website care plan pricing

What a Website Care Plan Should Cost and Cover

Search "website care plan" and most of what comes back is a handful of WordPress agencies and hosting shops, each explaining what their own plan covers. None of them covers Squarespace, Shopify, or Webflow, and none gives you a figure you can check against a second source. Here's what the two most direct vendor breakdowns we could find actually say, with the dates we read them, and how Howard Creative Co.'s own two plans compare, on whatever platform you're already running.

The short answer

A website care plan should run somewhere between $75 a month, the floor The Admin Bar found surveying outside vendors, and $300 or more a month, the top of Blake Strategies Group's own highest tier. What moves the price is whether hosting is bundled in, whether updates are automated or done by a person, and whether the plan includes someone making small edits for you instead of leaving you to do it yourself.

What a care plan should include

One agency that publishes care-plan pricing across the market, The Admin Bar, names four things that show up "more often than not": backups, software updates, security, and uptime monitoring. Treat those four as the floor, not the whole plan. Blake Strategies Group, which sells its own care plans, adds a layer on top of that floor as the price climbs: managed hosting and daily backups at its mid tier, then "regular content edits" and "monthly performance reviews" at its highest tier. The further up the price range you go, the more a person, not just a script, is doing the work.

What it usually doesn't include

The Admin Bar says SEO is "not something that can be easily included" in a care plan, and its own $75-$250 range specifically excludes plans that bundle in the cost of the website, SEO, or other services. If a care plan quote already includes SEO work, that's not a standard care plan; ask what's actually in it. On the content side, Blake Strategies' own plans cap small edits at "anything under about 30 minutes": hours, prices, team members, text changes, image swaps. A full rewrite or a new page isn't a 30-minute edit, so expect that kind of work to sit outside the plan too.

Typical pricing tiers

Blake Strategies Group breaks its own plans into three tiers. This is one vendor's own breakdown, not an industry standard, but it's a useful shape for what the climbing price actually buys:

  • Budget, $30-$60/month: automated hosting with basic security scanning and monthly backups. You're buying infrastructure, not a person's attention.
  • Mid-range, $80-$150/month: managed hosting, daily backups, and plugin and theme updates done by a human, plus some support access.
  • Comprehensive, $150-$300+/month: everything in mid-range plus regular content edits, monthly performance reviews, and priority support turnaround.

Blake Strategies says its own plans "start at $99/month," which lands inside its own mid-range band, though the page never says so directly.

How Howard Creative Co. does it

We run two different things under "care," and the difference matters. If we built your site, you get the Care Plan: the first month is included with every build, and after that it's sized to your build and quoted with it. We don't publish one flat number for it, and that's not us dodging the question: a plan sized to a five-page brochure site and a plan sized to a membership platform with payments and a job board aren't the same work, so one number would either overcharge the first or undercharge the second. If we didn't build your site, you get Site Membership, which does have a published number: from $99 a month, billed annually, on WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow, and more.

Questions to ask before you sign one

  • Is hosting included, or billed separately on top of the monthly fee?
  • Are updates done by a person, or only automated?
  • Is there a cap on how much content editing is included each month, and what happens past it?
  • Is SEO work included, or is that a separate line somewhere in the quote?
  • If the plan is for a site the vendor didn't build, does the price change based on that?

Want ours?

If you already have a site and want it covered, Site Membership starts at $99 a month, billed annually, no matter who built it. If you're building with us, the first month of the Care Plan comes with it.

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FAQ

What is a website care plan and what's included?

At minimum, backups, software updates, security monitoring, and uptime monitoring. Plans that cost more up the price scale from there usually add managed hosting, human-done updates, and a set amount of content editing each month.

How much does a website care plan cost?

Blake Strategies Group's own three tiers run from about $30 a month for a fully automated budget plan to $300 or more a month for a comprehensive plan with content edits and performance reviews included. The Admin Bar's survey of outside vendors found it's rare to see anything under $75, with most landing between $100 and $150, and the top end around $250.

Is SEO included in a website care plan?

Usually not. One vendor we checked says SEO "is not something that can be easily included" in a standard care plan and prices its range on plans that don't bundle it in.

Do website care plans work on platforms besides WordPress?

Most of what's published online is WordPress-specific. Ours isn't: Site Membership covers WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow, and more, and the Care Plan works on whatever we build your site in.

Sources: The Admin Bar's price range ("rare to see anything under $75," the majority "$100-$150," the top end "around $250"), its four common inclusions and its SEO line (theadminbar.com, read 29 October 2026). Blake Strategies Group's three tiers, its "start at $99/month" and its "anything under about 30 minutes" edit cap (blakestrategiesgroup.com, read 29 October 2026). Our own Care Plan and Site Membership terms are on our website care page, read 29 October 2026.