WooCommerce maintenance service

A store differs from a brochure site in one way that matters for upkeep. An update can leave every page looking right while checkout stops taking payments, and a look at the home page will not show it. Orders also arrive through the day, so last night's backup may be missing today's sales.

The Store plan is the care plan for WooCommerce. It includes everything in the Business plan and adds the checks a shop needs. The price is on this page.

Who it is for

The Store plan fits a shop where the checkout is the business. Usually one of these is true:

• Orders come in every day, and an hour of failed payments is money you can count.
• The store runs on many plugins, for payments, shipping, tax and more. Each has its own updates, and pressing the button feels like a gamble.
• An update has broken the cart or the checkout before, and the first you heard of it was from a customer.
• You want every update tried on a copy of the store before it reaches the one that takes money.

Who it is not for

• A store whose checkout is broken right now. That is a job for emergency support, a one-time fix that needs no plan. The checkout down runbook gives the order to work in meanwhile.
• A WordPress site that takes no orders. The Business plan has the same staging-tested updates. All four plans are set out under WordPress maintenance.
• A store you already update with care. If every round of updates goes to a staging copy first and the checkout is tested afterward, you may not need this plan. How to update WooCommerce safely is the full order to work in.
• A store that needs its payments watched all the time. The checkout and payment test runs after updates. It is not constant monitoring of your payment provider.

What is included

Everything in the Business plan, and what a shop needs on top of it:

• Updates reach a copy before they reach the store. Weekly updates to WordPress core, plugins and themes are tested on a staging copy first.
• Each update is checked for more than how it looks. A visual check follows each update, and checkout and payment are tested after every update. If something is wrong, the update is rolled back.
• Orders are backed up more often than the rest of the site. Daily offsite backups are kept for 90 days, with more frequent backups for order data.
• A bad update can be undone. If an update breaks the store, the store is restored.
• Outages and signs of malware are looked for. Uptime monitoring and security scanning are part of the plan, and so is malware cleanup.
• Time for fixes and edits. 5 hours a month.
• A quarterly speed tune-up.
• A monthly report.

What Store adds to Business:

Everything else in the two plans is the same.

What we need from you to start

The free diagnosis form asks for your name, an email address, your store's address if you can share it, and a few sentences about the store. We reply in writing to the address you give. The diagnosis is free, and you owe nothing after it. Whether to go ahead is up to you.

Hosting is not part of the plan. The plan works beside your host and does not replace it.

How it works

What it does not cover

• Constant monitoring of your payment provider. The checkout and payment test runs after updates, not continuously.
• Hosting, and anything on your hosting account that is not WordPress or WooCommerce.
• Licenses for paid plugins and themes. A paid plugin whose license has lapsed may not offer updates at all.
• New store features, a redesign, or writing product descriptions. Work larger than the monthly allowance gets a written quote first.
• Time beyond 5 hours in a month. It is charged at the hourly rate and quoted before work starts. Unused time does not roll over.
• A promise that nothing will ever go wrong. No plan can rule out an attack or an outage.

Before you buy: do it yourself, or check first

The work in this plan can also be done by a store's owner who has the time. These pages show how, and what to ask anyone you pay to do it.

• How to update WooCommerce safely is the order to work in: what to read and back up first, the round on a staging copy with a test order through each payment method in its test mode, the round on the live store, and what to do if it breaks.
• How to maintain a WooCommerce store is the routine before every update, every week, every month and before a sale.
• What WooCommerce maintenance costs explains why a store costs more to look after than a brochure site and what the extra should buy. It also lists the questions to put to anyone quoting for the work, us included.
• The sale readiness checklist runs from four weeks before a sale to the day after.
• The failed orders calculator adds up the orders that were started and never paid, from your own counts. The downtime cost calculator puts a figure on the hours the store could not sell, from your own revenue.
• If checkout is failing and you want to find the cause yourself, start with WooCommerce checkout not working and payment gateway errors.

Everything on the subject is listed under WooCommerce stores.