Published monthly prices for a website care plan across the four providers we read in full, for roughly the same list of services. None of the four pages explains the gap.
Source: Southern Tide Media review of provider pricing pages, August 2026Care-plan pages that show the monthly report they sell. It’s the $9-a-month one. Every provider charging more names a report and shows nothing.
Source: Southern Tide Media review of 10 care-plan pages, August 2026Provider pages, across care, audits and reporting, that say what happens to your backups, your accounts and your data if you leave.
Source: Southern Tide Media review of 11 provider pages, August 2026What’s included
A website is a machine that rusts. Care is the standing routine that keeps it updated, secure, fast and backed up, with a person reviewing every change before it ships and a monthly report that shows the work was done.
Focus areas · Build & ship
Core, theme & plugin updates
Applied on a schedule, with someone watching what each update changes. We don’t fire and forget.
Platform (PHP) upgrades
Tested on a copy of your site first, minor compatibility fixes included, rolled out with zero downtime. If a theme or plugin needs significant rework, we quote it before anything happens.
Security & backups
Proactive hardening plus daily backups we can restore from. We back up before we edit, so every change can be undone.
Uptime & monitoring
If the site goes down, we usually know before you do, and we’re already working on it.
Routine edits & small changes
Send the request. AI does the work, and our team checks it before it goes live.
Performance
Speed checked month over month, measured on the connections your customers use, not lab scores.
Business flows tested
Every month we use the site the way your customers do: send the contact form, run a booking, log in, search, tap the phone number. Updates rarely break a home page. They break the form nobody noticed had stopped sending.
Fixing what leaks
The small things that quietly cost you inquiries: a form asking for too much, a broken step on mobile, a page that got slow as content piled up. Found and fixed as part of Care, not sold as a separate program.
Managed hosting & SSL
Pair Care with managed hosting at $49/mo and SSL & security at $199/yr, or get all three inside every growth-stack plan.
Monthly care report
Uptime, every update applied (including the ones we held back, and why), the flows we tested, backups taken and the last restore we tested, hours used against hours included, and anything that needs a decision from you. See a sample care report →
Yours, including on the way out
The site, the domain, the hosting account and the backups are yours the whole time. If you ever leave, you get a final full backup and the account credentials, we remove our access, and there’s no exit fee and no charge for the handover.
The report you get every month
A care plan is the easiest service in marketing to fake, because a good month looks exactly like no work at all. So here is the whole report, for a business we made up. Two things in it aren’t perfect: an update held back, and a site search caught returning nothing. That’s what you’re paying for. Read the full sample report →
| Component | Version | Staged & tested | Result | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress core | 6.9.1 → 6.9.2 | Staged and tested | Passed | Aug 4 |
| Payment gateway | 3.8.4 → 3.9.0 | Staged, test transaction taken and refunded | Passed | Aug 6 |
| Booking calendar | 4.2.0 → 4.3.1 | Staged; broke the deposit field. Vendor patch due Sept 9 | Held | Aug 6 |
| Theme (child) | 2.1 → 2.2 | Staged and tested | Passed | Aug 11 |
| SEO plugin | 24.6 → 24.7 | Pushed, then the trip-detail layout shifted; restored from that morning’s backup and re-applied on the 24.7.1 fix | Rolled back | Aug 13 |
| Image optimizer | 7.0.3 → 7.1.0 | Staged and tested | Passed | Aug 18 |
| Forms plugin | 2.9.6 → 2.9.7 | Staged and tested | Passed | Aug 25 |
| Contact form to inbox | Passed | Test message delivered in nine seconds. |
|---|---|---|
| Tour booking and deposit | Passed | Test booking taken and refunded; confirmation email arrived. |
| Guide login | Passed | Password reset also tested. |
| Site search | Fixed | Returned nothing for “half day”; the index had gone stale. Rebuilt and retested the same day. |
| Phone-tap tracking | Passed | Recording on both iOS and Android. |
- Aug 5 Swapped the summer hero and rate block for the fall dates. 25 min.
- Aug 12 Built the Labor Day paddle package page from your copy. 55 min.
- Aug 19 Fixed the dead rental-waiver PDF link and re-pointed two menu items. 20 min.
- Aug 25 Rebuilt the search index after the flow check found it empty. 35 min.
There is no release compatible with the platform version your host is moving to, so it will eventually have to go. We would swap in a maintained gallery and move the 140 existing images across. Nothing is broken today. This is a next-quarter job, not an emergency.
About 2 hours. Fits inside next month’s included timeRenew it and the held update above can go ahead the same week. Let it lapse and the calendar keeps working, but it stops receiving security patches.
Vendor fee, paid directly by you. We don’t mark it up- The four numbers first. Uptime, backups, security, and how much of your included time you used. The four things you’d ask about if you called us.
- The held update is the point. An automated plan would have pushed that booking-calendar release and broken your deposit field on a Friday. A person tested it on a copy of your site first and stopped. You can’t see that work happening, so the report has to show it.
- We test the money, not the home page. Updates rarely break the page you look at every day. They break the form that quietly stopped sending, or the search that stopped returning anything. That’s exactly what happened here, and it was caught and fixed inside the plan.
- Hours, itemized, not “unlimited.” You can see what was done, on which day, and how long it took. What’s left is still yours this month.
- Decisions come with a cost and a consequence. Every recommendation says what it costs, whether it fits inside your plan, and what happens if you do nothing. You’re never asked to approve something described only as “recommended.”
The word “unlimited,” and what we say instead
Across the ten care-plan pages we read, providers charge $30 to $90 a month extra for “unlimited edits,” and only one of them defines what that means. Three point you to hourly work for anything bigger; none of the three publishes an hourly rate. Here’s where our line sits.
How the category usually puts it
- “Unlimited content edits,” priced as an upgrade and never defined.
- “Small changes included,” with no definition of small.
- “Development work is extra,” with no published rate to check it against.
- “24/7 support,” with no response time in hours anywhere on the page.
- You find the boundary in month four, on an invoice.
Included in your plan / quoted first at $95 an hour
- Swap the hero image, prices or hours: included. Redesign the home page: quoted first.
- Add a page from copy you send us: included. Write the copy, or shoot the photos: quoted first.
- Install and configure a plugin: included. Build the feature the plugin doesn’t have: quoted first.
- Fix a form that stopped sending: included, and we usually find it before you do. Build a new booking system: quoted first.
- Anything quoted is written down and approved by you before we start. Nothing lands on an invoice that you didn’t agree to first.
Where it starts
$149/moBasicThe essentials, handled: core, theme, plugin and platform (PHP) updates, security and daily backups, uptime and performance monitoring, and the monthly care report.
How pricing worksHow an update ships
A full site and database backup before anything is touched, so there’s always a known-good copy from that morning.
Updates go onto a private copy of your live site, not the real one. Every provider says they do this. It’s the step that separates a care plan from a scheduled task.
Forms, bookings, checkout, login and search get run by hand on the staging copy, then the pages that matter most get checked on a phone. Anything that breaks is either fixed or held back, with a reason.
Only what passed goes live, and the same flows get retested on the real site afterward. Everything applied, and everything held, goes in that month’s report.
What we work with
And the promise underneath it: the site does not go down over an update. If something can’t be applied safely, we roll back to the working version and send you a written quote before touching the live site again. If one of our updates breaks your site, fixing it is on us, not on your invoice. The one thing we can’t fix by waiting is an abandoned plugin or theme with no compatible release. That gets quoted at $95/hour before any work starts, never after.
How pricing works
Three published tiers. Pick by how much you want handled. Every one covers the essentials.
The essentials, handled: core, theme, plugin and platform (PHP) updates, security and daily backups, uptime and performance monitoring, and the monthly care report.
Everything in Basic, plus monthly edit requests handled for you, a priority queue, and performance tuning.
For sites that can’t go down: priority maintenance, plus design requests and the fastest turnaround. This is the Care level built into every bundled plan.
Bundling is cheaper than buying the pieces.
See plans & pricingHow long it takes
What to expect
Care isn’t a project with an end date. It’s a routine. Here’s how it starts, and what every month after looks like.
Pick a plan, sign up online, and hand over the site in one quick, secure handoff.
Updates brought current, backups verified, monitoring live, speed measured. The site is brought to a known-good state.
Monitored updates, security, edits on request, and a report that says exactly what was done. That’s the product.
Who we help
The sites we care for are the sites we market. The roster below is who trusts us with the keys.
Hospitality & Resort
Booking engines and season pages that can’t go down in July.
Explore →E-commerce & DTC
Stores where an hour of downtime has a dollar figure attached.
Explore →Medical & Med Spa
Patient-facing sites kept secure, current and quietly professional.
Explore →Outdoor & Recreation
Product sites that spike with the season and can’t buckle.
Home Services & B2B
Lead-generating sites kept fast, findable and answering the phone.
Legal & Professional
A stale site reads as a stale firm. Ours don’t go stale.
Chambers & Nonprofits
Community sites on community budgets, still cared for properly.
Portfolios & multi-site
One care team across every property you own, one report.
Don’t take our word for it
“The Southern Tide Media team has smartly positioned itself as partners, versus “vendors.” Each step along the strategic path, I feel as if they are “all in” and have our best interests at heart.”
“Southern Tide Media increased our conversion rates on our SEO campaigns by 60% in short time… Brandon takes the worry out of all the technical jargon and translates that into workable applications you can understand as a business owner.”
“In every dealing I have ever had with Brandon Evans, he has been knowledgeable, fair, and has responded quickly. I would highly recommend using him for any of your business’s marketing or advertising needs!”
Questions, answered
Which platforms do you support?
WordPress and Shopify. If you’re on something else, ask. Sometimes the answer is “yes” and sometimes it’s “that platform is the problem.” Worth knowing: every care-plan provider we reviewed for this page is WordPress-only, so if you run both a site and a store, this is a shorter list than it looks.
How do I know the work is actually happening?
That’s the right question, and it’s the whole reason the report looks the way it does. A good month on a care plan looks identical to no work at all, so the report shows you the updates applied and the ones we held back, the flows we tested, the backups taken, the last restore we tested, and where your included time went. Here’s a full one, filled in for a business we made up.
Do you test updates before pushing them to my live site?
Yes, every time, on a private copy of your site. We run the things that make you money (forms, bookings, checkout, login, search) instead of just glancing at the home page. If something breaks in testing, it doesn’t ship, and the report tells you what was held and why.
What happens if an update breaks my site, and who pays?
We roll back to that morning’s backup, fix it, and re-apply once it’s safe. It doesn’t go on your invoice. If our update broke your site, fixing it is our job, not a billable event. The one thing we can’t fix by waiting is a theme or plugin that’s been abandoned and has no compatible release. That gets a written quote at $95/hour before any work starts.
But I found a plan for $9 a month. What’s the difference?
That price is real, and it buys automation: updates applied on a schedule with nothing tested first, no staging copy, no included time for changes, and no plan for the morning an auto-update takes down your booking form. If your site is a brochure that never changes and earns nothing, that may be enough, and we’d rather say so. If a form or a booking on your site is worth money, you’re paying for the person who checks.
How often are backups taken, where do they live, and have you tested a restore?
Daily and off-site, kept away from the site itself so a hacked server can’t take the backups with it. We test a restore instead of assuming one works, and the date and result are printed in your monthly report. A backup nobody has ever restored is a hope, not a backup.
Is malware cleanup included, or just detection?
Ask us before you sign, and get the answer in writing, from us or from anyone else. It’s the most common gap in a cheap plan: monitoring is included, cleanup is billed by the incident. We’ll tell you exactly where our line sits for your site instead of leaving you to find out during an incident.
What happens when my host forces a PHP or server upgrade?
We test your site on the new version first, fix minor compatibility issues as part of the plan, and roll it out with zero downtime. If a theme or plugin needs significant rework to stay compatible, we quote it before doing anything. No surprise work, no surprise bill.