Description

Basic WordPress upkeep — updates, backups, uptime checks — keeps a site from quietly rotting. It does not stop a plugin vulnerability from being actively exploited, and it does not stop a database that has accumulated two years of revisions, spam comments and abandoned draft posts from slowly dragging down every page load. Those are different problems, and they need different work. An established business site carries real cost when either one goes wrong: a hacked site means lost trust and cleanup time on top of the fix itself, and a slow site quietly loses visitors and search ranking every single day it stays slow, without ever announcing that it’s happening.

The stakes are different, too, once a site has been running for a while and actually generates business — leads, enquiries, bookings, a reputation people search for by name. A brand-new brochure site going down for an afternoon is an inconvenience. An established business site going down, or getting flagged as compromised by a browser warning, is a different order of problem: it’s lost enquiries during the outage, a support team fielding “is your site down?” messages, and a trust hit with anyone who saw the warning before it was fixed. The cost of neglect scales with how much the site is actually doing for the business, which is exactly why a site at this stage needs more than the baseline.

The reason these problems don’t get caught by basic maintenance is that updates and backups are reactive by nature — they protect you after a patch exists or after something has already gone wrong. Security scanning is proactive: it looks for signs of compromise, malicious code and suspicious file changes on an ongoing basis, not just after someone reports a problem — the kind of proactive coverage that matters given that even routine-sounding releases can turn out to matter, as when a recent WordPress security release patched a high-severity XSS vulnerability. Database bloat and slow Core Web Vitals scores are similar — they build up gradually, page by page and post by post, and nobody notices until the site feels sluggish and by then there’s months of accumulated cruft to work through rather than a small, regular cleanup.

Business Care Plan covers everything in Essential Care Plan — weekly core, theme and plugin updates, daily off-site backups with 30-day retention, uptime monitoring, and a monthly health report — and then adds the layer that catches problems before they become visible. Security scanning and malware removal watch the site on an ongoing basis rather than assuming nothing is wrong because nothing looks wrong. Database optimisation keeps the backend lean instead of letting years of accumulated data slow every query down. Speed and Core Web Vitals monitoring track real performance continuously, the same metrics that affect both user experience and search visibility, instead of a single check done once at launch and never revisited.

The other addition is time: one hour of included edits every month, so a text correction, an image swap or a small content update doesn’t require booking a separate project or waiting on a one-off invoice to get approved. And when something does need attention outside the routine schedule, priority support responds the same business day rather than within a 24-hour window — a meaningfully faster response for a site where downtime or a security incident actually costs money.

How it works

1. Free site health check. Every plan opens the same way — a review of WordPress and PHP versions, plugin conflicts, current security exposure and backup status, delivered whether or not you go on to sign up.
2. Onboarding onto the full plan. We connect the site to backup, monitoring and security scanning systems, run a baseline database optimisation pass, and confirm your update schedule — all without disrupting how the site currently runs for visitors.
3. Ongoing weekly and continuous maintenance. Core, theme and plugin updates run weekly. Security scanning and uptime monitoring run continuously in the background, watching for compromise or downtime as it happens rather than after the fact.
4. Database optimisation and speed monitoring on a regular cadence. The database is cleaned up on a recurring basis rather than left to accumulate, and Core Web Vitals are tracked over time so a gradual slowdown gets caught while it’s still small.
5. Edit requests and priority support as needed. Your included hour of edits each month can be used for content changes, image updates or small fixes — just send the request. If something urgent comes up, priority support responds the same business day rather than sitting in a standard queue.

None of this replaces the essentials — it sits on top of them. The weekly update cycle and daily backups from Essential Care keep running exactly as before; security scanning, database optimisation and speed monitoring are added layers, not a different way of doing the same job. That matters because a site that’s only scanned for malware but never actually patched is still vulnerable through the same holes the scan is watching for, and a site that’s only optimised once but never kept updated will drift right back to where it started within a few months.

Who this is for: This fits established business sites where downtime or a security incident would actually cost something — lost leads, lost trust, or real cleanup time — rather than just being a cosmetic inconvenience. It also fits sites where someone occasionally needs a small edit made and would rather it be handled as part of an existing plan than booked as a separate one-off project every time.

What’s included

• ✓Everything in Essential
• ✓Security scanning & malware removal
• ✓Database optimisation
• ✓Speed & Core Web Vitals monitoring
• ✓1 hour of edits per month
• ✓Priority support — same business day

Security scanning and malware removal is the bullet that matters most for a site with anything to lose: it means active monitoring for compromise, not just hoping the weekly updates were enough to prevent one, and remediation if something does get through. Database optimisation matters more than it sounds like it should, because a bloated database slows down every single page on the site, every single time it loads — cleaning it up regularly is one of the highest-leverage, least-visible things that can be done for a site’s performance. And the included hour of edits changes the economics of small requests: instead of every minor change needing its own invoice and approval cycle, it’s simply part of what the plan already covers.

Onboarding starts with the same free site health check offered on every tier — WordPress and PHP versions, plugin conflicts, security exposure and backup status — reviewed before anything is touched, so you know the real condition of the site going in, not an assumption about it.

This plan is billed month to month with no long-term contract. You can cancel at any time, and priority support responds the same business day rather than the 24-hour window on the tier below — a meaningful difference when a security or downtime issue needs attention quickly. New feature development, redesigns and large content builds sit outside the scope of this plan and get quoted separately, so your monthly cost stays predictable and doesn’t creep upward as your site’s needs change in scope rather than volume.

The included edit hour resets each month and doesn’t roll over, so it’s meant for the kind of small, recurring changes a business site typically needs — not banked up for one large project. If your site runs WooCommerce, Commerce Care Plan builds on this same plan and adds checkout monitoring and store-specific update testing, since a store carries risks that a brochure or lead-generation site simply doesn’t.

You’ll always know what the plan actually did in a given month, because the monthly health report from Essential Care continues here too — updates applied, backup status, uptime — with the additional layer of what the security scans found, what the database optimisation pass changed, and how Core Web Vitals moved compared to the previous period. It’s the same commitment to plain reporting, just covering more ground.

How long does the included edit hour take to use? Most small requests — text changes, image swaps, minor layout tweaks — are handled well within the monthly hour, and requests are addressed as they come in rather than batched at the end of the month. If a request would take longer than the included hour, we’ll tell you before starting so there’s no surprise invoice.

What happens if the security scanning finds something? Malware removal is included as part of the plan, not billed as an emergency add-on. If scanning turns up a compromise, remediation happens as part of the service you’re already paying for, and priority support means it gets treated with same-business-day attention rather than sitting in a general queue.

How does this fit with a WooCommerce store? Business Care Plan covers security, speed and database health for any WordPress site, but it doesn’t include checkout or payment gateway monitoring specific to WooCommerce. If your site processes orders, Commerce Care Plan is built for that risk profile specifically and includes everything here as its foundation.

It’s worth being clear about what this plan does not cover, too, so there’s no confusion later. New feature development, redesigns and large content builds are outside the scope of Business Care Plan and get quoted as their own project — the plan is built to keep an existing site healthy, secure and fast, not to fund ongoing new development. Similarly, the included hour of edits is scoped to small, recurring changes; a larger content migration or a new page template is a separate conversation, and we’ll always tell you upfront if a request looks like it falls outside the included hour rather than quietly running the clock.

Billed monthly. Cancel any time. Onboarding starts with your free health check and baseline database and security setup right after checkout. Secure checkout — payments processed via Stripe, bank transfer, or crypto (Mercuryo). Questions before ordering? Talk to us first.