WordPress care plans for agencies and freelancers
For agencies and freelancers who build WordPress sites and are asked to look after them. How to sell upkeep as a plan, what to put in the proposal and the monthly report, and how to hand the work to someone else under your own name.
- By
- WP Ministry
- Published
A site you built keeps needing you after it launches: updates, a backup when something breaks, a small change the client wants by Friday. Done one request at a time, that work is unpaid or underpaid. Sold as a plan, it is income every month and a reason for the client to stay.
Selling it. How to sell care plans covers when to offer one and how to answer the usual objections, and how to price them is a method for working out a price from your own costs. The care plan proposal template is a proposal to adapt and send, with the scope written so that a client can see what is and is not included. The margin calculator works out what a plan earns you per site, from your own price and your own costs.
Showing the work. A client who never hears from you assumes nothing is being done. The monthly maintenance report template is what to send, and what each line should prove.
Taking on a site someone else built. Before you accept responsibility for it, work through the client site takeover checklist: record what you inherited, and tell the client in writing.
Doing the work. The routine itself is the same for any site: the maintenance checklist, updates in a safe order and backups that run by themselves.
Handing it over. Whether to outsource maintenance weighs doing it yourself, hiring, and a partner, including when a partner is the wrong choice. The white label agreement checklist is what the agreement should settle before anyone logs in. White label is our Essential care plan, delivered under your agency's brand. We run the updates, backups, monitoring and security scanning on your clients' sites, and the reports and the support address carry your name.
Guides
- How to price WordPress care plans: find your floor, find the ceiling, then build tiersA care plan's price has a floor and a ceiling. The floor is what one site costs you each month, with the bad months counted. The ceiling is what the site's upkeep is worth to the client. Work out both from your own numbers, price between them, and check what is left.
- How to sell WordPress care plans: when to offer one, what to say and how to answer objectionsA care plan sells when it is offered at the right moment, described as outcomes the client already wants, and written so the client can see what is and is not included. The hardest moment to sell one is after launch, as an afterthought.
- Should you outsource WordPress maintenance? A decision guide for agencies and freelancersOutsource WordPress maintenance when the work is routine, repeats across many client sites and does not need what you know about the client. Keep the relationship, the decisions about each site and anything the client expects from you in person.
Runbooks and checklists
- Monthly WordPress maintenance report templateA report to copy and send a client each month. It covers what was updated, the backups, uptime, security, the changes they asked for, what needs their decision and what comes next. Every figure in it comes from a record you can point to.
- Taking over a client's WordPress site: a checklist to run before you change anythingBefore you change anything on a WordPress site someone else built, take a backup of your own, record the state the site is in, and send the client what you found in writing. This checklist gives the command or screen for each check and what to write down.
- White label maintenance agreement: a checklist of what it has to settleA white label maintenance agreement has to settle five things before anyone logs in. Who talks to the client, what work is included, who has access and how it ends, what happens when something breaks, and how either side leaves. This checklist gives the question for each.
- WordPress care plan proposal template for agenciesA proposal to copy and send a client when you offer a monthly WordPress care plan. It says what is done each month, what is not included, what it costs, how to ask for something and how either side ends it, with stand-ins for your own terms.