HDC Academy Template
Website care plan template (UK)
What is a website care plan template?
A website care plan template is the document a web designer gives a client to sell ongoing site maintenance as a monthly service. It sets out the tiers, the price, what is included, what is not, and the notice period. Used well, it turns a one-off build into recurring revenue.
Last reviewed 7 October 2026 Word (.docx) · free
Most web designers lose the care plan conversation by having it too late and too vaguely. The build finishes, the invoice is paid, and six weeks later the client emails about a broken form. You fix it for nothing, because there is no document that says what looking after the site costs.
This page is the template that fixes that, written out in full, plus how to use it and what every section is actually doing. Copy it, change the numbers to yours, and have it ready before the project ends rather than after.
What this document is for
A care plan document does two jobs. It gives the client a clear reason to pay you every month, and it gives you a line to point at when a request falls outside what they pay for. Without it you end up doing both for free.
It is also the difference between a business with a lumpy project pipeline and one with a floor under it. A handful of care plans covers the quiet months, and the clients on them are the ones who come back for the next project.
Use it as a leave-behind at handover and as an appendix to any proposal that should end in a retainer. It is not a contract on its own; the commercial terms belong in your main agreement, and this document should match them exactly.
How to use it
- 1
Set your tiers before you set your prices
Decide what the three levels of service actually are, in terms of what the client gets. Three works because it gives a cheap option, a recommended option and a growth option without becoming a menu. Name them plainly.
- 2
Price the time, not the hosting
Hosting, security, backups and monitoring cost you almost nothing if your build is right, and every competitor sells them. Price the plan as an amount of your attention each month instead, then list the infrastructure as included rather than as the product.
- 3
Write what is out of scope first
Counter-intuitive, but it is the section that saves you money. Name the things people assume are included — a new page, a redesign, content writing, a third-party integration, emergency work out of hours — and say they are quoted separately.
- 4
Make the numbers match your agreement
If your main agreement has a managed-services schedule, the prices and notice periods here must be identical to it. When a client is on different numbers, change both documents or neither. Two versions of the same price is the argument you lose.
- 5
Put it in front of the client before the project ends
The best moment is at handover, when the site is working and they can see what it took. Offering a care plan three months after launch reads as an upsell. Offering it at handover reads as finishing the job properly.
Every section, explained
- 1
1. What this plan fixes
Four or five problems named in the client's words, not yours. This is the only section that sells; the rest is detail. A client does not buy "maintenance", they buy not being the person whose contact form was broken for a fortnight.
What goes in it
- A form or enquiry route that quietly stops working and nobody notices
- Search terms the business should be visible for, that nobody is tracking
- Parts of the business with no presence on the site at all
- A site that stopped improving the day it launched
Common mistake: Listing features instead of problems. "Monthly plugin updates" is a task; "the site stops being the thing that breaks your week" is a reason to pay.
- 2
2. The plans
Three cards, side by side. Each one needs a name, a price, a stated amount of your time, and a one-line description of who it suits. Mark the middle one as recommended and style it that way, because most people take the middle option when you tell them which one it is.
What goes in it
- Plan name and monthly price
- A guide amount of time per month
- What is included at that level
- Who it is for, in one line
Common mistake: Four or five tiers. Every tier you add makes the decision harder and the cheap one more attractive. Three, with a recommendation.
- 3
3. Your time, your call
One short paragraph saying the hours are a guide and not a meter, and that you will not refuse a ten-minute job because the month is full. It removes the fear that the plan is a ticket system.
What goes in it
- The hours are a guide, not a stopwatch
- Advice on the wider marketing setup comes with any plan
- Implementing that advice comes out of the plan time
Common mistake: Being precise about hours. A plan that bills to the minute invites the client to audit you, and you will spend more time accounting for the hours than using them.
- 4
4. Always included
The infrastructure list. Hosting, SSL, security, backups, uptime monitoring, form testing. It belongs here, below the plans, framed as "this is handled" rather than as the thing being sold.
What goes in it
- Hosting, SSL and the platform the site runs on
- Security updates and monitoring
- Backups, and how far back they go
- Routine checks that the forms still work
- A plain line saying the client owns the site, the domain and the data
Common mistake: Selling hosting as the headline. The client can buy hosting for a few pounds a month and they know it. Your time is the part they cannot buy anywhere else.
- 5
5. What is not included
The boundary. New pages, redesigns, new functionality, content writing, ad spend, third-party licence fees, work outside normal hours. Each one quoted separately, and said here so it is not a surprise later.
What goes in it
- New pages, sections or features
- A redesign, or a rebuild on a new platform
- Content and copywriting beyond small edits
- Third-party costs and licences, named
- Out-of-hours or emergency response, if you do not offer it
Common mistake: Leaving it out to seem generous. Every care plan that has no out-of-scope section becomes an unpaid retainer within a year.
- 6
6. How it works
The mechanics, in five lines. Rolling monthly, invoiced in advance, the notice period, no minimum term, and that the client can move between plans. Short, boring, and it answers the objection before it is raised.
What goes in it
- Rolling monthly, invoiced in advance
- The notice period, stated as a number of days
- Whether there is a minimum term, and ideally that there is not
- That they can move up or down a plan at any time
- What happens to the site if they cancel
Common mistake: A twelve-month tie-in. It wins you nothing a good service would not win anyway, and it is the single most common reason a careful client declines.
- 7
7. How to start
One instruction. Reply to this email, or pick a plan and we will send the first invoice. No form, no booking link, no choice of five next steps.
What goes in it
- The single action you want them to take
- Who to contact, named as the business rather than an individual
Common mistake: Ending with "let me know if you have any questions". That is not a next step, and it reliably produces no reply at all.
A filled example
The same template with a fictional client in it, so you can see the level of detail that works. Northgate Joinery is invented, and so are these figures. Yours should come from what the work actually costs you, not from this page.
Worked example · fictional client
- Client and site
-
Northgate Joinery, northgatejoinery.example
Prepared 14 March 2026. Valid for 30 days.
- What this plan fixes
-
Your quote form was down for eleven days in January and we only found it because a customer rang.
You rank for "bespoke staircases" in two towns and nothing is tracking the other four you work in.
The kitchens side of the business has no page at all.
Nothing on the site has changed since launch, so nothing has improved since launch.
- Plan A — Essential
-
£[ ] a month, around [ ] hours.
Nothing breaks and nothing drifts. Updates, monitoring, backups, form checks, and small edits when you need them.
For a site that is working and does not need to change much.
- Plan B — Growth (recommended)
-
£[ ] a month, around [ ] hours.
Everything in Essential, plus the marketing actually gets run rather than advised on: search tracking, content changes, and one improvement shipped each month.
For a business that wants the site to bring in more work than it does now.
- Plan C — Growth Plus
-
£[ ] a month, around [ ] hours.
Everything in Growth, plus the site grows a piece at a time — a new section or feature each month instead of one large invoice next year.
For a business adding services or locations this year.
- Always included
-
Hosting, SSL and platform updates. Daily backups kept for 30 days. Uptime monitoring. A monthly check that every form arrives.
You own the website, the domain, the content and the data. There is nothing to transfer if you leave.
- Not included
-
New pages, new features or a redesign. Content writing beyond small edits. Ad spend and third-party licences. Out-of-hours emergency work.
Any of these can be quoted separately, and the quote will be a fixed price before anything starts.
- How it works
-
Rolling monthly, invoiced in advance on the 1st. 30 days' notice to cancel. No minimum term. Move between plans whenever you like.
- How to start
-
Reply with the plan you want and we will send the first invoice.
Leave the prices as blanks while you are deciding them. A document with a confident blank in it is easier to finish than one with a number you will want to change.
What UK agencies publish for care plans
Before you set your own numbers, it helps to know the shape of the market. These are published ranges from UK agencies and studios, gathered from their own public pricing pages. They are a sanity check on your tiers, not a recommendation, and they are not our prices.
Published monthly care plan ranges, UK, as at October 2026
| Tier | Published monthly range | Typically includes |
|---|---|---|
| Basic maintenance | £20 to £75 | Updates, backups and monitoring. Little or no time for changes. |
| SME care plan | £75 to £200 | The above plus a small amount of time each month for edits and support. |
| Ecommerce or premium | £200 to £550 | More time, faster response, and the extra surface area a shop brings. |
| Growth retainer | £700 and up | A different product: marketing delivery rather than site upkeep. |
Two things worth noticing. Most published plans exclude hosting, which they charge for separately, and most agency prices are quoted excluding VAT. Both change how a price compares, so check which you are looking at before you match it.
Where these figures come from
Published ranges from UK agencies and studios, read at the date shown at the top of this page. They are market context, not our prices, and not a quote. We price each job on its scope.
Why does a care plan show hours when a project quote never should?
This is the one place the usual rule flips, and it is worth understanding rather than copying. On a project you sell the outcome and the fixed price. You never sell days, because the moment a client knows how long something takes, they start pricing your time instead of the result, and getting faster starts to cost you money.
A monthly retainer is the exception. A fee with no stated amount of attention behind it has nothing to anchor to, and it reads as a subscription to nothing. So you state the time, as "around five hours a month", and you say in the next line that it is a guide rather than a meter.
- On a project — outcome, scope, fixed price. No hours, ever.
- On a retainer — a guide amount of time, stated as a guide.
- In both — the price is the price, and a change of scope is quoted before anyone does the work.
Where this goes wrong: Carrying the hours habit back into your proposals. Once a client has seen your hourly shape on a care plan, they will try to apply it to the next build. Keep the two documents separate and keep hours out of the proposal.
How many care plans do you need before it changes anything?
Do the arithmetic on your own numbers rather than on anybody's promise. Take your fixed monthly costs, divide by the monthly fee of your middle tier, and that is how many care plans cover your overheads. For most one-person operations it is a surprisingly small number, and it is the most useful figure in your business plan.
We are not going to tell you what you will earn, because we cannot know, and anyone who does is guessing. But the calculation is yours to do in two minutes, and it reframes the care plan from an upsell into the thing that makes the rest of the work optional.
Where this goes wrong: Pricing the plan at what feels easy to say out loud rather than at what the work costs. A plan you resent servicing gets serviced badly, and then it churns.
When should you not offer a care plan?
If the site is on a platform you do not control and cannot fix, do not take a monthly fee to look after it. You will be liable for something you cannot change. Say so, offer to move it, and price that separately.
If the client's real problem is that the site is wrong rather than unmaintained, a care plan is the wrong sale. It will spend every month papering over a build that needed replacing, and when it does not work the plan gets blamed.
- You do not control the hosting or the platform
- The site needs rebuilding, not maintaining
- The client wants a guaranteed response time you cannot actually staff
- The work they describe is a project, and should be quoted as one
Word (.docx)
Get the editable version
The same document as an editable Word file, with the tiers, the out-of-scope list and the mechanics already laid out and the prices left blank for you to fill in.
The whole template is written out above and stays free to read, copy and use without giving us anything. The email is only so we can send you the editable file.
What this does not cover
- This is a commercial document, not a legal one. It does not replace a written agreement, and it says nothing about liability, data protection or what happens in a dispute. Those belong in your main contract.
- It does not set your prices. The blanks are deliberate: your costs, your market and your capacity are not ours.
- It assumes you control the hosting and the platform. If you do not, the "always included" section is a promise you cannot keep.
- It does not cover response-time guarantees or out-of-hours cover. If you sell either, they need their own wording and the staffing to back it.
- There is no VAT guidance here. Whether you add VAT, and how you show it, depends on your own registration status. Check it before you publish a price.
Nobody has taken an HDC Academy course yet, so there are no student numbers, reviews or results on this page. What is here is the process we use on client work, written out.
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ReadHow to price a website project
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ReadWhere this fits
These documents come out of the library HDC Academy is built from: the standards, checklists and templates we deliver client work to. The Academy is in development and the courses will teach the whole system, not just the paperwork.
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Questions about this template
Is this website care plan template free?
Yes. The whole document is written out on this page, free to read and copy, with nothing to sign up for. If you would rather have it as an editable Word file, we ask for an email address so we can send it to you, and the email opt-in next to it is separate and optional.
What should a website care plan include?
Five things at a minimum. The problems it solves in the client's words, the tiers with a price and a guide amount of time, what is always included, what is explicitly out of scope, and how it works commercially — rolling monthly, invoiced in advance, with a stated notice period.
How much should I charge for a website care plan?
Published UK plans run from about £20 a month for updates and backups to £550 or more for ecommerce, with marketing retainers sitting above that as a different product. Those ranges are on this page with their sources. Price yours from your own costs and the time each tier really takes, not from the market alone.
Should a care plan have a minimum term?
Usually not. A twelve-month tie-in rarely keeps a client who wants to leave, and it is one of the most common reasons a careful client says no in the first place. Rolling monthly with 30 days' notice removes the objection and puts the pressure where it belongs, on the service being good.
Can I use this with my own clients?
Yes, that is what it is for. Change the wording to suit how you work, make sure the prices and notice periods match your own agreement, and have a solicitor look over anything you intend to use commercially. It is a starting point, not legal advice.
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