Considered to be among the top website builder platforms in the world, WordPress is used by thousands – if not, millions – of businesses across the globe, including ScottHall.co.
From restaurants to retail stores, many of them love its easy user interface and intuitively, both of which allow even the least tech-savvy of owners to create an incredible website in a matter of days.
Why Do You Need WordPress Maintenance Services?
Unfortunately, though, a lot of them fall into the trap of believing that websites run themselves. Once the color scheme is picked out and the widgets are in place, they forget about the backend and focus solely on publishing content.
Somewhere down the line, their page malfunctions and their operations grind to a halt, making them lose out on many significant sales and customers.
There are also those who mistakenly believe that their hosting provider handles their site maintenance. While this is true to some extent, certain updates and features aren’t always included.
More importantly, some of these may result in adverse effects, which is why it is still important to personally ensure that all installations are wholly compatible with your site.
To add to that, there are also business owners who go by the adage, “why fix something that ain’t broke.” Rather than constantly updating their site, they prefer to leave them be, repairing only those that stop functioning.
This mentality may be extremely tempting but it can actually pose a threat to your website’s security. Keep in mind that your systems contain personal and highly sensitive information from your customers, including their passwords and credit card details.
Skimping on security for these would undoubtedly be catastrophic for a brand’s reputation, no matter how well-established they are.
More often than not, fixing only features once they’re malfunctioning or completely broken will end up costing significantly more. On the other hand, these astronomically-priced repairs would not have been necessary, had regular preventative maintenance been carried out.
To underscore the importance of website maintenance – specifically, WordPress maintenance – even more, the distinction between this and updates has to be defined first.
Now, updating your website often means publishing new content like articles and infographics, as well as improving its visuals by adding images and videos.
However, maintaining your website involves ensuring that its backend – the software programs that it runs, its themes, and the plugins that it has installed – all remain operational and stable, working smoothly to deliver fully-functional pages to business owners and their customers alike.
It’s clear that regular website maintenance plays a crucial role in business. With that, here are the eight best WordPress maintenance plans that are perfect for small business owners everywhere.
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Zen WP
The fact that Zen WP is the premier choice for many is unsurprising, given the whole suite of services that they offer. For one thing, they help website owners identify high-quality and reliable plugins that are relevant to their operations, allowing them to further their goals and reach greater heights of success.
More importantly, though, the platform’s team talks them through the installation and activation of these plugins, even lending a hand to ensure that every single one of their features is maximized and taken advantage of by the website owner.
Another incredible advantage of using Zen WP is the emphasis that they place on loading speed. These days, the performance of a website is a critical factor in search engine optimization (SEO), which means that a page that is slow to load will end up buried on the last page of Google’s search results.
Because of this, Zen WP makes sure that websites their clients run will load in less than three seconds, helping them retain customers and shoot to the top of the rankings.
Perhaps the reason why a lot of business owners prefer Zen WP, though, is their intuitive and easy-to-understand workflow. The platform’s account managers and client support team are extremely responsive, resolving issues within hours, and sending detailed job reports once requests are taken care of.
Without a doubt, this is a service that many would find appealing. Subscriptions start at $79 per month.
Sprout-Flowers, Inc.
Renowned companies across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia prefer the extensive list of services provided by Sprout-Flowers, Inc., which include seven hours of support time per month, as well as detailed reporting.
This particular feature has been instrumental in helping their clients figure out what exactly went wrong with their website, allowing them to introduce long-term fixes that ensure that the issue will never happen again.
Sprout-Flowers, Inc. also offers an hour of White Hat SEO services – an advantage that is even more valuable today, given the increasing complexity of Google’s algorithms and search engine rankings.
Without a doubt, this service would prove to be appealing to businesses that are struggling with getting to the top of the results page, even with relevant and well-placed keywords.
Not only do they offer support for the site’s backend, but Sprout-Flowers, Inc. provides complimentary design help too, which includes installing nifty plugins that improve a page’s performance. For instance, they’re capable of fixing alignment issues and introducing a live chat feature, which can take a website’s performance up a notch.
Subscriptions start at $49 per month.
WP Site Care
Operating since 2012, WP Site Care is largely considered to be among the top leaders in the industry, with a proven track-record or providing a slew of excellent maintenance services to their clients.
One of their biggest selling points is the fact that they store daily backups on the Amazon cloud, which is the world’s most reputable and trustworthy data storage platform, which reduces the risk of critical data being lost or compromised.
It goes without saying that this feature guarantees a protected and secure website for those working with WP Site Care.
The extreme protection that they offer their clients is boosted even more by their partnership with Sucuri, a top-tier online security platform. Any malicious or suspicious activity is immediately identified, addressed, and resolved while the threat of cyberattacks is significantly reduced.
For those whose businesses collect a ton of sensitive information, WP Site Care would definitely be your best bet.
However, the most unique service that WP Site Care offers is the Walkie Talkie, a feature that allows for quick communication between their team of experts and their clients. This means that those working with their platform is afforded instant solutions to every single issue that they experience, no matter how complicated they may be.
Subscriptions start at $79 per month.
GoDaddy WordPress Premium Support
GoDaddy WordPress Premium Support is slowly becoming the go-to choice for many business owners and website administrators, despite having been created a mere three years ago.
But the hype surrounding this platform is truly well-deserved, thanks to their stellar customer support that gives their users instant access to over 40 on-call developers. This formidable pool of resources is undoubtedly the reason why they’ve managed to amass thousands of clients in such a short amount of time.
Additionally, they also have an entire catalog of incredible services that range from maintenance to optimization and to management, which is why many perceive them to be a premier one-stop-shop for all their website needs.
This also means that the platform is capable of immediately resolving a wide variety of WordPress-related issues – by working with them, business owners are assured that any problem they encounter will be fixed in a jiffy.
The fact that GoDaddy WordPress Premium Support runs on a ticket-based system is also advantageous and incredibly helpful. This feature makes it easier for their clients to deal with issues that they’re concerned about, as well as allowing them to reach out to the platform’s team of experts without delay. In the fast-paced business landscape of today, this instant support is definitely a massive benefit.
Subscriptions start at $79 per month.
WP Buffs
One of the top-rated service providers in the world, WP Buffs takes a unique approach to WordPress maintenance service. While most platforms perform updates daily, they install them every week, but only after the new plugins and systems have been rigorously tested by their developers.
This means that bugs, kinks, and potential causes for a site’s malfunctioning have already been worked out and resolved, reducing the risk for downtime later on.
WP Buffs also prides itself on offering only high-quality code edits – everything from adding a new page to modifying image sizes and to installing new plugins are all handled by their team.
More than that, though, all of their developers work remotely; their geographical positions cover a wide variety of time zones, so business owners are afforded help and support at any time of the day.
One of the platform’s biggest advantages, though, is their practice of creating daily site backups on Amazon S3 infrastructure and scanning these daily. This may seem like an unnecessary extra step, however, this actually adds an extra layer of security to the websites that their clients run, protecting them from spammers and the usual hacking methods.
Subscriptions start at $67 per month.
Maintainn
Another incredible maintenance and support service, Maintainn is notable for the fact that most of their staff consists of the industry’s leading WordPress experts, which means that they’re all extremely qualified to take on whatever issues business owners and website entrepreneurs encounter. More than that, though, this ensures that the platform’s clients receive only top-notch solutions.
Maintainn performs weekly updates on the pages that they handle, allowing their clients to take advantage of the latest themes and plugins.
Additionally, this also guarantees the security of their websites, especially since the platform is constantly running offsite backups that are ready to recover and restore content, the minute a problem occurs.
One of the biggest advantages of using Maintainn is their monitoring feature that screens websites for viruses, malware, and hackers 24/7. Without a doubt, this guarantees business owners everywhere that their pages – as well as their customers – are nothing but protected and secured at all times.
Subscriptions start at $54 per month.
Valet.io
When it comes to providing outstanding WordPress maintenance services, Valet.io is nothing but dedicated.
Besides ensuring that websites continue performing at optimum levels, they also put in the time and effort to know their clients personally, identifying their business goals, along with their strengths and businesses.
This allows them to deliver services that are relevant and geared towards these things, helping their clients take their brands to a whole new level.
More importantly, though, they provide a whole host of website development services, including small custom work projects and full website builds. They also take the burden of managing the site from their clients, handling everything, from maintenance updates to performance monitoring.
Valet.io may be one of the pricier WordPress maintenance services in the market, but their services and expertise are certainly worth every penny.
For most of their clients, the platform isn’t just a mere support team, but rather a fully-fledged digital platform that has played a critical role in the success of their business. It goes without saying that having this would be well worth the price tag.
Subscriptions start at $300 per month.
GoWP.com
The great thing about GoWP.com is the range of services that they offer. For instance, several of their plans are focused more on one-off tasks, such as resolving simple issues or installing a certain plugin.
However, some of their other plans offer more intensive site management, which would definitely be appealing to high-traffic clients who foresee themselves requiring a ton of support.
With this variety of plans available, GoWP.com ensures that their services are catered to the needs of business owners everywhere, no matter what.
Those who are on a strict budget tend to go with GoWP.com because of how cost-effective yet powerful the platform is. For instance, the basic maintenance plan has everything that the usual small business owner would need, including plugin updates, security monitoring, and site backup.
To add to that, GoWP.com also provides clients with ongoing edits and customer email support. The latter is particularly useful for business owners who prefer to focus on their operations, rather than on the complaints and feedback that they receive.
With the platform’s nifty service, they can finally do what they actually want to do while simultaneously paying attention to the needs of their customers.
Subscriptions start at $29 per month.
The Best WordPress Maintenance Service For You
To say that a WordPress maintenance service is extremely important would be an understatement. Not having one would be precarious – especially amid the rise of the Digital Age – and could prove to be catastrophic for any company, regardless of their size.
More than that, though, business owners who aren’t taking advantage of the many WordPress maintenance plans available in the market are playing a dangerous game, putting their customers’ data at risk of being compromised and leaving their operations up to chance.
Thankfully, there are a ton of options out there that provide a slew of incredible and powerful services. Not only do these maintain a website, but they also offer other huge advantages, such as content publishing and digital strategies.
It can’t be denied that these are benefits that business owners simply shouldn’t pass up.
A WordPress maintenance service is non-negotiable – if you’re a business owner with a WordPress website, then this is something that you should always keep in mind.
