Hosting, maintenance and integrations
Website Hosting and Maintenance for Small Business
08 — Trades & home services · shot in-house
A website care plan covers the work that keeps a site online and fixable: hosting, software and plugin updates, off-site backups, uptime and security monitoring, and a person who answers when something breaks. Arcline Digital runs care plans for the sites we build and for sites built by somebody else, as long as we can get proper access. You own the site, the domain, the content, and the code. That does not change while you pay us, and it does not change if you leave. Plans are month to month. Cancel and we hand over the files, the database, the credentials, and the DNS records. What you are buying is not storage space, which costs almost nothing. You are buying updates that get tested before they go live, backups that have been restored at least once, monitoring that notices trouble before your customers do, and a defined response time when the checkout form stops sending.
Thirty minutes, video or phone, US and EU hours.
What the monthly fee covers
Storage is the cheap part. The fee pays for the following.
Hosting and uptime
Managed hosting on infrastructure we monitor, with SSL kept valid and renewed. Uptime checks run continuously. If the site goes down outside business hours, the alert still fires and gets picked up at the start of the next US or EU working window.
Updates, tested before they ship
Core platform, plugins, themes, and dependencies get updated on a schedule. Updates go to a staging copy first. If an update breaks the layout or a form, it never reaches your customers. This is the single most common reason a neglected small business site suddenly stops working.
Backups you can actually restore
We test restores rather than assuming the files are good. If something goes wrong, rollback is measured in minutes.
Security work
Malware scanning, firewall rules, forced HTTPS, login hardening, and prompt patching of known vulnerabilities. Nobody can promise a site will never be attacked. We can promise the known holes get closed quickly and that a clean copy exists.
Small changes and content edits
Text swaps, new images, price updates, opening hours, a new team member, a new service block. Anything larger gets quoted before we start. No surprise invoices.
Who owns the site? You do.
This is where a lot of agencies get slippery, so here it is plainly.
- The domain stays in your name, in an account you control.
- The site files and database are yours. On request, at any time, we send them over.
- Third party accounts, from analytics to email, get set up under your ownership, with us added as users.
- If we built the site, the finished code and content are yours once the project is paid.
We do not rent you a website. We do not hold a site hostage to keep a retainer. If you cancel, you get an export and a handover document, and you can move to any competent host.
What happens if you stop paying
Nothing dramatic. The site keeps existing, because it is yours. We stop hosting, updating, monitoring, and answering. You take the export and move it, or you point us at whoever is taking over and we brief them. There is no exit fee, and there is no clause that makes leaving expensive.
Be honest with yourself about the risk though. An unmaintained site does not fail on day one. It fails months later, when an outdated plugin gets exploited or a PHP version is retired and the whole thing goes white.
Not included
- Full redesigns or new page templates. Those are project work, quoted separately.
- SEO campaigns, ad management, chatbot builds, and content strategy.
- Rescuing sites on platforms we cannot access properly.
- Third party license fees, unless your plan states otherwise.
How the quote works
New builds are quoted up front, in writing, before anything starts. Website design and chatbot work are scoped the same way.
Care plans are monthly and quoted per site, because a five page brochure site and a booking system with integrations are not the same job. Tell us the URL and we will send a number.
Get a care plan quote
Send us the site address and tell us what platform it runs on. If you do not know, we will work it out. You get back what we would take over, what we would fix in the first week, what it costs each month, and how soon we could start.
Or contact us with the details.
Care plan questions
What is a website care plan?
A care plan is a monthly service that keeps your site running: hosting, updates, backups, monitoring, security patching, and a set amount of content edit time. It exists because websites are software, and software left alone breaks. Instead of paying an emergency rate to fix a site that has been down for two days, you pay a predictable amount to stop that from happening.
Who owns my website if I cancel?
You do, completely. The domain sits in your name, the files and database are yours, and the third party accounts are registered to you with us added as users. Cancelling triggers a handover: an export of the site and database, the credentials, the DNS records, and a document explaining how it is put together. There is no exit fee and no clause that makes leaving expensive.
Can you maintain a site that another agency built?
Usually yes. We audit it first to see what platform it runs, what condition the code is in, how far behind the updates have fallen, and whether backups exist at all. Some sites need a paid cleanup pass before a monthly plan makes sense, and we will tell you that up front rather than inheriting a mess and billing you every month to keep it alive.
My site barely changes. Do I still need a care plan?
Probably yes, though a lighter one. Static sites still run software that ages: expiring certificates, retired PHP versions, plugin vulnerabilities, and hosting changes made without notice. The risk is not that the site changes. The risk is that the internet around it does. If your site drives inquiries, the cost of a week of downtime is usually larger than a year of maintenance.
Schedule
Pick a slot, get a plan.
Thirty minutes, a clear plan and a fixed quote — video or phone, US and EU hours.
Book a call