Care plans for the website you actually own

The agency disappears the day after launch. You get the deploy keys, a four-page handoff PDF, and a "let us know if you need anything" email that goes unanswered when the contact form breaks three weeks later. By month four, your site is running on outdated dependencies, the SSL has auto-renewed but the CDN cache is misconfigured, and you're paying $39/mo to a hosting provider you don't really understand.

This is the part of small-business web work nobody talks about: the slow rot of a site nobody's actively caring for. Care plans are the antidote.

But they're also where most agencies trap clients. The $99/mo "maintenance plan" that does nothing. The $400/mo "premium support" that's actually 1 hour of work and 39 hours of margin. We don't run those plans.

What's actually broken about most maintenance retainers

Three things to look for when reading any agency's care-plan page (including ours):

Vague scope. "Up to 2 hours/month of support" usually means hours that don't roll over, that you have to ask for in a specific way, and that the agency keeps strict accounting on while you don't. Real care plans have specific deliverables.

Per-incident escalation. A change you assumed was covered turns out to be "outside scope" and gets quoted at $200/hr. Real care plans have clearly bounded change-types that are covered.

Lock-in clauses. 12-month minimum, 60-day notice, "transfer fees" if you leave. Real care plans are month-to-month with no penalty.

If a care plan can't show you specifically what's covered, what's not, and that you can leave any month — it's a billing relationship dressed as a support relationship.

What's in our care plan

Three tiers, all month-to-month, all specifically scoped:

Tier	Monthly	What's included
Essential	$400	Hosting + SSL + DNS · Weekly automated backups · Security patches within 48hr · Uptime monitoring (99.9% SLA) · 2hr/month of content edits or small fixes (rolls over up to 6hr)
Active	$800	Everything in Essential · 5hr/month of work · Monthly Lighthouse audit + report · Quarterly SEO health check · Priority Slack channel response (within 4 business hours)
Growth	$1,500	Everything in Active · 12hr/month of work · Monthly content publishing assistance · Quarterly conversion-rate audit + recommendations · One small feature ship per quarter (e.g. new landing page, integration, automation)

No tier locks you in. Cancel any month, no penalty, no transfer fee. You keep your domain, your hosting (we transfer it back to your name on cancellation), and your content.

What's NOT in any tier

Setting expectations explicitly:

• New page builds beyond a single landing page — quoted separately
• Major redesigns or rebrands — that's a fresh project, see /services/web-design
• Custom feature development beyond bug fixes and small additions — quoted separately
• Third-party app integrations beyond what was already wired — usually a small fixed-price add-on

We've seen too many agencies pretend "everything is covered" and then quietly bill for things that weren't. We'd rather be specific.

Cancel any month, no penalty

You can cancel by replying to the monthly invoice email with "cancel". The hosting transfers to your name within 5 business days. We hand over deploy keys, environment variables, and a written brief on what's running. No drama.

What this looks like in practice

• A Mississauga restaurant runs an Essential plan at $400/mo. We push their menu changes within 24 hours, host their reservations widget, and patched a critical Stripe vulnerability the same day it was disclosed in 2025. They've never had downtime longer than 7 minutes.
• A Toronto B2B SaaS runs Growth at $1,500/mo. We ship one new feature page per quarter (last quarter: a /pricing-calculator that brought their best-converting lead source to date), publish their monthly thought-leadership posts, and run their conversion analytics review.

Get on the right tier

We'll recommend a tier honestly. About 60% of our clients land on Essential and stay there for years. The Active and Growth tiers are for clients who want us actively contributing to their content + conversion strategy.

See which tier fits → — or add a care plan to a new build