As an experienced WordPress consultant who has managed over 200 sites, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a managed WordPress care plan. I‘ve seen brilliant website projects crash and burn without ongoing maintenance and care. I‘ve also seen sites thrive for years when backed by a care plan handling the heavy lifting.
So what exactly is a managed WordPress care plan? Think of it like a comprehensive health insurance policy for your website. It proactively monitors and optimizes your site around the clock. And it provides expert treatment when issues inevitably come up.
Care plans fill critical gaps that drain business owners trying to self-manage complex WordPress sites:
- Limited security expertise as threats rapidly evolve
- Lack of time for constant software updates
- Kid glove hosting care needed for peak uptime
- Daily tune-ups required for fast performance
- Specialized skills like code troubleshooting or SEO
By leveraging dedicated WordPress specialists, care plans save you money while letting you focus on customers and content instead of website headaches.
Intrigued and wondering if a managed plan is right for your website? As a website health guru to over 500 small businesses, I highly recommend care plans that check the following boxes:
Robust Security Protections
As an industry veteran since WordPress’ earliest days, I’ve seen cyber threats explode in scale and sophistication. In 2021, 90% of compromised sites were running WordPress per Sucuri. Widely used with custom plugins/themes, WordPress sites make prime hacking targets without vigilant security.
The most common attack vectors include:
- Brute force login attacks
- Vulnerable plugins exploitation
- Malicious file uploads
- Distributed denial-of-service attacks
- Phishing and social engineering
An advanced firewall should guard site access while intrusion detection spots irregularities. Daily backups to secure cloud storage prepare for worst case disasters. Two-factor authentication locks down admin accounts.
The very best care plans go beyond static security tools with expert teams continually monitoring threats, updating rules, and responding to block attacks before they compromise your site.
Seamless Software Updates
Plugins are what give WordPress its superpowers to serve as an online storefront, reservation system, social network, and more. The average site runs 16 plugins. Like apps on your smartphone, these plugins require ongoing maintenance and updating.
With over 55,000 free plugins in the WordPress repository, keeping them updated is a nightmare for most site owners. An expired plugin quickly becomes a security liability as unpatched vulnerabilities open the door to hacks.
A care plan completely removes this plugin stress with a few clicks. It handles auto-updates in the background for plugins, themes, and WordPress core without breaking your site. Some care plans even test updates on staging sites before pushing them to production. This takes the risk and headaches out of running a plugin-powered WordPress site.
Guaranteed Uptime
Your website going down is utterly disastrous for business. Outages mean:
- Lost sales when customers can’t order
- Missing reservation bookings
- Vanishing search engine visibility
- Failing to collect email leads
42% of consumers will abandon a brand altogether after just 2-3 negative site experiences.
Unfortunately, the typical website has 85 hours of downtime per year from technical failures. Hosting servers crash. Database errors flare up. Files get corrupted.
A premium care plan stands guard 24/7 to prevent and instantly fix underlying issues. With proactive load testing, scaling resources ahead of traffic spikes, and architects building in redundancy, they deliver guaranteed 99.95%+ uptime.
I have seen businesses lose $60k/hour in revenue during prolonged crashes. With livelihoods at stake, uptime is truly make-or-break.
Optimized Page Speed
Here’s a staggering stat: a single second delay on load time reduces conversions by 7%. Ouch!
Slow performance frustrates visitors who will quickly click away from laggy sites. Google also now factors speed into search rankings.
Care plans help pages fly with well-tuned servers, content delivery networks for faster delivery, image compression, browser caching, and beyond. Mobile optimization tailors the experience for smartphones.
The result is often 3-4X faster page loads compared to DIY sites. That quickly pays dividends through better conversions and SEO.
SEO Auditing & Growth
Search engine optimization can make or break an online business. Per data from Moz, about 91% of website traffic arrives via search engines like Google and YouTube. An invisible site means losing that traffic pipeline.
Yet effective SEO requires an expanding toolkit as algorithms and best practices constantly change. It also takes precious time small business owners rarely have.
A managed care plan serves as your on-call SEO expert to skyrocket organic growth. SEO site audits uncover quick wins to improve rankings. Keyword tracking provides actionable insights. Content expansion initiatives target buyer searches. Technical enhancements like schema markup improve click-through-rates.
Surging SEO visibility directly fuels more inquiries, sales, email signups. It amplifies marketing return-on-investment across channels.
Developer-Level Support
Let’s face it. Mastering website code and server management requires hardcore technical skills. When inevitable issues crop up like site crashes or contact form failures, they paralyze regular users. Hours of Googling snippets of error messages rarely fixes these complex problems.
WordPress care plans include unlimited access to elite developer teams. Is your custom theme breaking the site layout? A developer logs in and expertly debugs. Is the client portal plugin clashing with caching? They investigate and patch software conflicts.
No waiting around praying for fixes. Problems get nipped in the bud fast so you can get back to business as usual.
Total Cost & Time Savings
If looking at this comprehensive list of continuous services, you may be wondering “how much does all of this premium management cost?”
Surprisingly, it costs a fraction of hiring just one full-time developer in-house. Packages start around $29 per month covering a single site. Enterprise-grade plans scale securely at big multi-national companies.
Care plans ultimately save money given the value of expert work you’d otherwise need multiple personnel to fulfill. They minimize business risk surrounding web properties that usually house all company data, applications, and customer interactions.
Just as important, they save tremendous time. Based on my experience, a standard WordPress site realistically requires 15+ hours per month in upkeep by knowledgeable resources. Optimal care easily exceeds 30 hours monthly.
Very few businesses can devote half a resource purely for site duties. With a managed care plan offloading these tasks, leaders reinvest that free time into serving customers and innovating on the product or service keeping the lights on.
If you are sold on the benefits of getting managed WordPress support, here are the top platforms I recommend after evaluating over 20 major providers:
WP Buffs
Price – Starts at $29/month
Best For – Blogs, small business sites
Key Features – Daily backups, unlimited support tickets, core/plugin updating
Why Choose – budget-friendly plans packed with core security and maintenance
SiteCare
Price – Starts at $149/month
Best For – Premium protection for high-traffic sites
Key Features – firewall security, load balancing, priority 24/7 support
Why Choose – unmatched security expertise protecting Fortune 500 sites
WP Site Care
Price – Starts at $49/month
Best For – mid-sized businesses
Key Features – limited staging sites, SEO analytics, speed & conversion optimization
Why Choose – balanced plans with robust optimization capabilities
UnlimitedWP
Price – Starts at $199/month
Best For – web agencies, multiple sites
Key Features – centralized dashboard, white label reports, unlimited sites/users
Why Choose – easy multi-site security management scaling big networks
MainWP
Price – Starts at $169/year
Best For -Streamlined multiple site management
Key Features – one-click updates, backups, malware scan scheduling + more
Why Choose – Open source with largest ecosystem of 3rd party integration
- You dread updating plugins/themes
- Server management complexity keeps you up at night
- Your site was recently hacked
- More than 3 hours per week spent on upkeep
- Pages load like molasses
- SEO visibility slowly vanishing
- Launching new WordPress project
- No one on team comfortable managing
I hope this post has shed light on why a managed WordPress care plan should be a fundamental pillar supporting any serious website.
The mission-critical nature of business sites handling so much sensitive data and functionality demands ongoing security hardening, maintenance, and optimization.
Care plans fill wide skill gaps with an entire team specializing in website wellness on an unlimited basis for a reasonable price. They buy essential peace of mind while lifting heavy burdens off clients, empowering leaders to focus elsewhere.
If you manage a WordPress site without a care plan, what’s stopping you from giving your website the care it deserves? Check out some free trial offers and enjoy the new level of support. Both you and your website will be better for it!
