When a website is handed over and nobody is responsible for it afterwards, the decay is slow enough that nobody notices until it matters. The contact form breaks in month four. Nobody finds out until month nine, when a client mentions they emailed twice.

A care plan exists to make sure somebody notices.

What should be in one

Hosting, domain and SSL

The baseline. Your site is online, your domain renews before it expires, and your certificate does not lapse and put a security warning in front of every visitor. Domain expiry is a genuinely common and entirely avoidable disaster.

Backups you could actually restore from

Daily, kept off the server, and tested occasionally. A backup nobody has ever restored is a theory.

Security monitoring and updates

Small business sites are attacked constantly, almost always by automated scanners rather than a person who has singled you out. Updates are one control alongside access management, backups and appropriate configuration.

Uptime monitoring

Automated checks every few minutes so that your provider knows the site is down before a client phones to tell you.

Content changes

A defined monthly allowance for the real requests: a new team member, changed hours, an updated fee page, a new article. This is the part practices use most and the part most often left vague.

A monthly report

Short and readable. Visitors, where they came from, what they looked at, whether anything broke, what was done. Not forty pages of exported graphs.

What is usually not included

New pages, redesigns, new functionality, integrations, and rewriting a whole section. These are projects, and a care plan that pretends otherwise is either going to disappoint you or quietly stop answering.

Questions worth asking

  • How much content change time do I get, and what happens if I exceed it?
  • How often are backups taken, where are they stored, and have you ever restored one?
  • Will you tell me the site is down, or will I?
  • What is the notice period, and what do I get if I leave?

Your business should remain the legal domain registrant. The agreement should identify managed infrastructure, transferable files and licences, service access, notice periods and the handover process. Baken Care is month-to-month with 30 days’ written notice; handover follows the signed terms and payment status.

What it should cost

Compare the scope and response arrangements, not just the monthly fee. Baken’s Care Essential is R1,250/month with 45 minutes of changes; Care Complete is R2,250/month with 3 hours. Larger changes and third-party costs should be agreed separately.

Next step: request a free Website Check, or see Baken’s website maintenance plans.