7 Top Maintenance and Support Services for Tweaking WordPress
Is running your website a chore? Why not outsource the work?
From managing updates and backups to dealing with security, optimization, and custom development, running a WordPress site can be a challenge if you’re not technically inclined. And if you are technically inclined, it can be time consuming running multiple websites.
In recent years, there has been huge growth in the number of agencies offering maintenance and support for WordPress sites, kind of like one-stop shops that can take over the running of your website after launch, or even make simple one-off tweaks and updates to your site.
In this post, we’ll take a look at the services available, what they currently offer, and what to consider when choosing the right service for your needs.
Why Use a WordPress Support Service?
WordPress maintenance agencies typically offer some or all of the following services:
- Custom development – including small tweaks and larger more complex design changes
- Updates to WordPress core, themes, and plugins
- Backups and security
- Performance optimization
- Website monitoring
- Site migration
Is it worth forking out the cash to pay someone else to manage your site and, in many cases, do work that you could easily do yourself?
Yes, tasks like managing security and backups can be fairly easy to do (especially if you use our Snapshot plugin) depending on the size of your site and how many sites you have, while optimizing performance is also relatively straightforward with the right tools (Smush WP Pro, for example). But if you’re busy running your own business, things like custom development can be easily put off or ignored altogether.
So it all depends on your time, how much of it you have available to work on your site/s, and how much you value it.
To put it into perspective. If you only need basic help with your site for things like monitoring, backups and updates, a premium plan with a service like Maintainn would set you back $49 a month per site. If you charge $50 an hour for your own time and these tasks would take you two hours a month, getting someone else to do it for you is a no-brainer.
With all that in mind, here’s a look at what WordPress maintenance services are currently offering.
WP Tweaks
WP Tweaks offers a comprehensive and affordable set of support and maintenance options that revolve around the concept of “tweaks.” Tweaks include updating themes and plugins, making changes to a theme design or fixing bugs, performance optimization and configuring SEO plugins.
The agency offers three main packages:
- Standard: One tweak per month for $50 with a minimum three-month signup.
- Pro: Unlimited tweaks for $95 per month with a minimum three-month signup. This package also gives you access to spam comment cleansing, a monthly security scan, and site optimization advice.
- Business: The premium package weighs in at $190 per month (again with a three-month minimum) and includes additional SEO consultancy, help with site migrations, and premium theme and plugin updates.
Yearly pricing with a two-month discount is available for each package, which also includes secure cloud backups, core updates, and 24/7 security monitoring by default.
WP Tweaks offers one-off tweaks for small jobs at a very reasonable price. Tweaks cost $50 and are defined as small jobs that can be completed in around 30 minutes. The best thing about this offering is that WP Tweaks promises same-day service, and if you have a tweak that will take longer than 30 minutes you can get a free quote.
WP Tweak does a great job of breaking out the main reasons why you should hire them on their consistently informative blog. Once you start running the numbers on how much it could set you back to hire external developers (or members of your own team) to perform more than a couple of small tasks per month, their unlimited tweaks packages start to look very attractive indeed.
WP Maintainer
WP Maintainer is a three-man team that takes a more stripped-down approach to their services by offering one single package priced at a flat $99 per month, which gives you access to their full range of features including the following:
- Constant updates of WordPress core, themes, and plugins by qualified developers
- Regularly scheduled backups of your site
- One hour’s worth of maintenance tasks per month
- Site monitoring from the best in the business at Sucuri Security
- As part of the setup process, you’ll also receive free migration support and a complementary site audit and security review
Once you’re signed up to the package, you can submit additional requests to WP Maintainer’s team of developers at an hourly rate of $99 and take advantage of discounted development costs for larger projects.
WP Site Care
WP Site Care advertises itself as “your personal WordPress concierge” and offers the following set of services as standard:
- 24/7 security monitoring from Sucuri along with clean-up should anything go wrong
- Daily site backups to the cloud courtesy of Amazon Web Services
- Updates of WordPress core, plugins, and themes
- Access to professional WordPress training videos from WP101
There are two basic monthly packages to choose from when signing up:
- Protect Plan: The entry level plan priced at $99 per month ($79 per month yearly), which includes the full set of standard features.
- Professional Plan: Priced at $349 per month ($299 per month with annual billing), this package includes more advanced offerings, such as performance optimization, a monthly SEO audit, e-commerce support, uptime monitoring, and a staging environment for your site.
WP Site Care prides itself on offering top-notch support and transitioned to a “proactive” support model in 2015. According to the agency’s founder, Ryan Sullivan, this means identifying issues and making recommendations to customers because they have the opportunity to report an issue. As a result, just two people rated the agency’s support as unsatisfactory during the course of last year. That’s remarkable to say the least.
Each month, WP Site Care also gets in touch with customers with a set of recommendations that are unique to them, not just blanket recommendations like “optimize your database” or “combine your stylesheets.” These recommendations come as a custom plan to address any major issues that need to be addressed on a website.
WPMaintain
WPMaintain offers an interesting mix of services at a fairly compelling price point. The primary package is priced at £51 per month (roughly $70 at the time of writing) and includes the following:
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- Automated full backups of your site
- 24/7 security monitoring of your site using Sucuri
- Updates of WordPress core, themes, and plugins
- Hosting on dedicated UK server if required
- One hour of development time for tweaks and fixes
- Content management to take care of updating pages and posts
Inclusive hosting and content management are both eye-catching offers and set WPMaintain apart from others on this list. The agency also provides discounted rates for charities, so if you’re based in the UK, this is an option well-worth considering.
If your site gets hacked or something else goes wrong, WPMaintain also offers emergency support and promises to fix any issues ASAP.
WPCurve
WP Curve is a popular maintenance and support option that has quite a big team, with 39 staff members in eight countries.
The agency markets itself as being available 24/7 for unlimited 30-minute “small” jobs, such as fixing hacks, boosting your brand and conversion, performance optimization, traffic growth and SEO, and reducing bounce rate. Complex tasks that take longer than 30 minutes are “out of scope” and you’re best to look elsewhere for help. Small jobs are generally completed within eight hours of a request on weekdays.
WP Curve offers three monthly packages:
- Standard: Unlimited small 30 min jobs for 1 site, detailed notes for every job, 24 hour live chat & email support for $79
- Professional: All of the above, plus proactive WordPress upgrades, proactive plugin and theme upgrades, secure offsite backup, monthly security scan, security guarantee for $99
- VIP: All over the above, plus all jobs checked by quality assurance team, up to three job requests at a time, and a four hour response time for $199
One-off jobs can also be completed for $79 and includes things like performance optimization, updating plugins, CSS changes, and setting up Google Analytics.
WP Valet
WP Valet is one of the oldest and largest maintenance and support services available for WordPress sites, with a team of designers, strategists, developers and “valets” on hand as part of its truly comprehensive service. The basics are available – backups, updates, security, and monitoring – but then there’s more, including strategy and business intelligence help, branding and UX work, custom design and development, and site migration.
WP Valet doesn’t publish its pricing, instead you have to fill out a six-question survey about your websites and its needs. Why the lack of transparency? Probably because it’s the most expensive service on this list. Monthly plans start at $250 for a Personal package, $700 if you sign up for a Professional plan, and $1750 for a Business plan. It’s not clear exactly what each of these plans includes, but what is clear is that for your money you access to an experienced team of designers, developers and strategists.
The WP Butler
Unlike all of the other services on this list, The WP Butler doesn’t offer monthly plans. Instead, you can build a custom maintenance plan to suit your needs, including any of the following:
- Backups
- Updates
- Eyes on your site
- Malware scans
- WordPress training videos
- Uptime monitoring
- Premium plugins like Gravity Forms
There are also recommended monthly plans, starting at $41 for Casual Bloggers, going up to $96 for a Small Business plan and $146 for a Business plan. All plans include site restoration and a security audit.
Choosing a Maintenance and Support Service
Knowing your website’s specific needs is key to choosing the right maintenance service for your site. As such, it’s a good idea to keep the following in mind:
Your Skills
What are you able to do yourself? What aspects of your site do you need help with?
If tasks like adding security to your site and managing backups get you in a head spin, it’s worth getting some expert help. Likewise, if you want to make design and development changes to your site, or want to make optimizations so your site runs faster.
Cost
How much are you willing to spend? Most of the services on this list offer monthly plans, as well as annual packages at a discount. Then there are services like WP Tweaks that offer one-off development work and The WP Buttler.
If you’re only looking to keep your themes and plugins up-to-date and set up automatic backups on your site, you might want to set up automatic updates and use a plugin like Snapshot. But if your needs are more complex, you want help with custom development, or your time is worth more than the cost of signing up for one of these services, then it’s worth paying for some expertise and help with your site.
Support
How quickly do you want work completed? Do you want support staff to return your email same-day?
Services like WP Site Care go out of their way to please customers with “pro-active” support while WPCurve advertises itself as being available 24/7. If you need work done quickly, it’s worth signing up with one of the services above that promises a quick turnaround.
Getting Expert Help for Your Website
The flexibility, power, and control that WordPress offers comes at a price – you’ll inevitably be faced with ongoing admin, bug fixing, and update requirements as a site owner.
However, with the new wave of outsourced service providers willing to take care of the basics of site maintenance for an extremely affordable monthly flat-rate fee, it means it’s easier than ever to keep your WordPress site working like a well-oiled machine with a minimum of fuss.
Each of the services on this list offers varying levels of expertise so it’s worth doing your own evaluation of each of the options available in more depth to determine just how much help you need with your site.
Do you think it’s worth getting outside help for your site? Have you used any of the support services in this list? If you have, let us know about your experiences in the comments below.
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