Are Website Care Plan Services Necessary?

Everything you need to know about why secure website hosting and a website maintenance plan is essential to your business.

You’ve invested substantial amounts of time, money, and energy into creating and designing your pristine new website. You love it, your clients love it, and it’s generating business and revenue.

You’re not finished with it, though. Now is the time to implement website care plan services to keep it running in tip-top condition.

Good Website Hosting and Maintenance is Like Routine Service for Your Vehicle

Think of your website as a new car. You just purchased a late-model straight off the production line. You paid a lot of money for the perfect vehicle that suits all of your needs and gets you where you need to be safely and securely, with comfort and style. You want to keep it that way so you diligently protect your investment by following recommended routine maintenance services to keep it operating smoothly, efficiently, and safely.

The same principle applies to your website.

The Dangers of Ignoring Website Maintenance

Revisiting the new car analogy, if you neglect ongoing maintenance requirements, you’ll encounter problems big and small, sooner or later. On the other hand, proactive and diligent vehicle maintenance gives you peace of mind that your car will continue to operate and perform properly, protecting your investment.

Very similarly, utilizing a proper hosting provider along with quality website maintenance is necessary to help keep your site running smoothly and safely for you, your business, your customers, and your site visitors.

What’s So Critical That I Need Quality Hosting and WordPress Care Plan Services?

And how do website hosting and maintenance services apply to me?

Any website constructed on WordPress has precise hosting and maintenance requirements. Developers are regularly updating the WordPress platform itself, WordPress plugins (plugins are features or mini-programs that add functionality to your site), and WordPress themes for improvements and security. Those updates need to be carefully tested and implemented within your website. If updates are not applied properly – or not applied at all – you run the risk of your site breaking, going down, or even being infected with malware.

Just think: if your website goes down or becomes infected with a virus, you risk losing customers, sales, and consumer confidence.

What Are the Benefits of Website Care Plan Services?

• Required Updates Are Performed For You, By a Skilled Professional
  Wordpress software, plugins, and themes need to be updated (and updated with care), in order to preserve the integrity, features, and safety of your website. Your Care Plan provides all updates and testing for you, so you don’t even have to think about it.
  Read more about the risks of DIY website maintenance here.
• A Systematic Process
  Unlike many care plan providers, Fat Cat Design Client Care Plans are carried out meticulously and methodically, to eliminate the chance for conflicts or site issues.
  You can read more about why this is important here.
• Peace of Mind
  With a website maintenance plan in place, you can rest assured your site and its components are being carefully monitored, scanned, backed up, maintained, and running smoothly. You don’t have to worry about your site crashing in the middle of a valuable product launch or online sales promotion, and you can keep doing what you know best (running your business) while all of this happens behind the scenes.
• Prevention of Hacks and Malware
  The number one cause of WordPress hacks and malware attacks is failing to maintain and update the website. Your Care Plan takes care of this, ensuring as much as possible that your site will remain secure.
• Malware Removal
  If your site does become compromised, and your site is hosted with Fat Cat Design, your Fat Cat Design Care Plan covers you with free malware removal and site restoration.
• Ongoing Monitoring and Scanning
  At a minimum and in addition to software core updates, plugin updates, and theme updates, your Care Plan provides you with ongoing security scanning and uptime monitoring of your website.
• Redundant Backups
  In addition to daily backups provided by your hosting provider, your Care Plan provides secondary/redundant daily backups, along with backups-on-demand, so if anything needed to be reverted to a previous backup, it can be accomplished with one click.
• Monthly Reports
  Your Care Plan provides you with monthly (or more frequent) detailed reports outlining all maintenance services completed, along with a description of the results of all ongoing monitoring.
• The Advantage of Having a Professional On Your Team
  Your Care Plan means you have the benefit of an experienced professional working to ensure your site is functioning and operating exactly as it should be to support you and your business.

What Do I Get with Fat Cat Design Care Plan Services?

At a minimum, your website maintenance plan with Fat Cat Design includes:

• Software Core Upgrades
• Software Plugin Upgrades
• Daily and Redundant Website Backups w/ Restore
• Security Scanning
• Uptime Monitoring (every 1 minute)
• Malware Removal
• Monthly Maintenance Report

Fat Cat Design will perform all of the update and maintenance services required based on your plan, and you will receive a detailed report every month outlining maintenance services completed, along with a description of the results of all ongoing monitoring.

What’s Different About Fat Cat Design’s Website Care Plan Services?

Many care plan providers use an automated system to perform updates without checking for compatibility or conflicts either before or after an update.

Website maintenance can be a delicate process. Automatic updates without manual testing can lead to your website features failing, or your site going down altogether.

Fat Cat Design provides Care Plan services to clients using meticulous steps and strategies to carry out website maintenance in a way that minimizes or eliminates conflicts or issues.

1. We review the changelogs for all updates, to determine if there are cautions, concerns, or alerts.
2. We take a backup of the site’s files.
3. We perform a visual check of the site’s main pages.
4. We update the first element.
5. We do another visual check or performance test of the site. If there are issues or conflicts, we can roll back to the previous site version in one click.
6. When all goes perfectly, we systematically follow the same steps and update each element one by one until your updates are complete.

Unlike the automated/unchecked method, this process dramatically reduces the chance of conflicts, errors, and website failure.

What About Website Care Plan Costs?

Fat Cat Design offers several tiers, or packages, to choose from depending upon your requirements and your site’s features. Packages can also be customized with various add-on services as needed. Once we all agree on the best care plan package for you, Fat Cat Design offers two payment options:

• MONTHLY OPTION: Our monthly plan invoices every month and you pay electronically.
• ANNUAL OPTION WITH DISCOUNT: Our annual plan allows you to pre-pay for 12 months in advance at a reduced rate.

“Can’t I Just Do This Myself?”

Theoretically, you “can” DIY website maintenance, just as any non-attorney “can” represent him- or herself in court. However, performing services with which you’re not familiar can have disastrous consequences.
When it comes to your website, it would be more costly to hire someone to fix a broken site than it would be to engage a professional to handle it from the start.

Ensuring you have proper hosting, keeping your site updated, backed up, maintained, and secure can be tedious and time-consuming. If you’re not cautious and careful, you risk issues with features, functionality, site failure, and malware. Having to call in a professional to get everything straightened out costs time, money, frustration, and business.

We Want You to Have Peace of Mind

Just like that brand-new car purchase, you want peace of mind that you and your investment are safe and protected.

You shouldn’t have to even think about it.

Fat Cat Design wants you to enjoy your website and the success your website brings. We want you to able to focus on what you know best – your business, products, services, and customers – while your website is taken care of seamlessly.