You wouldn’t get on a boat without a life jacket, so why would you launch your website without a support plan? A WordPress Support Plan Check out our WordPress Maintenance Service is like a life jacket; if you fall overboard, it’ll keep you breathing easy. If you get hit by a tsunami, that life jacket isn’t going to do much. Using a life jacket, much like a support plan, is more about safety and preparation than it is about disaster-proofing. Disasters happen, but many small disasters are simply avoidable. That’s where a support plan shines.

In this new era of the wild wild web, having your website up for your customers to visit is crucial. Ensuring your customers feel safe while browsing is the most important task of your website maintenance needs. WordPress is great in many ways How WordPress Makes Our Sites Better , but with anything popular and awesome, it becomes a major target for hackers worldwide. Wordpress Maintenance Services are essential to ensuring your website is up and running, your customer’s experience isn’t hindered, and you can sleep easy knowing your website is safe.

• The Bad News: On an annual basis, hundreds of thousands of WordPress websites are hacked.
• The Good News: Most website hacks are entirely preventable by updating WordPress plugins, themes, WordPress core, and backing up your website regularly. That’s where WordPress maintenance services come in.

A WordPress support plan is for anyone who owns a WordPress website, and it doesn’t matter what industry, organization, or business you’re in. This post will cover what a WordPress support plan is, why you need one, and 5 Must-Haves In A Maintenance Plan (Jump To List) Jump straight into the list! for your business.

What Is A WordPress Support Plan?

A WordPress support plan is a series of regularly scheduled tasks performed by a developer to ensure your website is secure, backed up, and functioning correctly. These tasks are typically conducted daily, weekly, and monthly and are completed regularly on a schedule set out in the plan. Having a dedicated account manager ensures personalized support, excellent customer service and a deep understanding of your business needs, allowing you to focus on more important aspects of your life and work.

Why Do I Need WordPress Website Maintenance Services?

Has your WordPress website ever been hacked? Has one of your beloved customers ever emailed you, “Hey, I tried to go to your website, and it looks like it’s down”? Have you ever been in a meeting where you typed your website into the browser to find that you couldn’t access it?

If any of these scenarios sound vaguely familiar, it’s probably why you’re reading this post. WordPress is the most popular CMS (content management system) on the market today, making it a beacon for hackers around the world. Having your WordPress site down can have massive business implications like loss of revenue, brand distrust from your customers, and difficulties running your day-to-day operations, to name a few.

A well-structured maintenance plan is crucial in preventing these issues. It includes regular updates, security monitoring, and proactive management to address potential problems before they escalate.

To top that off, here’s an uninspiring statistic from Sucuri’s 2023 Website Threat Research Report (check out the full report). Read Sucuri's full Website Threat Research Report for 2023 WordPress makes up approximately 95.5% of all CMS infections recorded in 2023 and a 0.12% decrease from 2022 when we last updated this post. This stat doesn’t imply that one platform is more or less secure than another but instead reflects the overall popularity of the CMS. Seeing a stat like this can be scary, but it illuminates the importance of WordPress maintenance packages.

W3Tech’s market share has reported WordPress holds approximately 63% of the global content management system market share. According to Securi, they attribute a lot of the CMS infections to the rise of the Balada Injector malware. The Balada Injector Malware is a sophisticated malware campaign targeting WordPress websites that exploits existing vulnerabilities and once it gains access it redirects users to different scam sites, typically fake tech support websites.

So how do you stand up to these threats? How do you get armed and ready to fight the good fight on the digital battlefield? For starters, you need to get educated on the topic and accept that you must be prepared for anything.

At this point, you might ask yourself, “is WordPress even secure” and it’s safe to say it is. WordFence, a leader in WordPress security, wrote a thorough post on WordPress security Read WordFence's Full Post and how they handle WordPress-related vulnerabilities actively. In the image below, WordFence outlines how a vulnerability is typically handled and how its firewall protects your website against known hack attempts. So you’re a bit more armed, we’ve created a list of 5 Must-Haves In A WordPress support plan below.

Benefits of a WordPress Support Plan

A WordPress maintenance plan is essential for any business or individual who wants to ensure their website is running smoothly, securely, and efficiently. With a support plan, you can expect a range of benefits, including:

• Peace of Mind: Knowing that your WordPress site is in good hands and that any issues will be quickly resolved can be a huge relief. No more sleepless nights worrying about potential problems.
• Increased Productivity: By outsourcing your website maintenance, you can focus on other aspects of your business. Let the experts handle the technical stuff while you concentrate on growth and innovation.
• Improved Security: Regular security monitoring and updates can help prevent hacking and malware attacks. A robust maintenance plan ensures your WordPress website is always protected against the latest threats.
• Enhanced Performance: Regular maintenance can help improve your Wordpress site’s speed and performance. Faster load times mean happier visitors and better search engine rankings.
• Cost Savings: A support plan can help prevent costly repairs and downtime. By addressing issues before they become major problems, you save money in the long run.

Incorporating a Website maintenance plan into your website maintenance strategy is a smart move that pays off in multiple ways.

5 Must-Haves In A WordPress Support Plan

1. Security Monitoring

It’s important to know when your website is down, regardless of the time of day. Website maintenance services, such as our WordPress maintenance plan, ensure regular updates, security monitoring, and overall site health. Unless you’re an insomniac, watching your site all hours of the day is next to impossible. We’ve created a WordPress maintenance plan called the CareKit Learn More About The CareKit (shameless plug here, don’t mind me) that automatically monitors your website minute by minute, so we’ll know your website is down and take action well before you do.

2. Plugin Updates

Keeping your plugins up-to-date is a crucial step in your website maintenance plan. With our CareKit, we ensure websites receive the latest well-tested updates. We check for plugin updates, theme updates, and WordPress software core updates every week to make sure we address any vulnerabilities discovered. The majority of updates, especially WordPress core updates, are security fixes. Neglecting updates is one of the main reasons WordPress websites get hacked so often, and older versions of plugins, themes, and WordPress core can pose significant security issues and concerns for your website.

3. Human Checks

Some WordPress maintenance packages ignore this critical component of ensuring your website is safe. In those plans, developers and robots will blindly perform updates without checking to see if those updates are compatible and if your site is functioning correctly afterwards. You know, the “update all” function? Clicking that can be a real problem. For all of our CareKit customers, we have a dedicated developer check the sites weekly after scheduled updates to ensure that updates to the website haven’t broken anything and the website is functioning as intended. Human checks are a heavily overlooked task in most support plans simply because of the cost of resources needed.

4. Website Backups

Speaking of heavily overlooked maintenance tasks, please do not take this lightly: backup, backup, backup! I cannot stress this enough. Regular backups are a crucial part of any comprehensive WordPress website maintenance services. To be safe, we take backups in 3 ways: hourly backups, daily backups, and weekly backups to a remote server. If we conduct a plugin, theme, or WordPress update and in our human check, we find that it broke the site and it’s not functioning correctly, instead of panicking, we rely on backups to restore the site to a previously working state. Tripling the backups means triple the means to restore a fully-functional website. Having backups is absolutely mandatory in any good WordPress maintenance plan.

5. Support & Report

This rhymes and sounds cool, but that’s not the only reason I’ve mentioned it. When a website goes down or isn’t functioning correctly, our CareKit Medic (dedicated developer) and WordPress developers investigate and address the issue when our monitoring system picks it up. We also provide a monthly CareKit Insights Report outlining the number of website hack attempts prevented, uptime, plugin updates, and more.

Look at our website’s November 2024 CareKit Insights Report: 1,555 hack attempts! WOW, that’s a lot. We’re protected, so it’s time to kick back, relax, and take a much-deserved coffee break.

What to Expect from a WordPress Maintenance Service

When you sign up for a WordPress maintenance service, you can expect a range of support services designed to keep your website in top shape. Here’s what you can typically look forward to:

• Regular Security Monitoring and Updates: Ensuring your website is secure and up-to-date is a top priority. Regular checks and updates help protect against security vulnerabilities.
• Performance Optimization & Uptime Monitoring: Improving your WordPress site’s speed and performance is crucial for user experience and SEO. Expect regular tweaks and optimizations to keep things running smoothly. Using uptime monitoring to keep an eye on your websites’ overall performance. Uptime monitoring happens automatically and we get notifications when your site goes down immediately, so we can take action.
• Complete Malware Removal and Cleanup: In the unfortunate event of a hack or malware attack, a good support plan includes swift malware removal and thorough cleanup to restore your site.
• Plugin and Theme Updates: Keeping your plugins and themes updated is essential for security and functionality. Regular updates ensure your website is running with the latest software. It’s also important to swap out weaker, unsupported plugins with premium plugins where possible. A good maintenance service typically offers this.
• Emergency Support: Issues can arise at any time, and having access to emergency support means problems are resolved quickly, minimizing downtime.
• Regular Backups: Ensuring your website’s data is safe and secure with regular backups is a must. In case of any issues, you can easily restore your site to a previous state.

A comprehensive maintenance plan covers all these bases, giving you the confidence that your website is well-maintained and secure. Ideally, maintenance services should be easy for businesses to render and take advantage of.

Choosing the Right WordPress Maintenance Services

When choosing a WordPress maintenance service, there are several factors to consider to ensure you get the best support for your website:

• Experience: Look for a service with extensive experience in WordPress maintenance and support. Experienced providers are more likely to handle issues efficiently and effectively.
• Services Offered: Make sure the service offers the range of services you need, including security monitoring, performance optimization, and malware removal. A comprehensive service package is essential for thorough site maintenance.
• Pricing: Compare prices and services offered to ensure you’re getting the best value for your money. While cost is important, don’t sacrifice quality for a lower price.
• Customer Support: Look for a service with excellent customer support, including emergency support and regular communication. Responsive and helpful support can make a big difference when issues arise.
• Reputation: Research the service’s reputation online and read reviews from other customers. A well-regarded service with positive feedback is more likely to provide reliable and effective support.

Takeaway

ll of this can seem overwhelming, but with some education and the right team, you can conquer the wild wild web (get it WWW?) with grace. Take your WordPress website security seriously and use the 5 Must-Haves list above to pick the best WordPress maintenance plan for you. WordPress website hackers are ruthless, and it’s your job to ensure you’re ready for the battle. Thinking about the cost? Check out our blog post on Website Maintenance Costs. Check out our website maintenance cost post

By considering these factors, you can choose a WordPress maintenance service that meets your needs and provides the level of support and security you require. Investing in the right maintenance service ensures your WordPress site’s performance remains secure, efficient, and up-to-date.

This post was originally posted on October 7, 2019, and was updated on December 16, 2024.