WordPress Support Services

At some point in time, every WordPress website on the internet will eventually require some form of web maintenance. The reason is simply that the internet is always changing.

Not to worry though, our WordPress web support cost isn’t overly expensive so it should be affordable for you to maintain your website!

Here are some common reasons why WordPress sites might require website maintenance services:

• When a hosting company upgrades their servers, they might remove older versions of PHP that your website was originally intended to use. When this happens, you need to refactor your web application or upgrade to a newer PHP framework that supports the latest version.
• When WordPress releases new versions they eventually must deprecate the old versions so their teams can focus on maintaining the newer codebases. This means you will need a WordPress support expert to upgrade your website to the newer version of WordPress.
• When a WordPress site has become a victim of malware, or some other form of malicious activity, the website will need to be reviewed for security exploits and cleaned of malware. The service of malware removal can be a time-consuming activity, and often happens because the website owner wasn’t being mindful of the earlier WordPress web maintenance examples.
• When the content on your website, which explains your organization, products, or services becomes outdated and needs to be refreshed to help ensure future visitors receive accurate information about your operation. This type of WordPress support is critical to ensuring your website is benefiting you.

As you can see, there are many reasons WordPress sites may require maintenance above and beyond the obvious reasons of just wanting to update something on the website.

It is important to understand the future needs of your website when planning budgets and schedules.

Before signing up for a WordPress maintenance package, it is important to ask the WordPress support company some questions about how their web services work.

This will help you get a better idea of the relationship you will have with the WordPress site maintenance team before you give them money, provide them WordPress access, and give them complete access to your website for one of their WordPress support packages.

Let’s go over some simple questions to ask:

• How do you handle WordPress security? Do you run security scans of WordPress websites?
• What is the turnaround time for WordPress support and maintenance services?
• Do you outsource your WordPress support services?
• What are the costs of your WordPress site maintenance services?
• Do you have minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for website updates?
• What are your normal hours of operation?
• Will you keep me informed about new updates within WordPress?

We find it beneficial to run these questions by any WordPress services company before purchasing their website maintenance packages.

This practice will provide you with a much better understanding of the future relationship, the security of your website, and the expected turnaround time for important maintenance requests.

WordPress, while user-friendly, requires consistent updates for its core, themes, and plugins. Regular maintenance ensures your site remains secure, fast, and compatible with the latest technologies, providing an optimal experience for your visitors.

We typically recommend you install updates on a monthly basis. However, critical security updates should be applied immediately to ensure your website is always protected from vulnerabilities. If you add one of our website management plans, we’ll take care of these updates for you on a routine basis. Otherwise, just send in a request and we’ll handle it within your website maintenance service.

Yes, our agency assigns a dedicated WordPress manager for each client. This manager will understand your site’s individual needs, keep you informed about updates, plan out work with our WordPress developers, and be your go-to contact for any website-related questions.

We prefer to test plugin updates in a staging environment first, assuming you are okay with the extra maintenance time. If a conflict arises, we’ll identify an alternative solution or roll back to the previous version, ensuring your live site remains unaffected.

We suggest you have us install a WordPress security plugin to help with routine security improvements. From there, it is a good idea to check if you have a backup policy in place, if you are using strong passwords, if you’ve disabled unnecessary admin accounts, etc. It is also a good idea to check if your hosting company includes malware scanning within their service.

For WordPress hosting clients, we perform automated daily and weekly backups. For WordPress management clients, we perform on-demand backups prior to installing updates. For WordPress maintenance clients, we often do not have recent backups and rely on you or your web hosting service to have fresh backups in-place. The ultimately responsibility for website backups falls on you, the business owner. If you take the time to read the terms of service of your web hosting provider, you will likely notice several disclaimers regarding data loss. We recommend you learn how to generate your own backups, regardless of who you hire for WordPress website maintenance, management, or hosting.

Definitely! Part of our example WordPress maintenance services include content updates. Whether it’s posting new articles, updating product listings, or modifying page content, our team has you covered.

We can assist with that! Just let us know your requirements, and we’ll find, test, and install compatible plugins or themes that align with your needs. Please be aware that theme changes are often large projects, though!

If the issue is related to our web hosting services, we’ll have server administrators alerted to begin resolving the issue immediately. However, we do not have WordPress developers on-call on nights and weekends. We recommend you refrain from modifying your WordPress website outside of our normal business hours.

All WordPress support services are billed on a time-and-materials basis. You can pre-pay for a WordPress maintenance block of time to receive a discounted hourly rate, or as an existing client you can opt for monthly invoices at a slightly higher hourly rate.

When talking with prospective WordPress website maintenance clients, we are often asked what is considered billable time. You will find the answers vary greatly within the WordPress support industry.

In some situations, you may find a WordPress maintenance company to charge a much higher hourly rate, but not bill out for client communication or task organization. Likewise, there are WordPress website support companies like us, who charge a more affordable hourly rate, but also bill out for most communication and organization.

To help provide clarification, let’s go over some examples of what we consider billable time when it comes to maintaining and supporting your WordPress website.

WordPress maintenance services we do consider billable time:

• Reading through lengthy emails to understand what is being requested.
• Preparing responses to lengthy or complex email messages.
• Helping you figure out your domain name or web hosting provider credentials.
• Scheduling your WordPress maintenance to be completed by the best team member.
• Talking with you on the phone about new ideas or potential website changes.
• Reviewing completed work for quality control purposes.
• Providing you with training on how to handle administrative tasks.
• Researching unique solutions to difficult questions you present our team.
• Providing detailed time usage reports, beyond the automated monthly update email.
• Helping you figure out email client issues within Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.
• Almost any other task that you request for your website or company.

WordPress website maintenance services we do not consider billable time:

• We do not charge you to talk about personal matters, such as the weather, a recent vacation, or a sporting event.
• We do not charge you to respond to simple email messages that don’t require research or lengthy feedback.
• We do not charge you to handle accounting-related tasks, such as invoice generation, payment confirmations, etc.