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Running a website is hard work.
It is one of the main reasons why so many webmasters end up letting their website fall by the wayside.
A webmaster may be responsible for content creation, SEO, strategic outreach, social media, and general website updates, security, and administration. All of these tasks are time-consuming and can leave you with little time for yourself.
If you want to take a sizable number of WordPress tasks off your plate, consider signing up for one of the many WordPress maintenance and support services that are available online.
- Maintenance – Maintenance can include core WordPress updates, plugin updates, theme updates, website backups, security, uptime monitoring, and more
- Support – Support can help you with website downtime, plugin and theme errors, theme modifications, and provide WordPress advice and help with troubleshooting problems
WordPress maintenance and support services can drastically reduce the time you need to spend maintaining your website and tackling issues such as spam, hacks, and errors. They handle the mundane WordPressy tasks that have to be done such as plugin and theme updates, security checks, and website backups. These tasks are essential to the success of any online business.
Experienced WordPress users may feel that maintenance and support services do not offer anything groundbreaking as they provide help with anything that you cannot do yourself. That, however, is missing the point. What support services do is greatly reduce your workload and allow you to focus your time on more important tasks.
Those who are new to WordPress will benefit from support services immensely as the company will take control over of problematic situations that you could not resolve yourself. This ensures that your website gets back online quickly.
Let us take a closer look at seven of the best WordPress maintenance and support services available to you.
GoDaddy WordPress Premium Support
Founded in 1997, GoDaddy can lay claim to being the largest domain registrar on the internet and the web hosting company with the most clients.
Over the last five years GoDaddy have been aggressively pursuing the WordPress market. They’re a constant presence at WordPress WordCamp conferences and their WordPress.org profile highlights the many WordPress plugins and themes they have released.
In 2016 they got a head start in the WordPress support world by purchasing WP Curve; who were one of the largest WordPress support services at the time. GoDaddy have branded their WordPress support service as GoDaddy WordPress Premium Support.
Their service only provides support and does not help with basic maintenance tasks such as plugin and theme updates.
Godaddy can help you with theme modifications, database management, image optimisation, URL redirects, and more. Before GoDaddy complete any task, they will back your website up so that it can be restored if necessary.
GoDaddy use a credit system for their support service.
Each task that you ask GoDaddy to complete costs one credit, regardless of how much time the task takes to complete. If a problem requires multiple tasks to be completed, tyou will asked to approve the additional credit usage.
It is obviously difficult to quantify whether certain problems constitute one or two tasks to be completed, however if you are unsure you can ask GoDaddy to clarify.
GoDaddy’s monthly support plans include a defined number of credits. The effective rate for each credit goes down if you buy higher-priced plans. Unused credits are not rolled onto the next month.
It costs $49.99 per month for one credit, $79.99 per month for three credits, $99.99 per month for five credits, and $149.99 per month for 10 credits.
GoDaddy WordPress Premium Support is worth considering if you need help with WordPress modifications, website optimisation, and WordPress errors. The company can also help less experienced WordPress users with basic tasks such as installations.
Please remember that GoDaddy does not help you with any WordPress maintenance tasks. Additionally, those of you who need a lot of help with WordPress may be better going with a service that offers unlimited support.
WP Site Care
WP Site Care are a WordPress maintenance and support service that have been operating since 2012. The company is based in Atlanta, however it has staff spread across the United States in cities such as Montana and Salt Lake City.
WP Site Care can take control of most WordPress maintenance tasks for you. They perform cloud backups of your website every day and automatically update the WordPress core and your WordPress plugins and themes to the latest version.
Their service monitors activity on your website in real-time and scans your website for security breaches. If your website is hacked, however, they charge a one-off fee of $100 for cleaning it up.
There is no limit to the number of support requests that customers can make. If your support request is not covered in your plan, the team will give you a quote on how much the job will cost.
WP Site Care’s services may suit North American customers better as their support hours are 9am to 5pm Eastern Time. Support queries may not be handled until the following day if they are made outwith these hours.
WP Site Care have adopted a simple pricing model.
There are two plans available to customers. Their basic plan costs $99 per month or an effective rate of $79 per month if paid yearly. Their pro plan costs $399 per month or an effective rate of $299 if paid yearly.
Jumping up the the pro plan brings many benefits. It increases backups from daily to hourly and ensures that your support tickets are classified as priority. Two hours of development work are included in this plan and a staging service is provided for eCommerce websites. Version control is available too so that you can track changes to your code.
The pro plan also provides additional security features including priority support and Sucuri’s cloudproxy firewall.
If you are looking for a service that handles WordPress maintenance and provides backups, security checks, and support when you need it, you should check out WP Site Care.
Their plans come with a 30 day money satisfaction guarantee. If you are not happy with their service during this time, you will get a full refund.
Maintainn
Maintainn is a WordPress maintenance and support company that provides its customers with weekly service reports and support via email and live chat. The company was launched by WebDevStudios in 2012.
Their maintenance plans include off-site website backups, 24/7 security monitoring, and weekly updates to the WordPress core, WordPress plugins, and WordPress themes.
Once you have signed up to Maintainn you can install a support button on your WordPress dashboard so that you can get help directly from your WordPress admin area. The Maintainn team can give you support on a number of WordPress issues such as website migration, development, website errors, downtime, and more.
Maintainn offers three maintenance plans: Standard, professional, and enterprise.
If you pay monthly, the plans cost $59 per month, $179 per month, and $299 per month, respectively. By paying yearly, you can reduce the effective monthly price down to $49 per month, $149 per month, and $249 per month.
The standard plan offers daily website backups, weekly WordPress updates, and WordPress support when you need it. Security scanning is provided with this plan too, however a one-time fee of $99 is charged for cleaning up a hacked website.
The professional plan removes the website clean-up fee and increases website backups to twice per day. This plan also adds uptime monitoring, performance checks, and support for eCommerce websites and WordPress multi-site. Maintainn will also assign a dedicated project manager who will help you manage your website and give you a better level of support.
The enterprise plan is geared more towards larger companies. Customers get access to a collaboration environment, version changes, and website staging. Website backups are performed four times per day under this plan too and customers are encouraged to review websites changes in the staging environment before they go live.
Maintainn is an affordable WordPress maintenance and support service that will reduce the time you spend administrating your website.
If you pay monthly, their entry level plan is only $59 per month. It’s a good deal when you consider this includes support, WordPress updates, security scans, and daily website backups.
Valet
Valet is a WordPress maintenance and support company that has a great reputation online. The company was launched in the USA in 2011 as WP Valet by Mason James and Kimberly Lipari and later rebranded as Valet in 2016. Today, they have staff working remotely from around the world such as Milan Ivanovic, who is well-known in the WordPress world for organising multiple WordCamp Europe conferences.
Valet’s maintenance plan retails at $69 per month.
This plan offers incremental offsite daily website backups which are stored for 30 days, CloudFlare CDN implementation, and updates of the WordPress core and your WordPress plugins and themes. Interestingly, Valet manually update plugins and themes instead of using cron jobs.
Their maintenance plan also includes security scanning and uptime monitoring.
Valet have three support and consulation packages. These additional support packages can be purchased on a one-time basis or on a recurring basis.
The company have taken a different approach to other WordPress support companies by stating that their basic plan is suitable for websites with less than 10,000 visitors per month, their professional plan is suitable for websites with less than 100,000 visitors per month, and their elite plan is suitable for websites with less than 500,000 visitors per month.
The basic plan retails at $300 and includes two hours of support every month. The professional plan costs $750 per month and includes five hours of support every month. They recommend this plan for eCommerce and membership websites.
Their most expensive plan is their elite plan; which includes ten hours of support every month. This plan was designed to help companies who need additional help with marketing and IT, but do not want to hire another member of staff.
Further consulation is available at $175 per month and website assessments are available from $1,400.
Whilst Valet’s maintenance plan is a little more expensive than alternative solutions on the market, I do feel that at $69 per month, their service is still competitive; especially when you consider you would be working with a prestigious company with a high level of experience. Please remember, however, that their maintenance plan does not include support.
Valet have clearly positioned their support plans at the higher end of the market. If you are looking for premium WordPress support, I recommend checking them out.
WP Buffs
WP Buffs is a WordPress maintenance and support service that offers 24/7 support via email and live chat. The company is based in Washington DC in the USA, however they have staff from all around the world.
If you attend WordPress WordCamp conferences, you have probably bumped into WP Buffs at some point as their team regularly WordCampevents in the USA and Europe. WP Buffs also show others how they built their business through WPMRR. This website walks you through how you can build up monthly recurring revenue using video tutorials and podcasts.
The WP Buffs support plan packages can help you with website edits, security, website backups, website updates, and general WordPress support.
The three main care plans from WP Buffs are maintain, protect, and perform.
These plans retail at $67 per month, $147 per month, and $197 per month, respectively. These prices drop down to an effective rate of $56 per month, $123 per month, and $164 per month, if you pay yearly. Additional plans are also available for those that have highly customised WordPress websites.
The maintain plan includes daily cloud website backups, weekly WordPress plugin and theme updates, uptime monitoring, and weekly reports that give an overview of how your website is doing. Emergency support is provided with this plan to help you tackle crises such as hacks or malware.
Upgrading to the protect plan increases website backups to twice per day and grants access to premium WordPress plugins such as iThemes Security Pro, WPMU DEV Smush Pro, and WP Rocket. This plan also features unlimited website edits; which means that WP Buffs can help you with making changes on your website (check out the WP Buffs FAQ page to see exactly what is classed as an edit).
The perform plan gives you everything that the lower priced plans do, however it increases website backups to four times per day. WP Buffs will also optimise the speed of your website with this plan and ensure your website design looks good on smartphones and tablets. Malware removal is included too and you will receive priority support.
If you are searching for a good WordPress maintenance and support service, WP Buffs is one to consider. The company has a great reputation for providing solid support and their plans are priced fairly.
I encourage you to book a call with them and speak to them about what your requirements are.
WP Tech Support
WP Tech Support is a WordPress maintenance and support company that has offices in the UK, USA, and India. Their global locations allow them to give customers support 24/7 via their secure customer panel.
The company offers WordPress updates, security scanning, offsite website backups, performance enhancements, and general WordPress support.
With support plans retailing from only $25 per month, WP Tech Support are undoubtedly one of the cheapest WordPress support services online.
WP Tech Support have four support plans: Basic, standard, pro, and business. Based on a six month purchase up front, these plans retail at an effective rate of $25 per month, $36 per month, $48 per month, and $68 per month, respectively.
All plans include weekly reports, daily security scans, and weekly WordPress updates for WordPress plugins and the WordPress core.
The basic plan includes one emergency fix, weekly website backups, and 24 hour ticket support monday to friday. If you pay another $11 per month to upgrade to the standard plan, website backups are made daily and you get access to support at the weekend too. A website health check is also provided.
Unlimited emergency fixes are provided with the $48 per month pro plan. This plan also includes WordPress theme updates, malware removal, and 60 minutes of website improvement help. The most expensive plan is the business plan. For $68 per month you will receive 90 minutes of website improvement, provision of an SSL certificate for your website, and SEO and performance optimisation.
Basic and standard plan holders can get additional emergency fixes for $65 each. A performance tuneup is also available for a one-off fee of $115 and custom development is billed at $115 per hour.
WP Tech Support offer some of the cheapest support packages in the WordPress world. This alone makes them an attractive option to many WordPress users.
You should, however, be sure to check whether their plans do exactly what you need as some of their plans are lacking. For example, you need to purchase their pro or business plan in order to receive WordPress theme updates and even their top support plan only offers daily backups.
It is still easy to recommend WP Tech Support as their plans offer fantastic value for money.
Newt Labs
Newt Labs is a WordPress support company that offers website backups, security scanning, WordPress updates, security scanning, and hack clean-ups.
Based in Cambridge in the UK, New Labs work with many established companies in the UK. They do work with customers across the globe, however you should bear in mind that their support hours are 9am to 5pm GMT so customers outside of Europe may want to consider a different service.
Their maintenance and support plans start from just £59 per month. In addition to providing ongoing monthly WordPress maintenance and support, New Labs also offers one-off emergency fixes for £75 and emergency clean-ups for £175.
All Newt Labs prices are quoted without VAT.
The Newt Labs proactive plan costs £59 per month if paid monthly and £49 per month if paid yearly. This plan includes email and live chat support, unlimited small website fixes, managed WordPress updates, and daily website backups to the cloud. Security scanning and hack clean-ups are provided in this plan too.
The performance plan costs £119 per month if paid monthly or £99 per month if paid yearly. This plan includes a shared cloud hosting package that has 4GB of memory, two core CPU, 80GB SSD, and 4TB of bandwidth.
Many other premium features are included in this plan including Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates, Cloudflare integration, uptime monitoring, website performance optimisation, and website staging. The image optimisation WordPress plugin WP Smush Pro is provided in this plan too together with version control to help you keep track of changes.
The most expensive plan from Newt Labs is protection. Retailing at £239 per month if paid monthly, or £199 per month if paid yearly, it comes with a dedicated cloud hosting package that has 2GB of memory, one core CPU, 50GB of SSD, and 2TB of bandwith. Website backups are performed hourly in the protection plan and a secondary backup location is included.
Sucuri’s Cloudproxy firewall is included in the plan too alongisde the premium WordPress plugins iThemes Security Pro and WP Migrate DB Pro. Customers also have their support requests marked as priority.
It is clear that Newt Labs took customer’s requirements when designing their support plans as they are well tailored for essential WordPress tasks and come with a 30 day money back guarantee.
Their entry-level plan offers everything you would expect from a maintenance and support plan, however their more expensive plans include hosting and many additional premium features.
I recommend checking them out.
Honourable Mentions
There just isn’t enough time to talk about every WordPress support service online, however I would like to give an honourable mention to three additional companies.
WP Site Plan is a WordPress support company based in the USA based that offers support from just $29 per month. Their entry-level plan gives you daily off-site website backups, uptime monitoring, security scans, and WordPress core, theme, and plugin updates.
Another service to consider is WordXPress. The company is based in Idaho in the USA, but has staff in The Phillipines to help them provider 24/7 support.
Their support plans retail from $79 per month and include WordPress support, website backups, malware scanning, database optimisation, and iThemes Security Pro integration for security.
My final recommendation is FixRunner.
Operating out of Israel, USA, and Serbia, their entry level plan retails at $59 per month. This plan includes WordPress updates, 90 minutes of support every month, speed optimisation, website backups, and security scanning.
Final Thoughts
I hope you have enjoyed this list of the best WordPress maintenance and support services.
The WordPress support market is highly competitive so I encourage you to shop around and speak to many companies about what your requirements are.
Some factors to consider when selecting a WordPress service:
- Maintenance – Do you need a company to handle WordPress updates, security scanning, and uptime monitoring, or are these tasks you want to take care of yourself?
- Support – How important is support to you? Do you need access to experienced WordPress developers regularly or do you just need help when your website experiences a major error or hack?
- Locality – Is it important to you that the support company is local?
- Level of Support – Is unlimited support provided or are you restricted to a certain number of hours of support or pre-defined number of fixes?
- Telephone Support – Do you need telephone support or are you happy to receive support via email and live chat?
- Support Availability – Are you happy restricting support to office hours or do you need 24/7 support?
- Price – Can your business afford to pay for the package you need? Are there cheaper alternatives? Would it be cheaper to hire a new member of staff instead?
Using any of these WordPress maintenance services? Thoughts?
