change before it touches a live website. The thing people depend on is not where you find out whether something works.
One more point that belongs here. A care plan cannot see everything. A contact form can stop sending emails while the page still says “thank you, your message has been sent”, and uptime monitoring will not notice, because the site is up. I have written about how to check your contact form is actually working. Send yourself a test enquiry now and then, whoever looks after your site.
Care plan, hosting or Pay Monthly: which covers what?
These three get mixed up, and it is easy to end up paying for the same thing twice.
| Service | What it covers | RTWD price |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | The server your website lives on, with email. Keeps the site online. Does not update WordPress, the theme or the plugins. | £10 a month |
| Website Care Plan | Looking after an existing WordPress site: updates, backups, security, monitoring, reports and support. | £39 a month |
| Pay Monthly website plan | A website built for you, then hosted and looked after, with SEO work included. Care is already part of it. | From £59 a month |
Two things follow from that table.
First, hosting is not care. A good host keeps the server running, but the software on your site is your responsibility unless someone has agreed to take it on. Plenty of people assume their host is doing the updates. Usually it is not.
Second, if your site is on a Pay Monthly plan, you do not need a separate care plan as well. The care is included. A standalone care plan is for a site you already own that nobody is currently looking after.
Who is a website care plan for?
You are likely to benefit from one if any of these describe your site:
- It runs on WordPress, with a handful of plugins.
- It takes enquiries or bookings, so a silent failure costs you real people.
- It collects personal information, which for a therapist or counsellor means every enquiry form on it.
- You would not know how to tell whether it had been updated recently.
Under UK GDPR, personal data has to be kept secure. The Information Commissioner’s Office quotes the law directly: personal data must be processed “in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data”, using “appropriate technical or organisational measures”. The ICO is also clear that what counts as appropriate depends on your size, and that small organisations may not need a great deal of time and resources to secure their systems. A care plan is not a legal requirement. It is one straightforward way of showing that somebody is keeping your website’s software in good order.
You probably do not need one if your site is a single page with no forms and no plugins, on a platform that handles its own updates. Some websites are closer to a leaflet than a piece of software, and that is fine.
What to ask before you sign up
Five questions, and what a good answer sounds like.
- “Will you look at my site before you take it on?” Taking on a site someone else built means inheriting whatever is inside it: old plugins, an unfamiliar theme, settings nobody remembers choosing. A careful provider checks first and tells you what they found.
- “What happens after an update?” You want to hear that someone checks the site, not that updates run automatically.
- “Where are the backups, and have you ever restored one?” Off-site and daily is the standard. Knowing the restore works matters as much as having the backup.
- “Who replies when I email?” A name is a better answer than a ticket system.
- “How do I leave?” A monthly plan should be easy to stop, and your site, domain and content should remain yours. I have written about what happens when you cancel a pay monthly website, and the same principles apply here.
If you want to know what can go wrong without any of this, what actually breaks when nobody looks after a WordPress site covers the quiet failures in more detail.
Frequently asked questions
What is included in a website care plan?
A website care plan usually covers software updates for WordPress, the theme and plugins, regular off-site backups, security scanning, uptime monitoring and support from a person when something goes wrong. Better plans add a monthly report in plain English, so you can see what was updated and whether the backups ran. What a care plan does not usually include is design work, new pages or content writing, which are either charged separately or counted as small changes. Because providers use the name differently, the only reliable way to know what you are buying is to read the list of inclusions and ask what happens after an update is applied. A plan that updates your site automatically but never has a person look at it afterwards is doing half the job. The human checking is the part that catches problems before your clients do.
Is a website care plan the same as website maintenance?
For most practical purposes, yes. “Care plan”, “maintenance plan”, “support plan” and “management plan” are all used to describe the same set of jobs: updating the software a website runs on, backing it up, watching its security, checking it stays online and helping when something breaks. There is no agreed industry definition that separates them. The name tells you very little. The useful comparison is how much of the work is done by a person who knows your site, what is included in the monthly price, and how quickly someone replies when you email. Compare plans on those points rather than on what they are called, and you will get a much clearer picture of what you are actually paying for.
How much does a website care plan cost in the UK?
UK care plans for a small business website typically cost somewhere between £20 and £80 a month. The lower end tends to be automated updates and backups with little human oversight. The middle of the range usually adds a person checking the site, email support and a monthly report, which is where most small business and therapy practice websites belong. Higher prices normally include content changes, faster response times or marketing time bundled in. RTWD’s Website Care Plan is £39 a month. If your website is on one of RTWD’s Pay Monthly plans, care is already included, so there is no separate charge. When comparing prices, look at what the monthly fee includes and whether a person reviews the site after updates, rather than choosing on the headline figure alone. The cheapest plan is poor value if nobody notices when it breaks something.
Does my web host look after my website?
Usually not in the way people assume. A web host looks after the server: the computer your website sits on, its power, its network connection and often your email. Most hosts do not update the WordPress software, theme and plugins that make up your actual website, and they will not notice if a plugin update breaks your booking form. Some managed WordPress hosts do apply updates automatically, but that is different from a person checking the site afterwards. If you are not sure, the quickest check is to log in to your WordPress dashboard and look at the Updates page. If it lists several updates waiting, nobody is doing them. You can also ask your host directly what they update and what they leave to you. Many site owners discover the answer only after something has gone wrong.
Do therapists need a website care plan?
Not every therapist does, but many will find one useful. A therapist’s website usually does two jobs that make looking after it important: it takes enquiries from people who may be reaching out at a difficult moment, and it collects personal information through a contact form. If the form stops working, someone who took a real step towards getting help hears nothing back. If the site falls behind on security updates, personal data sent through it is at greater risk. Under UK GDPR you are expected to keep personal data appropriately secure, and keeping your site’s software up to date is part of that for most websites. A care plan is one way to make sure it happens without you having to remember. If your site is very simple, with no forms and no plugins, you may not need one at all.
If you would like someone to look after your site
I host over fifty websites, mostly for counsellors, therapists and small local businesses, and I am the person who replies when you email.
If you already have a WordPress site and nobody is keeping an eye on it, my Website Care Plan is £39 a month. If you would rather have a new site built and looked after as one monthly payment, the Pay Monthly plans start at £59 a month with care already included.
Not sure which, or whether you need either? Book a free 30-minute chat and I will take a look at your site with you.