The problemPaying for a maintenance plan, and the site still broke last month?
In shortWordPress maintenance plans from Pixel & Oak cost $99 (Essential), $199 (Growth) or $399 (Commerce) a month, with 50% off the first three months for new clients. Every plan covers updates, daily off-site backups, monitoring and security. Higher plans add staging-tested updates, more hands-on hours and faster response. No contract, any host.
Many care plan pages ask you to book a call before you see a price. Others publish a low number, then bill extra for small edits, charge a monthly fee if you are not on their hosting, or ask hundreds of dollars to hand over your own backups. Owners usually find this out after something breaks, which is exactly when they need the plan most.
Our three WordPress maintenance plans are listed below in full, including what they do not cover. The difference between them is how fast we respond, how much hands-on time is included, and whether updates are tested on a staging copy first. Extra work is quoted at a fixed price before it starts, and your backups leave with you if you cancel.
Maintained by Haider Ali, Founder & CEO · Updated
These are the complaints people raise about the maintenance plans they already pay for.
You spend an hour on a call to learn a price that depends on what they think you will pay, and you still cannot compare it with anyone else.
What we doEvery plan price, feature and limit is on this page. You can pick a plan without talking to anyone, or ask a question first if you prefer.
The monthly price stops being the real price. A few text changes or a new banner turn into an invoice you did not expect.
What we doEach plan includes hands-on hours: 1 on Essential, 3 on Growth, 6 hours of development on Commerce. Anything bigger is quoted at a fixed price before we start.
Some providers charge hundreds of dollars to export a full backup, or require you to move hosting to join, which makes leaving expensive.
What we doYour backups are yours. If you cancel, we hand them over at no charge, and you keep your own hosting and logins the whole time.
An untested update can take down a form, a booking page or a checkout, and an automated plan will neither notice nor fix it.
What we doGrowth and Commerce test updates on a staging copy first. On Essential, updates run with a fresh backup in place, so a bad one can be rolled back fast.
Every hour of a broken site costs leads or sales, and a ticket queue rarely tells you when anyone will look.
What we doResponse times are written per plan: same business day on Growth, and on Commerce emergency response within 2 hours plus a direct line with no ticket queue.
You keep paying for a plan that is not working, because leaving costs more than staying.
What we doEvery plan is month to month. Move up, move down or cancel at any time, effective from the next billing cycle.
| Essential | $99/month: weekly updates, daily backups, uptime and security, 1 edit hour |
|---|---|
| Growth | $199/month: adds staging-tested updates, Core Web Vitals, 3 edit hours |
| Commerce | $399/month: adds checkout monitoring, hourly backups, 6 dev hours |
| Launch offer | 50% off the first 3 months for new clients |
| Contract | Month to month; change or cancel any time |
| Setup fee | None for a site in reasonable shape |
| Hosting and backups | Any host; your logins and backups stay yours |
Worth knowing: When comparing plans, the monthly price is the least useful number. Ask two questions: are updates tested on a staging copy before going live, and on which tier? And does a person respond, or a ticket system? Many cheap plans fail both, and you only find out the day something breaks.
Use this on us as well as on anyone else you’re considering.
The difference between a maintenance plan and a scheduled script. An untested plugin update is the most common way a working site suddenly breaks.
Daily is the minimum. Ask where backups are stored, because a backup on the same server is not a backup.
Many providers cannot answer this. An untested backup is an assumption.
'We respond quickly' is not a commitment. Ask for hours, and ask what happens at 2 a.m. on a Sunday.
A named person who knows your site, or whoever picks up the ticket that day.
Bundled hosting often hides the real maintenance margin and makes leaving harder.
Month to month means they keep you by being useful. Annual lock-ins do the opposite.
You should, at no charge. Ask before signing, not after.
Fixed monthly price, month to month, cancel any time. No bundled hosting and no annual lock-in.
For brochure sites and small business WordPress.
$49 /month $99
First 3 months, then $99/month
For sites that generate leads and cannot go down.
$99 /month $199
First 3 months, then $199/month
For WooCommerce and anything taking payments.
$199 /month $399
First 3 months, then $399/month
Multiple sites? Rates drop per site — tell us how many.
Growth at $199 a month suits most businesses whose site brings in leads: it adds staging-tested updates, Core Web Vitals checks and same-business-day response. Essential suits a brochure site that mainly needs to stay online and secure. Commerce is for anything taking payments, where an hour of downtime has a cost you can measure.
Usually nothing. 'Care plan', 'maintenance plan' and 'support plan' are different names for the same service: updates, backups, monitoring, security and some hands-on time. Ignore the label and compare what is inside: staging-tested updates, off-site backups, written response times, included hours, and what it costs to leave.
Testing on staging means copying the site and checking key pages after every update run, which is real work each week. A brochure site that rarely changes can run safely on backups and a fast rollback. A site that brings in leads or sales should be on Growth or Commerce, where updates are tested before they reach the live site.
Yes, up or down, at any time, effective from the next billing cycle. Many sites start on Essential and move up once the site starts producing real revenue, or move down during a quiet season. There is no fee for changing plans and no minimum term on any of them.
No setup fee for a site in reasonable shape. We start with an audit of plugins, backups, security and speed. If it turns up work that is needed before we can maintain the site safely, you get a fixed quote for that first, and you decide whether to go ahead before anything is billed.
We fix it first as a one-off project with a fixed quote, then the plan starts from a clean baseline. It would not be honest to put a compromised site on a monthly plan and pretend maintenance alone will sort it out. Once it is clean, the plan keeps it that way.
Hosting, redesigns and new features, license fees for premium plugins, content writing and photography, and paid ad management. Larger jobs are quoted at a fixed price before we start, so nothing appears on an invoice that you did not agree to first. You can see every inclusion on the plan cards above.
Yes. You keep your hosting account and admin logins the whole time, and on the way out we hand over your backups at no charge. We do not hold credentials or backups back, and there is no exit fee. Leaving should be as easy as joining.
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