What Should a WordPress Maintenance Plan Include?

What should a WordPress maintenance plan include? At minimum: tested updates, automatic off-site backups, uptime and security monitoring, a set amount of support time for small changes, and a clear report each month. If a plan can’t tell you exactly what happens and when, it probably isn’t happening.

“Maintenance” means very different things to different providers. Some plans are a person who checks your site every week. Others are a plugin that runs updates while nobody watches.

Here is what to expect, so you can compare plans properly.

The essentials

Updates, tested

WordPress core, plugins and themes, updated on a regular schedule, with someone checking the site afterwards. “Updates included” means little if nobody looks at the site once they finish. I explain what careful updating looks like in how to update plugins safely.

Backups, off-site

Automatic backups of files and database, kept somewhere other than your server, for at least a few weeks. Ask how often they run and when a restore was last tested. See my WordPress backup guide for what good looks like.

Uptime monitoring

A service that checks your site every few minutes and alerts someone when it goes down. The point is that your provider knows before your customers tell you.

Security monitoring

Malware scanning, login protection and alerts for suspicious changes. Ask what happens if the site is hacked. Is clean-up included, or charged separately?

Support time

A set number of minutes or hours each month for small jobs, such as updating text, swapping images, adding a team member or fixing a form. This is often where you get the most value.

A monthly report

A short summary: what was updated, backup status, uptime, any issues found and fixed. It keeps the work visible and gives you a record.

Useful extras

Depending on your site, these are worth having:

• Speed checks every month or quarter, with fixes when scores slip. More in why your WordPress site is slow.
• Form and checkout testing, so you know enquiries and orders still come through.
• Broken link checks.
• Search Console monitoring for errors and security warnings.
• Domain, SSL and hosting renewal tracking. Expired domains take sites offline more often than hackers do.
• Staging for testing bigger changes safely.

What is usually not included

Be clear on the boundaries before you sign. Most plans charge separately for:

• New pages, new features or redesigns.
• Writing content.
• Major plugin replacements or migrations to new hosting.
• Hack clean-up, unless the plan says otherwise.
• Hosting itself. Some providers bundle it, many don’t.

None of this is a problem, as long as it’s clear up front.

Red flags

Be careful with a maintenance plan if:

• It can’t say how updates are tested. Running “update all” automatically is not maintenance.
• Backups are stored only on your server.
• There is no report. You can’t see whether anything was done.
• Support has no response time. “We’ll get to it” isn’t a commitment.
• You don’t keep your own logins. You should always have admin access to your site, hosting and domain. My website handover checklist lists what you should own.
• The contract is hard to leave. A good provider keeps you because the work is good, not because cancelling is difficult.

Questions to ask before signing up

1. How often do you update, and how do you test afterwards?
2. Where are backups stored and how long are they kept?
3. What happens if my site is hacked or goes down at night?
4. How much support time is included and what does it cover?
5. What does the monthly report show?
6. What is your response time for urgent issues?
7. Can I cancel at any time, and will you hand everything over?

Do you need a plan at all?

If your website brings in enquiries or sales, yes. The cost of a few hours of downtime, a lost month of form submissions or a hack clean-up is usually far higher than a year of maintenance.

If you’d rather handle it yourself, my WordPress maintenance checklist lists every task. If you’d rather not, here’s what my WordPress support and maintenance covers.

Frequently asked questions

Featured photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash.