The one number
Care plan tiers differ mostly in two things: how fast someone responds when something breaks, and how much monitoring happens between breakages. Both are priced against the same question: what does it cost your business when the website is not working for an hour?
For a brochure site that gets its clients by referral, an hour of downtime costs almost nothing. For a salon whose Saturday column fills from online bookings, an hour on Saturday morning is real money. For a clinic whose new-patient enquiries all arrive through the site, a day is a week's marketing spent on an error page.
Work out your number roughly. Then pick the tier whose response time and monitoring match it.
Basic: for the site that must keep working
The cheapest tier, around $100 a month, does the routine that every site needs: staged updates, daily backups, uptime monitoring, a monthly note, and an hour of changes. Response to problems within one business day.
Built for: a small site with a simple booking or enquiry form, where an outage costs an inconvenience rather than a day's revenue, and where changes are occasional. A solo practitioner, a small trade, a one-chair salon.
The wrong saving: choosing Basic for a business whose bookings all arrive online and whose diary would be empty after a weekend outage. One business day is fine on a Tuesday and long on a Saturday.
Growth: for the site that takes the bookings
Around $250 a month adds security scanning and cleanup, speed monitoring rather than a one-off check, a few hours of changes, and content updates handled for you. Response within one business day, and problems are usually caught by monitoring before you see them.
Built for: the typical booking-led business. Several staff, online booking with deposits, a price list that changes, a diary that depends on the site. The extra monitoring is what turns "we found out from a customer" into "we found out from the alert". The extra hours cover the changes a growing business actually makes.
This is the tier most of our clients are on, and the one we recommend when someone is unsure.
Scale: for the site where an hour is expensive
Around $500 a month adds priority response, emergencies answered within four hours rather than a business day, more included time, monthly checks on the booking flow and search health, and a direct channel rather than a form.
Built for: businesses where the website is the operation. Multi-location clinics, salons with a dozen staff, stores taking orders, anything where a Saturday outage costs more than the year's plan. Also for businesses that change the site often enough to use ten hours a month.
The wrong saving in the other direction: paying for Scale when Growth's response time would never have been tested. If nothing has broken outside business hours in two years, the four-hour emergency window is insurance you may not need.
A quick decision table
| If | Then | | --- | --- | | The site is a brochure; enquiries come by phone or referral | Basic | | Online booking is how most clients arrive | Growth | | Several staff, several services, prices change monthly | Growth | | Weekend outage would empty Monday's diary | Scale | | Several locations or a store taking money | Scale | | You regularly need more than four hours of changes | Scale, or a project | | You are not sure | Growth, and review after three months |
Reviewing the choice
Tiers are not permanent. Move up when the included hours run out two months running, or when an outage outside business hours cost you. Move down when a year passes with the monitoring finding nothing and the hours untouched. A plan you can change monthly should be changed when the facts change.
Ours can be moved between with a month's notice, and every tier carries the same non-negotiables: you keep the logins, updates are staged, backups are tested, and leaving costs nothing. The care plan page has the full comparison; the number that decides between the tiers is yours.