Website Care Plans: Turn One-Off Builds Into Monthly Revenue

By Umair Ali Sadaqat · Updated September 27, 2026 · Editorial policy

A website care plan bundles hosting, updates, backups, security and edits for a monthly fee. What to include, how to price it, and the real revenue math.

A website care plan is a monthly service that keeps a client's site hosted, updated, backed up, secure and improving after launch. For an agency selling $2,000 to $10,000 projects, it turns every launch into income that repeats each month instead of ending at handoff. Published plans run from under $100 to about $600 a month, and most agency plans reviewed by The Admin Bar sat between $100 and $150.

TL;DR: Offer three tiers (around $99, $199 and $399 a month), pitch the plan in the proposal rather than after launch, and cap the time each tier includes. At a 50% attach rate, an agency doing 24 projects a year grows revenue about 20% in year two. Doubling needs a higher attach rate and price, and it shows up as a run rate entering year three, not in year two.

Why do web design agencies add care plans?

Project income resets to zero every month. Care plan income stacks. The Admin Bar's State of the WordPress Agency 2026 survey of 622 WordPress agency owners and freelancers found that agencies with no recurring revenue were rarely or never profitable 58.3% of the time. Among agencies earning 25% to 49% of revenue from recurring work such as care plans, hosting and retainers, that fell to 9.7%.

The same report adds a fair caveat about retainer agencies: stronger agencies tend to gravitate toward retainers, so the model reflects a healthy business as much as it creates one. Still, the direction is clear. A care plan is the simplest way to smooth out lumpy months.

What goes in a website care plan?

A good care plan covers the work that keeps a site safe and useful, and makes that work visible to the client:

Hosting and SSL. Fast hosting, a valid certificate, and uptime monitoring that alerts you, not the client.
Updates. Software, theme and plugin updates, checked after they run. On a hosted website builder, the platform handles much of this, which frees your time for edits.
Backups. Automatic daily backups kept for at least 30 days, and a restore you have actually tested.
Security. Malware scanning, login protection and a plan for cleanup if something gets through.
Edits. A fixed amount of time for content changes: new staff, updated prices, holiday hours, a new service page.
Reporting. A short monthly report on uptime, work done, form leads and top pages. Clients cancel what they cannot see.
SEO. Basic on-page checks, Google Business Profile updates and a monthly ranking snapshot, on higher tiers only.

Be careful with SEO. Kyle Van Deusen of The Admin Bar keeps SEO out of his care plans because clients may cancel the whole plan, backups included, when rankings disappoint. If you include it, sell named tasks ("update 2 service pages a month") rather than results.

How to package a care plan in three tiers

Three tiers let clients pick their own level and give you a natural upgrade path. Here is a structure that works for most small business sites:

	Essential	Growth	Partner
Monthly price	$99	$199	$399
Hosting, SSL, backups, monitoring	Yes	Yes	Yes
Updates and security checks	Yes	Yes	Yes
Edit time included	None (billed hourly)	1 hour a month	3 hours a month
Reporting	Monthly email summary	Monthly report	Monthly report and quarterly call
SEO	No	Local listing check	Named monthly SEO tasks
Response time	2 business days	1 business day	Same business day

Table of three website care plan tiers: Essential at $99 a month with no edit time, Growth at $199 a month with 1 hour of edits and a monthly report, and Partner at $399 a month with 3 hours of edits, a quarterly call and named SEO tasks.

Put the tier you want most clients on in the middle. Say in the agreement that unused edit time does not roll over.

How much should you charge for a website care plan?

Start with the market, then check it against your costs. Here is what published care plans cost, as of September 2026:

Provider	Entry plan	Highest listed plan	What changes between tiers
WP Buffs	$89/month (Maintain)	$359/month (Custom)	Unlimited small edits from the $179 Protect plan, then speed work and custom code monitoring
FatLab Web Support	$99/month (Starter)	$599/month (Enterprise)	Developer hours: 0, 1, 3 or 8 a month, with extra hours at $150
GoWP	$39/site/month (Pro), plus a free tier	$99/site/month (Business)	AI edits (15 or 50 a month) and 5 human edits of about 30 minutes on Business

These are retail prices listed for site owners, and GoWP also lists a $49 monthly white-label option for agencies. Agency pricing sits in a similar band. Van Deusen reviewed more than 100 agency care plan pages in 2025 and found few under $75, most between $100 and $150, and a top end around $250 for plans that did not bundle the website, SEO or other services.

To set your own price:

Add up hard costs per client: hosting or platform share, backup and security tools, reporting software.
Estimate monthly hours per tier and multiply by your hourly rate.
Add margin so the plan still pays when a client uses every included minute.
Build in a yearly increase, written into the agreement. Van Deusen names skipping regular price increases as a mistake he wishes he had avoided.

How to sell a care plan at project handoff

The best time to sell a care plan is before the project starts. By handoff, the client should already expect it.

Put it in the proposal. List the care plan as a line item under the project, with the Growth tier pre-selected.
Explain what happens without it. Missed updates, a lapsed domain, a broken form nobody notices for a month. A car service analogy works for most owners.
Give them the choice. Van Deusen found clients more receptive when he explained the work and offered to handle it, instead of making the plan mandatory.
Start billing at launch. The first charge lands the week the site goes live, when the client is happiest with you.
Hand over a one-page "what we do each month" sheet at the launch meeting, so the value is in writing.

How do you convert existing clients to a care plan?

Past clients are the fastest care plan sales, because the trust already exists. A simple campaign:

List every site you launched in the last 3 years that is still live.
Run a free site check on each: speed, broken links, forms, SSL and outdated content.
Send each client their results with one fix done free and an offer to handle the rest on a plan.
Offer a founding price locked for 12 months if they sign within 30 days.

The math: if 30 past clients get the offer and 1 in 5 take the Growth plan, that is 6 × $199 = $1,194 a month, or $14,328 a year.

Churn: why clients cancel care plans and how to stop it

Clients rarely cancel only on price. They cancel because they cannot see the work, their card fails, or their business changes. Fixes for each:

Make the work visible. A monthly report, plus a short note whenever you fix something they never knew was broken.
Recover failed payments automatically. Stripe Billing can retry failed subscription payments to reduce involuntary churn, and its recommended Smart Retries default is 8 tries within 2 weeks.
Offer a downgrade before a cancel. A client leaving Partner may happily stay on Essential.
Talk to Partner clients every quarter. Upgrades and early warnings both come from these calls.
Offer annual prepay with a small discount for clients who prefer one invoice a year.
Sell tasks, not promises, especially for SEO.

A client portal under your own brand also helps, because clients log in to your product rather than a vendor's. See how a white-label client dashboard keeps your name in front of every client.

Separate care from hosting and marketing

Clients mix these three up, and plans lose money when the agency does too. Keep them as separate lines, even if you sell them together:

	Hosting	Care	Marketing
What it is	Keeping the site online and secure at the server level	Upkeep and small changes to the site	Getting more visitors or leads
Typical tasks	Server, SSL, uptime	Updates, tested backups, fixes, edit time, reports	Ads, SEO campaigns, social, email
Outcome you can promise	Availability targets your host backs	Tasks done on a schedule	Tasks done, never rankings or lead counts
Priced	Per site	Per tier, with capped hours	Per project or retainer

Cost support time and scope explicitly

Before you publish a price, fill in this worksheet. The filled row is a labelled demonstration for a fictional client, "Northside Plumbing" (a five-page service site). The hours are planning assumptions to replace with your own time logs, not measurements.

Task	Frequency	Minutes per month (assumed)	Included in tier
Updates and post-update check	Monthly	15	All
Restore test from backup	Quarterly	10 (averaged)	All
Form and link check	Monthly	10	All
Content edits	On request	60	Growth and up
Monthly report	Monthly	20	All
Review call prep and call	Quarterly	20 (averaged)	Partner
Total		135 minutes

Multiply the total by your hourly rate, add tool costs and margin, and compare with the tier prices earlier in this guide.

Blank copy:

`` CARE PLAN COSTING Client: ______________ Tier: ________ Price: $_____/mo Task Frequency Minutes/month Included? Updates + post-update check ________ ______ [ ] Backup restore test ________ ______ [ ] Form + link check ________ ______ [ ] Content edits (cap: ___ min) ________ ______ [ ] Monthly report ________ ______ [ ] Calls ________ ______ [ ] Total minutes ______ x hourly rate $____ + tools $____ + margin ____% = $______ ``

Client reporting template

A report is how the client sees the work. Keep it to one screen:

`` [Month] care report for [Client] Site status: online all month / [dates and cause of any downtime] Updates applied: [count], checked after update: yes / no Backups: running, last restore test on [date] Edits done: [list], time used [x] of [y] minutes Forms: tested on [date], [n] enquiries received (from the form's own log) Recommended next: [one suggestion, with price if extra] ``

Only report numbers you can see in your own tools. Do not estimate leads or revenue for the client.

Ownership, exit terms and exclusions

Put these in the agreement in plain words:

Ownership: the client owns the domain, their content and their photos. Say who holds the domain login.
Exit: notice period (for example 30 days), how the client gets an export or copy, and any hand-over fee.
Exclusions: redesigns, new features, copywriting, photography, ads and results-based SEO, unless named in the tier.
Unused time: whether edit minutes roll over (most plans say no).
Price changes: how much notice you give before a yearly increase.

This is not legal advice; have a local professional review your agreement.

Build a clearly scoped recurring offer

Pick the tasks from the costing worksheet that every client gets. That is your lowest tier.
Add edit time and reports for the middle tier, calls and named tasks for the top one.
Write the exclusions and exit terms once and reuse them.
Check a sample client site with the free website grader and use the result as the first month's baseline in the report.
Price with the website cost calculator for the build side and the reseller margin calculator for the monthly side.

Start building your business website. If you want to build the sites you care for, create your account and start from the business website templates. The free plan publishes up to 3 template sites on a we.inc address (no AI credits, no custom domain); AI building and custom domains start on Starter at $20 a month. See pricing, or the white-label platform for running client sites under your own brand.

Can a care plan double your agency's revenue?

Sometimes, but not in year two. Here is the math for an agency doing 24 projects a year at $5,000 each ($120,000 a year), adding care plans at three attach rates.

Assumptions you can check:

Clients join evenly through the year, so a new care client pays for 6 months on average in the year they sign.
About 1 in 10 care clients cancels in year two, halfway through the year, rounded to whole clients.
Project revenue stays flat at $120,000 in both years.

	Low	Base	High
Care plan attach rate	25%	50%	75%
Blended care plan price	$99/month	$199/month	$299/month
New care clients per year	6	12	18
Cancellations in year two	1	1	2
Year 1 revenue	$123,564	$134,328	$152,292
Year 2 revenue	$130,098	$161,790	$213,288
Year 2 vs year 1	+5%	+20%	+40%
Care plan run rate entering year 3	$13,068/year	$54,924/year	$121,992/year

Walk through the Base column:

Year 1: 12 clients × $199 × 6 months = $14,328 of care revenue. Add $120,000 of projects for $134,328.
Year 2: 11 continuing clients × $199 × 12 = $26,268, plus 1 cancelled client × $199 × 6 = $1,194, plus 12 new clients × $199 × 6 = $14,328. That is $41,790 of care revenue, so year two totals $161,790.
Entering year 3: 23 clients × $199 × 12 = $54,924 a year.

Bar chart comparing annual agency revenue: $120,000 from projects only, $130,098 in year two of the Low scenario, $161,790 in year two of the Base scenario, $213,288 in year two of the High scenario, and a $241,992 run rate entering year three in the High scenario.

In the High case, care plans alone run at $121,992 a year entering year three, more than the $120,000 from projects. Together that is a $241,992 run rate, about double the project-only agency. That is what "double your revenue" really looks like: two years of high attach rates and fuller plans. In the Base case, with 12 new clients a year and 1 in 10 cancelling, reaching the 51 clients needed ($10,000 a month ÷ $199) takes roughly 5 to 6 years. Model your own mix with the reseller margin calculator.

What do care plans cost you in time?

Recurring revenue is not passive income. Take the Base case entering year three: 23 care clients, split 10 Essential, 8 Growth and 5 Partner. That mix earns 10 × $99 + 8 × $199 + 5 × $399 = $4,577 a month, the same $199 average used above.

Say Essential clients take 30 minutes a month (checks and the report), Growth clients 1.5 hours (edits plus the report) and Partner clients 4 hours (edits, the report and call prep). That is 5 + 12 + 20 = 37 hours a month, or about $124 of revenue per hour before hosting and tools.

The hidden costs are real too:

Interruptions. A site down at night is now your problem.
Scope creep. Quick edits grow into redesigns unless you log time.
Tool costs. They feel expensive at 5 clients and cheap at 50. Van Deusen reports paying only a few dollars a month in hard costs, excluding hosting, for the tools that automate most care tasks across more than 70 clients.
Capacity. At some client count, one person cannot run new projects and care work alone. Decide in advance when you will hire or outsource.

If per-site platform fees are part of your cost, check how they scale before you commit. Our Duda white-label review walks through that pricing model.

Where We.Inc fits

Care plans are easier to deliver when every client site lives on one platform under your name. We.Inc's white-label platform lets agencies run an AI website builder on their own web address, with their own name, logo and colours on the login, dashboard and builder screens, and emails to clients carry the agency's brand. You bill care plans through your own Stripe account, so clients pay you. Edits happen visually or in code, and sites publish to custom domains with SSL. There is a 0% transaction fee. Pricing is tailored to your volume and setup. Book a 30-minute demo and you get your exact price on the call: Book a demo. If you are starting from zero, read how to start a website reseller business and the complete white-label website builder guide.

Sources

The Admin Bar: State of the WordPress Agency 2026, checked September 2026
The Admin Bar: What is a Website Care Plan and What's Included?, checked September 2026
WP Buffs care plans, checked September 2026
FatLab Web Support pricing, checked September 2026
GoWP pricing, checked September 2026
Stripe Docs: Automate payment retries, checked September 2026

Frequently asked questions

Is a website care plan the same as hosting?

No. Hosting keeps the site online. A care plan is the work around it: updates, backups you have tested, fixes, a set amount of edit time and a report. Marketing, such as ads or ongoing SEO campaigns, is a third thing and is usually priced separately so a bad month for rankings does not cancel the upkeep.

What happens to the site if a client cancels a care plan?

Write it down before they sign. A fair exit clause says the client owns their domain and content, how they get a copy of the site files or an export, how much notice either side gives, and what the hand-over costs if any. Clear exit terms make the plan easier to buy, not harder.

What is included in a website care plan?

A website care plan usually includes hosting and SSL, software updates, daily backups, security scanning, uptime monitoring, a set amount of edit time and a monthly report. Higher tiers often add more edit hours, faster response times, quarterly review calls and named SEO tasks. Write down exactly what each tier covers, because unclear scope is the fastest way to lose money on a plan.

How much should I charge for a website care plan?

For basic upkeep, most agencies charge $100 to $150 a month. Kyle Van Deusen of The Admin Bar reviewed more than 100 agency care plan pages and found most priced in that band, with few under $75. Plans that include developer time cost more: as of September 2026, FatLab lists $99 to $599 a month and WP Buffs lists $89 to $359 a month per site.

When should I pitch a care plan to a web design client?

Pitch it in the proposal, before the project starts, not at handoff. List the plan as a line item under the build with your middle tier pre-selected, explain what happens to a site without upkeep, and start billing the week the site launches. By launch day the plan should feel like the natural next step for the client, not a surprise upsell after the final invoice.

Can a website care plan double my agency's revenue?

It can, but usually not in year two. An agency doing 24 projects a year at $5,000 that attaches a $199 plan to half its projects grows revenue about 20% in year two. At a 75% attach rate and a $299 average plan, care plans run at $121,992 a year entering year three, which roughly doubles the agency's $120,000 project-only revenue.

How many hours a month does a website care plan take?

Plan for about 30 minutes a month on a basic plan and 1.5 to 4 hours on plans that include edit time, reports and review calls. For 23 clients split across three tiers, that works out to about 37 hours a month. Log time against each client for the first three months, then adjust prices or included hours to match what you actually spend.

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