Do you actually need a WordPress maintenance plan?

We sell these, so weigh this accordingly. But a plan is wrong for plenty of people, and pretending otherwise would make everything else we write less believable.

Here is the honest sorting.

You probably do not need one

You are comfortable in WordPress and enjoy the tinkering. If updating plugins and checking a backup is fifteen minutes you do not mind spending, you do not need to pay someone. Read the checklist, set a calendar reminder, and you have most of the value.

The site does not matter much. A personal blog, a portfolio nobody enquires through, a site you would shrug at losing. The maths does not work: $79 a month against a site earning nothing is a bad trade.

It is not really a WordPress site any more. A static site, a Squarespace site, or something you are about to replace. Do not pay to maintain something you are retiring.

You already have a developer on retainer doing it. Check they actually are — a lot of retainers cover "support" without anyone updating anything. But if they are, you do not need us as well.

You probably do

The site brings you enquiries or orders, and a day down costs real money. This is the whole test. If a day of downtime costs more than a month of the plan, the plan is cheap insurance.

You do not know when it was last updated. Honest answer counts. If it is "a while ago", you are somewhere on the neglect timeline, and the longer you leave it the more expensive the correction.

You run WooCommerce. Shops break in ways that are silent and expensive. Checkout can fail without anything looking wrong.

You have been hacked before. Once is bad luck. Twice is a pattern, and the pattern is always the same: cleaned but not maintained.

You keep meaning to do it. This is the most common honest answer and the most reliable predictor. The work is not hard; it just never reaches the top of the list. Paying someone converts a task you keep deferring into a line item you do not think about.

The middle case

Some people need part of it. If your host already handles backups and updates competently, what you may actually need is an emergency cleanup service on standby rather than a monthly plan.

And if the only thing you want is to know when something is wrong, our free plugin does that with no account and no cost. It is a genuine alternative for a site that does not justify a plan.

What to check before paying anyone

If you decide you want one — ours or anyone's — ask these:

• What is the response time, in writing? "Fast support" means nothing.
• Is malware cleanup included, or extra? A cleanup bought in a panic is $150–500.
• Are backups off-site and tested?
• Does a person check the site after updates, or does a script just run?
• What counts as an included edit? Get examples, not adjectives.
• Is hosting bundled? Convenient, until you want to leave.
• What happens when you cancel? You should keep your site, your backups and your data.

Our answers to all of those are on the pricing page, without a call to book.

The uncomfortable honest bit

The value of a maintenance plan is not skill. Everything on the checklist is learnable in an afternoon, and we have published all of it deliberately.

What you are buying is that it reliably happens — every week, whether or not it feels urgent, whether or not you are busy. That is worth $79 a month to some people and nothing at all to others, and only you know which you are.