---
title: "What Is a Website Care Plan, and What's In It?"
description: "What a website care plan covers, how it differs from hosting and maintenance, what is usually excluded, and how to tell a real plan from a hosting bill."
category: "Care Plans"
question: "What is a website care plan and what does it include?"
datePublished: 2026-10-15
dateModified: 2026-10-15
readingMinutes: 6
status: published
author: "UXPro Design Studio"
authorType: "Organization"
editorialProcess: "Prepared with AI assistance and checked against the listed sources."
authorUrl: https://uxpro.ca/about
canonical: https://uxpro.ca/blog/what-is-a-website-care-plan
image: https://uxpro.ca/covers/what-is-a-website-care-plan.webp
license: "Quote freely with a link to the canonical URL."
---

# What Is a Website Care Plan, and What's In It?

## Key facts

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Hosting | Keeps the site online: a server, not a service relationship |
| Maintenance | Keeps the site working: updates, backups, certificates, uptime checks |
| Care plan | Maintenance plus a person accountable for edits, lead delivery, reporting and, on some tiers, content |
| UXPro care plans (as of 15 October 2026) | Essentials $250, Growth $650, Authority $1,200 CAD a month, plus HST; month-to-month, cancel any time |
| The test to apply | A stated edit allowance, a stated support arrangement and a backup that has actually been restored |

**A website care plan is a monthly service in which someone is accountable for keeping your site online, secure, current and still delivering enquiries: hosting and DNS oversight, software and security updates, tested backups, uptime monitoring, a stated allowance of content edits, and regular checks that your forms still work. It differs from hosting, which only keeps the site online, and from basic maintenance, which keeps it technically working without anyone checking that it still does its job for the business.**

## Maintenance vs care plan vs hosting: what is the difference?

These three get sold in the same sentence and sometimes on the same invoice line. They are layers, and each one includes the one below it.

| Layer | What it covers | What it does not cover | Typical monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | The server your site's files live on; the site stays reachable at your domain | Updates, backups, monitoring, content, anyone checking that anything works | Often a few dollars a month for shared hosting, or bundled into a builder subscription |
| Maintenance | Hosting oversight plus software and security updates, backups, certificate renewal and uptime monitoring | Content changes, lead-delivery checks, reporting, a person reviewing what happened | Varies widely by provider and by what is included |
| Care plan | Maintenance plus a stated edit allowance, a monthly check that forms still deliver, reporting and, on higher tiers, SEO and content work | Redesigns, new builds and ad spend, which are separate projects or budgets | UXPro: $250, $650 or $1,200 CAD a month, plus HST |

The practical test: ask whoever looks after your site who is notified if it goes down, when a backup was last restored, and who checks that the contact form still reaches an inbox. If the answers are vague, you most likely have hosting described as maintenance.

**Why hosting alone is the risky option.** A site can be perfectly hosted, loading and looking fine, while its form has stopped sending email after a routine change at the mail provider. Hosting does not check for that. Only a person, on a schedule, does.

**Why maintenance is necessary but not sufficient.** Maintenance keeps the site working the way it did last month. It does not ask whether last month's version was working for the business: whether the hours, prices and staff are current, or whether a new service needs a page.

## What does a real care plan cover?

| What a real plan covers | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Hosting and DNS oversight | Someone watches the accounts that keep your site reachable, not just the invoice |
| Security and dependency updates | Components are patched on a schedule, and the site is checked afterwards |
| Certificate renewal | Let's Encrypt's [FAQ](https://letsencrypt.org/docs/faq/) says its default certificates last 90 days and recommends renewing every 60; someone should notice if the automatic renewal fails |
| Uptime monitoring | You hear about an outage from an alert, not from a client |
| Backups, tested | A backup nobody has restored is a hope, not a plan |
| A stated edit allowance | Small text and photo changes happen without a separate invoice |
| Lead delivery checked | A real test submission confirms the form still reaches an inbox |
| Reporting | A short note on what changed, what was updated and what was tested |

On updates, WordPress's own [updating guide](https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/updating-wordpress/) says most sites apply minor and security core updates automatically, but major releases need someone to run them, with a backup taken first. Plugins, themes and the dependencies of a custom-built site need the same attention.

## What are UXPro's care plans?

As a concrete example, here is what our three tiers include as of 15 October 2026. All are month-to-month, and you can cancel any time.

| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $250 CAD a month, plus HST | Hosting and DNS oversight, security and dependency updates, uptime monitoring, backups, lead delivery kept working, 1 hour of content edits a month |
| Growth | $650 CAD a month, plus HST | Everything in Essentials, 2 hours of edits, 1 SEO article a month, AI-search tuning (FAQs, structured data, llms.txt), Google Business Profile upkeep, quarterly reporting |
| Authority | $1,200 CAD a month, plus HST | Everything in Growth, 4 hours of edits, 2 SEO articles a month, landing pages included, monthly reporting and a strategy call |

Essentials and Growth come with email support, and Growth is answered ahead of Essentials. Authority is answered first, ahead of every other plan. Work outside a plan is quoted before we start it. HST applies at the rate for your province; the Canada Revenue Agency's [rate page](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/charge-collect-which-rate.html) lists 13% for Ontario. None of the plans promises rankings, traffic or AI citations: the content tiers do the work and report on it, and the results are not ours to promise.

Whoever you choose, the question is whether their tiers map onto the coverage table above, not whether the number sounds fair.

## What do care plans usually exclude?

Read the fine print, because this is where surprises happen. Most plans exclude:

- A redesign, or new pages beyond the stated allowance.
- Large catalogue or e-commerce data entry.
- Third-party subscriptions such as booking systems, email and paid plugins.
- Ad spend and ad management.
- Recovery from a change made outside the plan, such as an unreviewed plugin.

Ask how a provider treats requests on the boundary. Swapping a hero photo is an edit; redesigning the hero section is a project. A provider who writes that line down in the plan is easier to work with than one who decides case by case.

## Why do support arrangements matter?

Under the marketing language, a [care plan](/glossary#care-plan) is a promise about who answers when the site is down or the form stops sending. "We'll get to it" is not a support arrangement. Ask each provider what the arrangement is on each tier, what happens outside business hours for something genuinely urgent, and get the answer in writing before you need it.

How much this matters depends on the business. A law firm whose consultation bookings all run through the website loses more for every hour the form is broken than a daycare with a prominent phone number and a full waitlist.

## Backups vs disaster recovery: what is the difference?

A backup is a copy of your site from a point in time. Disaster recovery is the tested process of getting that copy back into production after a hack, a bad update or an accidental deletion. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security's [backup guidance](https://www.cyber.gc.ca/en/guidance/tips-backing-your-information-itsap40002) recommends testing recovery from backups on a routine basis, keeping an offline copy, and storing a copy off-site.

So ask three questions: where are the backups stored, how many weeks of history are kept, and when was one last restored? A backup on the same server as the live site protects against very little, and a history of only one night will not help when a bad change goes unnoticed for a week.

## FAQ

### What is the difference between hosting, maintenance and a care plan?

Hosting keeps the site online. Maintenance keeps it technically working: updates, backups, certificates and uptime checks. A care plan adds a person accountable for the site doing its job, with a stated edit allowance, a monthly check that forms still deliver, reporting and, on some tiers, ongoing content.

### Do I need a plan if my site is static?

You need less of one, not none. A static site still sits on a host that can go down, a domain and certificate that can lapse, and a contact form that can stop delivering without anyone noticing. A light plan with monitoring, DNS oversight and a tested backup covers the failures a static site actually has.

### What if I want to leave?

A properly run plan hands you a clean exit: the domain in your name, hosting in your account or an easy transfer, and your content and code. Ask how you would leave before you sign. Our plans are month-to-month, and your code stays in your repository.

### Who owns my site and domain?

You should. Register the domain in your name or your business's name, on an account whose login you control, and make sure the code and content are yours to take elsewhere. A care plan is a service you can cancel; it should never be a lock on ownership.

## Next step

See the full inclusion table on [care plans](/care-plans). For the ownership question in depth, read [do you own your website?](/blog/do-you-own-your-website) Planning a new site with a plan from day one? See [website design and build](/services/website-design-build).

*Reviewed 15 October 2026 against the sources listed below.*

## Sources

- [Tips for backing up your information (ITSAP.40.002)](https://www.cyber.gc.ca/en/guidance/tips-backing-your-information-itsap40002) (accessed 2026-10-15)
- [Updating WordPress](https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/updating-wordpress/) (accessed 2026-10-15)
- [FAQ: certificate lifetimes and renewal](https://letsencrypt.org/docs/faq/) (accessed 2026-10-15)
- [Charge and collect the tax: which rate to charge](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/charge-collect-which-rate.html) (accessed 2026-10-15)