WordPress Maintenance Plans

Features

The WordPress core software, themes, and plugins are constantly releasing upgrades. When you upgrade, there’s a risk of your site breaking due to a software conflict, so it needs to be done carefully. If you don’t upgrade, you have a much greater chance of getting hacked.

I can ensure your site stays secure, upgraded, and error-free. I also continuously monitor your site to make sure it’s up, and I keep secondary offsite backups to quickly restore your site in case of emergency.

Security, Backup, and Restore

  • If you’re not already on a secure host like Kinsta, I’ll set up increased security measures.
  • I’ll set up automatic backups to secure offsite storage (free for sites under 10GB).
  • Database backups are made daily, file backups are made weekly, and extra backups are made immediately before upgrades. Backups are stored for a year.
  • If your site is hacked or broken, I’ll do a full restore.

Regular Upgrades and Fixes

  • Upgrades will be done at least once per calendar month. If there is a critical security upgrade, I may do the upgrades more than once in a month.
  • I’ll spot check the site before and after the upgrades to see if anything breaks, and fix it right away.
  • If you have a staging feature on your host and want to be more risk-averse, I can test upgrades there first.

Why Choose EfficientWP?

Reliability. If something goes wrong, it might be days or even weeks before you notice, let alone find and hire a developer to fix it. If I’m handling the maintenance, I’ll usually find and fix errors before you notice, but if not, I’ll be readily available.

Experience. I handle maintenance for a lot of sites. When I come across a bad plugin upgrade on another site first, I’ll know to wait on it on your site, or I’ll have the fix already. You can read more about my upgrade process here.

Speed. I can fix things or restore a backup very quickly, often before anyone notices something is wrong. You and your visitors will have minimal disruption.

How It Works

See my Services page for details about pricing and billing. You’ll be billed at my standard rate when I do the regular maintenance work. If you have an urgent request, it will be billed at the urgent rate.

I’ll handle the maintenance during low traffic hours (late night / early morning continental US time) to minimize risk. I’ll spot check key pages on your site before and after the upgrades, and fix anything that goes wrong right away.

The billable time will vary based on factors such as the experience of the designer who built your site, the quality of the themes and plugins used, the quality of your hosting provider, how long it’s been since it’s last been fully upgraded, and the number of plugins installed. Small and simple sites often just take 15 minutes on most months. Larger or more complex sites often have issues that take longer to fix. If you want me to test upgrades on a staging/development copy of your site (recommended for high traffic sites), it will take a little longer, but it’s safer.

If the billable time looks like it will be more than an hour in a given month, I’ll check with you before proceeding (or you can pre-authorize a higher threshold.