WordPress maintenance for Kingston businesses: updates, backups and monitoring, reviewed by a person
Optional monthly plans from $275 CAD for keeping a WordPress site updated, backed up and watched. Your website build is still one fee; this is only for owners who would rather not look after the site themselves.
What this is, and what it isn't
Most maintenance plans are a monthly invoice for someone to click "Update All" and send you a PDF. This is different. Before an update goes on, I look at what it actually changes and how it could clash with the plugins and theme on your site, then decide whether to apply it now, test it first, or hold it until it is compatible. If something breaks, you get me, not a ticket number.
I learned to work this way managing publishing sites for Postmedia and government properties, where a failed update is an outage, not an inconvenience. The same care goes into every site I look after, whatever its size.
You don't need a plan to own a site I build. It is yours either way, and plenty of owners keep their own site running. A plan makes sense when the site takes payments, brings in customers, or would embarrass you if it went down.
Every plan includes
- Core, plugin and theme updates reviewed and applied with a way back if anything goes wrong, not batch-clicked and forgotten.
- Uptime monitoring. If the site goes down, I hear about it straight away and start looking, usually before you notice.
- Security monitoring and malware scanning. If something on your site has a known weakness, it is patched or isolated before you read about it in the news.
- An off-site backup kept somewhere other than your host, so it survives even if the host has a bad day.
- A one-page monthly summary: what changed, what was checked, and anything you should know about.
Three plans, in Canadian dollars
Essential: $275 a month
For a business whose site needs to keep running without the owner thinking about it. Everything above, plus one small content change a month: a phone number, an address, a new staff photo, a change to a service. The kind of job that should take five minutes and somehow always takes a week when you try to do it yourself.
Active: $500 a month
For busier sites. Everything in Essential, plus a monthly speed check against real visitor data, a compatibility check before major updates, a 30-minute advice call each month, and faster response: acknowledged within four hours, same day if the site is down.
Concierge: from $950 a month
For sites where an outage has real consequences. Everything in Active, plus a maintenance window planned around your busy times, a quarterly review of where the site is heading, top-priority response with a committed fix time, and a say in any hosting decision that affects the site. Priced after I have looked at the site and talked through how you use it.
For schools, municipalities, charities and newspapers
Institutions pay $650, $1,800 or from $4,000 a month for the same three levels. The hourly rate is $275 for everyone; an institution plan costs more because it includes more: a written service agreement with response times and a named contact, a quarterly technical review, a monthly report written for a manager or board, an accessibility re-check on any template that changes, and a change log you can keep for audit.
What costs extra
These plans cover looking after the site, not building new things. New features, moving content, design changes, connecting other systems and setting up online sales are billed at the standard rate. If a request crosses that line, I tell you before I start rather than quietly absorbing it.
How to start
Sites I built move onto a plan whenever you ask, at the prices on this page. If I didn't build your site, I spend 30 minutes looking at it first: the code, the plugins and the hosting. That check is free if you go ahead with a plan. Some sites aren't a good fit as they stand: ones built on page builders like Elementor, Divi or WPBakery, ones on bargain shared hosting, or ones running more than 40 plugins nobody has reviewed in a while. Those need a clean-up or a rebuild first, and I'll quote that separately and clearly.
Questions about maintenance
How much does WordPress maintenance cost?
For a business, $275 a month for Essential, $500 for Active and from $950 for Concierge, in Canadian dollars. Institutions pay $650, $1,800 and from $4,000 a month.
Do I really need a maintenance plan?
If your site takes payments, brings in customers, or would embarrass you if it went down, someone has to own the updates. If it is a simple brochure nobody depends on, you can honestly skip it, and I will tell you so.
How is this different from my host's automatic updates?
A host clicks update and moves on. Here, updates are reviewed, tested, and rolled back if something breaks, by a person who will notice, not a timer that won't.
Tell me your site's address, who hosts it, and what you do now for updates and backups, and I'll tell you which plan fits. Call 613.480.1345, or email hello@kingstonwebdesigner.com. The contact page has a short form if you prefer.
Ready to get a fixed-price quote?
I reply within one business day.