WordPress Maintenance Plans

What a plan includes

What a month on a plan looks like

In a typical month, updates are checked weekly and applied, with anything that touches payments or bookings tested on a copy first. Backups run on schedule and their sizes are watched, so a backup that suddenly shrinks or stops raises an alert. Monitoring runs in the background, and any alert is checked against the log of planned changes. At the end of the month you receive a one-page report: what was updated, whether every backup ran, what alerts fired and what they turned out to be, and anything we suggest you decide on, such as replacing a plugin that is no longer maintained.

When things are working, the report is short. That is the point of maintenance: problems are dealt with while they are small.

How we scope a plan

The right plan depends on what the site does, not on its size. A five-page site for a tradesperson and a shop taking orders every hour both run on WordPress, but a broken update costs them very different amounts. Before quoting, we ask:

• Does the site take payments, bookings or account sign-ups?
• How often do you edit it, and who else has access?
• Which plugins are business critical, such as a booking system, a membership tool or a shop?
• What does your host already include, such as backups or malware scanning?
• How quickly do you need a reply if something breaks?

The answers decide the update approach, the backup frequency and the response time written into the plan.

Why updates are tested first

The WordPress hardening guide is clear that you should keep the site current ^[2], and plugins are where most new weaknesses are found: Patchstack attributes 91% of the WordPress vulnerabilities it recorded in 2025 to plugins ^[4]. But updates occasionally break things, especially on sites with many plugins or custom code. For plugins that handle money or bookings, we apply the update to a private copy, check the key flows, and only then update the live site. Lower-risk plugins can update automatically.

What plans cost in Australia

Prices vary widely. One Australian agency's 2026 guide puts small business or lead-generation site maintenance at $200 to $800 a month excluding GST, personal sites and blogs at $50 to $150 a month, and WooCommerce stores at $500 to $2,500 or more a month ^[1]. That guide is published by a company that sells maintenance, so treat the ranges as one view of the market. Our own pricing page explains how we quote, and the guide to choosing a maintenance plan covers what to compare.

Response times, honestly stated

Each plan states how quickly we reply to a problem during business hours and what happens outside them. We do not describe a plan as round-the-clock unless it includes staffed cover at those hours, and we do not attach uptime percentages to sites we do not host. Consumer guarantee rights cannot be signed away ^[3], so our plan documents describe the work and the response times plainly instead of hiding exclusions in fine print.

What the monthly report contains

A maintenance plan should leave a record you can read in a couple of minutes. Each month you receive a short report that lists the updates applied, with any that were held back and the reason, such as a known compatibility problem or a change that needs testing on a copy first.

The report also covers:

• backup status for the month, including the date of the last test restore;
• any security alerts, what caused them and what was done;
• user accounts added or removed, so you can confirm each change was expected;
• anything that needs a decision from you, such as an old plugin that should be replaced or a hosting notice;
• time used, if your plan includes a set number of hours for small changes.

The point of the report is not to look busy. It is to make the work visible, so you can tell whether the plan is doing what you are paying for. If a month is quiet, the report will be short, and that is a good thing.

Reports are written for the business owner, not for a developer. Technical detail is kept in an appendix for anyone who needs it, such as a future provider.

If you leave

Backups are stored in your accounts, and every login we use is one you created. If you move to another provider, we hand over a short note listing the plugins, schedules and quirks of your site, and we remove our access.