WORDPRESS MAINTENANCE — RETAINER PLANS
Keep your WordPress site alive. Without remembering to.
Updates, backups, security scans, and active monitoring run on a schedule. I do the work, send you a monthly report, and answer when something breaks. You stay focused on your business.
WordPress doesn’t fix itself. The sites that stay healthy have someone watching.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Most WordPress sites get maintained — until they don’t.
Owners start with good intentions. Updates run for a few months. Backups feel optional. Wordfence alerts pile up unread. Then something breaks — a plugin update kills the homepage, a brute-force attack succeeds, a backup that nobody tested turns out to have stopped running six months ago. By the time anyone notices, the site has been quietly decaying for a year.
- Plugins go unpatched until one becomes an exploit
- Backups stop running and nobody notices until they’re needed
- A WordPress update breaks the theme and the site goes down at 2 AM
- Wordfence alert emails pile up unread and a real one gets lost in the noise
- The “I’ll get to it” list becomes the “why is everything broken?” list
Maintenance isn’t glamorous. It’s the work that keeps the lights on.
WHAT I DO
Three layers of always-on work.
Updates with a Safety Net
WordPress, theme, and plugin updates run on a schedule — but with a backup taken right before, and a test pass after. If something breaks, I roll it back inside the same hour. The most-skipped maintenance task is also the most important — and the one that takes the most discipline to do right.
Active Security
Wordfence stands between visitors and your site, blocking known-bad IP addresses and patterns before they reach you. Cleantalk filters out the spam comments and form submissions that would otherwise waste your week. Both run automatically — I review the alerts, you don’t have to.
Backups That Restore
Daily off-site backups, kept off your hosting account so a breach doesn’t take them out. Periodic restore drills to confirm they actually rebuild your site. A backup that’s never been tested isn’t a backup — it’s a hope.
AND THE WORK BEHIND THE SCHEDULE
What you don’t see is what keeps the site healthy.
Monthly Reports
At the end of every month, you get a summary: what I updated, what I caught, what I’m watching. No noise. One page. If something needs your attention, it’s at the top in plain English.
When Something Breaks
WordPress sites occasionally break — a plugin conflict, a bad update, a server hiccup. When it happens, I respond by the response time on your plan: same business day for Premium, next business day for Standard, 3 to 5 business days for Essential. You email me. I fix it. You move on.
REAL RESULTS
The proof is what didn’t happen.
Maintenance proof is invisible. The sites I keep healthy don’t generate news. They don’t lose data. They don’t show “service unavailable” on their busiest day. That’s what the work is for.
I’ve been doing this since 2013. Salmon Chaser Charters has been on my maintenance retainer for over six years now — through every WordPress release, every plugin deprecation, every security advisory in that window. The site has stayed online, stayed clean, and stayed boring. That’s the win.
Other long-running sites in my care have similar stories. If a maintenance plan is doing its job, you forget you have one.
HOW WE START
Two paths in. One plan running.
1
Pick a Tier
Three plans, from $250 to $1,800 per site per month. Essential is the safety net for stable sites. Standard is the sweet spot for active business sites. Premium is for sites where downtime directly costs money.
2
Subscribe — or Call First
Essential is a direct sign-up. Click the button, complete a short intake form (site URL, hosting platform, admin access, primary contact), and I review within a business day. Standard and Premium are call-required — schedule a 30-minute call so I can walk through your site’s current state and confirm tier fit. If it’s not a fit, I tell you why and what I’d recommend instead.
3
Monthly Cadence
Once you’re on, the work runs on a schedule. Updates Monday morning. Backups verified daily. Wordfence alerts triaged within the day. Monthly report at the end of the month. You email me when you need something — and you stay focused on the rest of your business.
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE
Three plans. Three commitments. Same direct access to me.
Every plan includes WordPress updates, daily backups, and active security. The tiers differ in how many hours of hands-on time you get from me each month, and how fast I respond when something needs attention.
Essential
$250 / month
Safety net for stable sites.
WordPress core, plugin, and theme updates run on schedule. Daily off-site backups. Wordfence and Cleantalk stay active. Monthly uptime check. One hour of hands-on time per month for small fixes or content tweaks. Standard response time — 3 to 5 business days.
Right for sites that don’t need active development.
Most popular
Standard
$500 / month
For sites that need regular attention.
Everything in Essential, plus four hours of hands-on time per month. I run quarterly plugin and theme audits, push content updates and minor revisions, review your speed and security posture every quarter, and send you a summary report at the end of every month. Next-business-day response when you need me.
The right fit for sites that need regular attention without revenue-critical pressure.
Premium
$1,800 / month
For revenue-critical sites.
Everything in Standard, plus eight hours of hands-on time per month. I run monthly performance reviews — Core Web Vitals, speed metrics, security posture — and we have a quarterly strategy call. Priority access for incident response. One piece of new content or page work each month. Same-business-day response when something needs attention.
Right when downtime, performance regression, or a security incident directly costs money.
Monthly billing. · 30 days notice to cancel. · No annual contracts.
Not sure which fits? Schedule a free audit and I’ll show you which tier matches your site.
COMMON QUESTIONS
The questions I get before people sign up.
What if I want to cancel?
30 days written notice. No long-term contract. Either of us can step away at month-end with notice. Refunds are pro-rated to the day you tell me — no haggling.
Can I pause my plan?
No pause. Cancel with 30 days’ notice and you stop being charged. If you come back, you re-subscribe at whatever the current price is at that time. Active or canceled — that’s the model.
What about my hosting?
Plans run on managed hosts I work with regularly — Kinsta, SiteGround, A2, and similar. Sites on EIG-family shared hosting (Bluehost, HostGator, iPage, FatCow, JustHost, and others under that parent) need a migration first — those servers throttle updates, block debugging access, and can’t support consistent maintenance work. If you’re on one of those hosts, the “Subscribe” button routes you to a migration call instead of a checkout.
What if I just want one specific thing — speed work, schema, hosting management?
Add-on modules exist for the focused work — SEO Monitoring, Performance Tuning, Content Support, Custom Schema, Security Hardening, Hosting Management. Scope depends on the site, so pricing happens on a discovery call. Schedule one and I’ll quote it with you.
I already have a developer. Can you maintain the site without stepping on their work?
Yes. I take over the maintenance lane — updates, backups, security, monitoring — and stay out of feature development. If you have a dev who builds new things, I coordinate with them. If anything I touch ever breaks something of theirs, I tell you immediately and sort it out with them directly.
Ready to stop remembering?
A free audit pulls the current state of your site — version status, backup posture, security posture, performance baseline — and recommends which tier fits. An honest read of where you stand.