Wordpress Backups and Updates Service

[Paullas]

Hi, Simple question - Would you pay to have your wordpress site backed-up and kept up to date on a daily basis and if so what would you think is reasonable monthly fee you would pay.

 

[Retired_Member42]

I think I'd just ask my host what their backup options are. Most hosts offer it inclusive?

 

[Paullas]

I think I'd just ask my host what their backup options are. Most hosts offer it inclusive?

yeah but do they offer to update all your plugins etc. I know some plugins have auto update now but i know a lot of people who use wordpress as there main site who haven't a clue so as everyone on here is (i think) experienced just thought i would put it out there.

 

[alex]

Hi, Simple question - Would you pay to have your wordpress site backed-up and kept up to date on a daily basis and if so what would you think is reasonable monthly fee you would pay.

We offer a similar service to our existing clients who find it quite useful as they generally don't want to be worring about this sort of thing.

We include daily backups, wordpress and plugin updates, content updates, comment reviewing and general maintenance for a fee of £100 per month for up to 2 hours work, then £100 per hour thereafter as required.

The 2 hours is generally enough to cover everything they need. We use a premium plugin to do a daily backup to dropbox, so most of the time is spent updating content and restoring backups in the rare cases they're required.

So I'd say £100 per month is reasonable, but it would depend on your clients and included services.

 

[Paullas]

We offer a similar service to our existing clients who find it quite useful as they generally don't want to be worring about this sort of thing.

We include daily backups, wordpress and plugin updates, content updates, comment reviewing and general maintenance for a fee of £100 per month for up to 2 hours work, then £100 per hour thereafter as required.

The 2 hours is generally enough to cover everything they need. We use a premium plugin to do a daily backup to dropbox, so most of the time is spent updating content and restoring backups in the rare cases they're required.

So I'd say £100 per month is reasonable, but it would depend on your clients and included services.

Thanks Alex, yes this is what i am going to start offer to my clients but just thought i would stop and see if its something people will use before i go setting everything up.

 

[monaghan]

I think most here wouldn't pay, however, a non technical end user running a site for their business would probably pay a reasonable sum to have their sites kept up to date and secure.

I don't have any WP managed users, but I do have a few Drupal managed customers. A fixed price with X number of hours support included seems to work well for my customers, make sure they don't have any expectation of major version updates to be included though as these (as you know) are often the ones requiring major updates to themes and modules.

 

[devilsrefugee]

the one thing i would say (from experience) make sure you dont fuck the backups up, because whilst it may seem like easy money, lose a clients site and you are up shit street (pardon all my french). Big responsibility.

 

[wonder_lander]

You also need to be careful of modifications. We've got a modified theme and a couple of modified plugins so when a new update rolls out the code needs reviewing, test deploying and then releasing if all is good!

 

[Retired_Member42]

You also need to be careful of modifications. We've got a modified theme and a couple of modified plugins so when a new update rolls out the code needs reviewing, test deploying and then releasing if all is good!

I was going to mention this also. Most plugins are developed solely as plugins and perhaps tested on a basic Wordpress install. I often encounter plugins which simply don't display correctly with certain themes due to duplicate class names or lack of thought from the developer in general. The business is great if you're clicking the update buttons across a load of domains and everything runs smoothly but when you cock up someones site and spend a day fixing it the tiny amount you're charging them just doesn't seem worth it.

Clients love to make you liable also so be prepared to be blamed for everything, even if it's not your fault and if it is make sure you can fix it within the time you're paying for. I can just imagine you making a grand a month from 20 clients or whatever and have to work full time fixing errors that your updates have caused.

 

[Paullas]

I was going to mention this also. Most plugins are developed solely as plugins and perhaps tested on a basic Wordpress install. I often encounter plugins which simply don't display correctly with certain themes due to duplicate class names or lack of thought from the developer in general. The business is great if you're clicking the update buttons across a load of domains and everything runs smoothly but when you cock up someones site and spend a day fixing it the tiny amount you're charging them just doesn't seem worth it.

Clients love to make you liable also so be prepared to be blamed for everything, even if it's not your fault and if it is make sure you can fix it within the time you're paying for. I can just imagine you making a grand a month from 20 clients or whatever and have to work full time fixing errors that your updates have caused.

yeah good point i think i will stick to my own sites for now and monitor it.

Thanks to all for replying.

 

[Retired_Member42]

yeah good point i think i will stick to my own sites for now and monitor it.

Thanks to all for replying.

Of course depending on your abilities you could make a service out of that in its own right in terms of fixing/customising plugins to suit or whatever once they do cock up the site. I guess with all this just be rock solid in your terms and don't set your pricing based on everything going smoothly. Allow for fuck ups in your billing structure and cover your ass in your terms by saying that updates may cause issues and so on. To put it simply offer inclusive updates in your core service but bill for it if it needs extra leg work to get it going (or you can revert back to previous and cross it off the update list at no cost)

 

[alex]

You also need to be careful of modifications. We've got a modified theme and a couple of modified plugins so when a new update rolls out the code needs reviewing, test deploying and then releasing if all is good!

There are occasionally issues where plugin updates cause functionality to break. We have a staging site for a couple of clients and test there first, but in most cases if we update and find issues we just revert back to the previous version.

We ensure the client is aware that there may be compatibility issues with updating, which should be taken up with the developer. So assuming we didn't build the site, the client is aware that fixing bugs is not our responsibility. All we have to do is ensure that when we update we are not leaving a broken site.

As Redemption says, if you're not careful you could find all your time spent fixing things you didn't break.