Website Care Plan

A website isn’t finished at launch. It needs hosting that stays up, software that’s kept patched, backups that actually restore, forms that keep delivering enquiries, and a steady stream of small changes and improvements to keep earning. Most businesses have nobody doing any of that. The site launched, the developer moved on, and now every update is a risk and every change sits in an inbox. Our website care plan is the fix: a monthly managed service where we host, secure, monitor and improve your site, and a named person answers when you need something.

What a website care plan covers

The plan is built around the jobs a site needs done every month whether or not anyone is watching:

• Hosting, SSL and DNS. Fast, secure hosting on a global network, with certificates renewed and domain records looked after, so you’re never the one working out why the site shows a security warning.
• Updates. Software, dependencies and security patches applied and tested, so the site never becomes the easy target. On WordPress that means core, theme and plugin updates applied carefully, tested, and rolled back if anything breaks.
• Backups. Off-site, automated, and tested, so a mistake or an attack is an inconvenience rather than a disaster.
• Uptime and security monitoring. We’re alerted when the site goes down or something suspicious happens, and we deal with it. Usually we know before you do.
• Lead capture checks. Forms, phone links and tracking tested regularly, because a form that silently stops sending is the most expensive fault a business website can have.
• Speed checks. Core Web Vitals reviewed and fixed when they slip, so the site stays as fast as the day it launched.
• Content changes and ongoing development. An agreed allowance each month for the edits, new pages, new features and conversion improvements you ask for, done by the team that built the site.

Every plan is scoped in writing before it starts, so you know what’s covered, what your monthly allowance is, and what would be quoted separately.

What it doesn’t cover

A care plan is not a way of getting a new website on a monthly fee. It doesn’t include a full redesign or rebuild, a site for a second business, large new features such as a booking engine or customer portal, paid advertising or SEO campaigns, or third-party costs such as domain renewals, premium plugins and email tools. All of those can be scoped and quoted separately, and if something you ask for falls outside the plan, we tell you before we do it, not after.

Managed, DIY or nothing: the honest comparison

	HDC care plan	Do it yourself	Leave it alone
Updates and security	Applied, tested, monitored	Only if you remember, and dare	Site slowly becomes a target
If it goes down	We’re alerted and restore it	You find out from a customer	You find out from a customer
Backups	Automated, off-site, tested	Depends on the host	Probably none
Changes and new pages	Done for you, from your monthly allowance	Your evenings and weekends	Never happen
Who to call	A named person who knows your site	Nobody	Nobody
Best for	A business that wants the site handled and improving	A simple site and a technical owner	Nobody who relies on enquiries

Some sites genuinely suit the middle column, and if yours does we’ll say so and show you how to run it. The right-hand column is where most business websites quietly sit, and it’s where the expensive surprises come from.

Ongoing development: the part most plans leave out

Most care plans stop at “we keep it online”. The part that actually earns money is what happens after that: the new service page for the work you want more of, the location page for the town you’ve started covering, the case study that wins the next job, the form change that lifts conversions, the landing page for this month’s campaign. That’s why our plan includes ongoing development from the same team that built the site. Ask for it, it goes on the list, and it gets done without a fresh quote and a fresh negotiation every time. It’s how one site becomes a growing asset rather than a fixed cost.

A named person who answers

Every client on a plan has one named contact, Harry, who knows the site, the business and the history. When you email or call, you’re talking to someone who already understands what you’re asking, not opening a ticket with a helpdesk that’s never seen your site. Our team does the work behind the scenes; you only ever need one name.

Who this is for

This is for businesses whose website brings in enquiries and who can’t afford it to be slow, offline, out of date or hacked: trades and local services, garden-room and conservatory firms, automotive and vehicle rental, professional services, legal and care providers, and growing local brands. It suits businesses we’ve built for, who want us to keep the site working and improving, and businesses whose original developer has moved on and who need someone to take responsibility for the site. If your site is a one-page placeholder that never changes, you probably don’t need this, and we’ll say so.

The mistakes that cost businesses their website

The same handful of problems come up again and again. Nobody runs updates, so a known security hole sits open for months. There’s no backup, or there’s one but nobody has ever tested a restore. The domain is registered to a former employee or a freelancer who’s no longer around. A form breaks after an update and enquiries go nowhere for weeks before anyone notices. And the site never changes, so it slowly falls behind competitors who keep adding pages and getting faster. A care plan exists to make all five of those somebody’s job, every month.

Proof it works

We build sites to be fast and keep them that way. Bike Crash Claims came to us with a slow, fragile site and now loads in about a second and a half on mobile data. Move & Mend With Em went from a DIY WordPress site to one that loads in 1.4 seconds on a phone with 26 pages working in search. For MW Ground Screws, acting on the numbers within 24 hours of the client’s feedback tripled daily enquiries, which is the kind of ongoing attention a site needs after launch, not just before it. You can see more in our case studies.

Want to know whether your site is being looked after properly? Get your free website audit, it’s free and there’s no obligation. Or see the services this sits alongside: web development, SEO and paid advertising. If you want to understand what a care plan should include before you talk to anyone, our guide on what’s in a website care plan walks through it.