Key takeaways
- A website care plan is a monthly service that keeps your site secure, updated, backed up and monitored.
- Choose your level by what the site earns and what a bad day would cost, not by its number of pages.
- Essentials suits brochure sites and blogs. Advantage suits sites that bring in leads or use premium plugins. Elite suits online stores and sites that take payments.
- Every Maintain & Protect plan starts with a security audit and lockdown.
A website care plan is a monthly service that looks after your website’s security, updates, backups and monitoring, so you don’t have to. The right level depends on how much the site matters to your income. A brochure site needs solid protection. A site that brings in most of your leads also needs someone checking it after every update. An online store needs its checkout watched as well.
Below we compare our three Maintain & Protect plans, Essentials, Advantage and Elite, and help you pick one in a couple of minutes.
What’s included in each care plan?
Each plan includes everything in the level below it. Prices are per month + GST, with a one-off setup fee for the initial security audit and lockdown.
| Feature | Essentials | Advantage | Elite |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $40 | $80 | $120 |
| One-off setup | $120 | $240 | $360 |
| Security audit and lockdown at setup | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Firewall and login protection | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Malware and vulnerability scanning | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Blacklist monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Core, theme and plugin updates | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Offsite backups | Yes | Yes | More frequent |
| Restores (fair use) | Limited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Uptime monitoring and monthly report | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced firewall rules and two-factor login | No | Yes | Yes |
| Premium plugin and theme updates | No | Yes | Yes |
| Visual and form checks after updates | No | Yes | Yes |
| Repairs if an update breaks something | No | Yes | Yes |
| Broken link and mixed content repairs | No | Yes | Yes |
| Minor content changes (fair use) | No | Yes | Unlimited, with minor repairs |
| Checkout and payment gateway checks | No | No | Yes |
| Database and image optimisation | No | No | Yes |
| Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Facebook pixel setup | No | No | Yes |
| Search engine health report | No | No | Yes |
Annual billing costs ten times the monthly price, so you get two months free. If your site has already been hacked, the setup fee doubles, because we need to clean it before we can lock it down.
Which care plan am I?
Find the row that sounds most like your business. If two rows fit, go with the higher plan.
| If this sounds like you | Your plan |
|---|---|
| A brochure site that tells people who you are, and most customers phone you | Essentials |
| A blog or portfolio built with free plugins, changed a few times a year | Essentials |
| Your website brings in most of your enquiries, so forms must always work | Advantage |
| Your site uses a premium page builder, theme or plugins with paid licences | Advantage |
| You’d like small text and image changes done for you | Advantage |
| You sell online or take payments or deposits through the site | Elite |
| You run ads and need analytics and tracking pixels set up properly | Elite |
| Your site has grown slow, with a large database and image library | Elite |
| Your site has been hacked or is showing a browser warning | Any plan, starting with a clean-up |
Who is Essentials for?
Essentials is core protection for brochure sites and blogs. It covers the jobs that stop a site being hacked or lost: a lockdown at setup, firewall and login protection, malware and vulnerability scanning, blacklist monitoring, updates, offsite backups, uptime monitoring and a monthly report.
It suits a site that matters to your reputation but doesn’t change much. Think of a tradie, consultant or local practice whose customers mostly ring. The first year on annual billing ($400 plus the $120 setup, + GST) costs less than a typical malware clean-up, which one Australian agency puts at $600 to $1,500 (WP Creative).
Who is Advantage for?
Advantage is for sites that do real work for the business. The key difference is what happens after updates. We check the site visually and test forms, and if an update breaks something, we repair it as part of the plan.
It also adds advanced firewall rules and two-factor login, updates for premium plugins and themes, unlimited restores, minor content changes, and broken link and mixed content repairs (all fair use). If your enquiry form is how most new customers reach you, a silent failure costs you every day it goes unnoticed. Advantage is built to catch that.
Who is Elite for?
Elite is for sites where downtime or a broken checkout means lost sales straight away. It adds checkout and payment gateway checks, more frequent backups, unlimited minor repairs and changes (fair use), database and image optimisation, Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Facebook pixel setup, and a search engine health report.
If you run a WooCommerce shop, take bookings with deposits, or spend money on ads, Elite makes sure the parts that earn money keep working and that you can measure them.
Do I still need hosting with a care plan?
Yes. A care plan looks after the website: WordPress, its theme and plugins, backups and content. Hosting is the server the site runs on. With our managed hosting, the server side is looked after too, so the whole stack is covered by one team.
If you’re still deciding whether you need ongoing care at all, our guide to website maintenance explains what it covers and what happens without it. Building something new? Our website launch checklist shows what to set up before go-live.
You can see the full details and start any plan from our Maintain & Protect website care plans page.
Frequently asked questions
What is a website care plan?
A website care plan is a monthly service that keeps a site secure, updated, backed up and monitored. Depending on the level, it can also include checks after updates, repairs, content changes and performance work. It replaces ad hoc fixes with steady, predictable care for a fixed fee, so problems are caught early.
What’s the difference between Essentials and Advantage?
Essentials protects the site: security, scanning, updates, offsite backups, monitoring and a monthly report. Advantage adds what happens after updates: visual and form checks, and repairs if an update breaks something. It also covers premium plugin and theme updates, two-factor login, unlimited restores and minor content changes, all on a fair use basis.
Do I need Elite for a WooCommerce store?
We recommend it. Elite adds checkout and payment gateway checks, more frequent backups and database optimisation, which matter most when orders and payments run through the site. A store on a lower plan is still protected, but nobody would be specifically checking that customers can complete a purchase after changes.
Why is there a setup fee?
The setup fee covers a full security audit and lockdown before ongoing care begins: $120, $240 or $360 + GST depending on the plan. It means we start from a known, hardened state. If the site is already compromised, the fee doubles, because it has to be cleaned first.
What does “fair use” mean?
Fair use means the inclusion covers normal, reasonable use for a site of that kind. Minor content changes, for example, cover small edits such as updating text or swapping an image, not building new pages or redesigning a section. Larger work is quoted separately.
Sources
- Maintain & Protect website care plans, Website Management Services, accessed 13 Nov 2026
- WordPress Maintenance Cost in Australia [2026], WP Creative, updated 30 Aug 2026