BitwiseDesigns Care Explained: What a Website Care Plan Actually Includes
"Care plan" gets used by every agency to mean something different - sometimes it's a real monitoring service, sometimes it's a retainer nobody can explain the deliverable for. Here's exactly what BitwiseDesigns Care includes at each tier, what it costs, and - just as important - an honest read on whether it's worth paying for yet, or whether you should wait.
What Care actually is
Every fix we sell is a snapshot: it makes the site fast, visible, and working as of the day it's delivered. Nothing about that day is permanent - plugins update and break things, images pile up, competitors improve their own sites, and Google adjusts what it rewards. Care is the ongoing side of that: instead of finding out a year later that the site quietly slid back, we re-run the same audit every month, publish a before/after report, and (on the two paid-work tiers) make the small fixes that keep it from sliding at all.
It isn't a check-in email. It's the same Lighthouse tooling from your original audit, run again on a schedule, with real work attached to what it finds.
The three tiers, plainly
Care Basic - $49/mo
Watching-only. A full re-audit every month (Performance, Accessibility, SEO, and Security & best practices, the same four scores your original report used) with a before/after report each cycle - the same audit tracks uptime and speed, so a slow slide or outage shows up in it instead of going unnoticed for months. Nothing gets changed on your site - you get told what's happening, on a schedule, instead of finding out by accident.
Care Pro - $99/mo
Everything in Basic, plus up to 3 small edits or updates a month (a new phone number, a seasonal offer, a broken link, a pricing change) and priority support on any fix work. This is the tier where what the monitoring finds actually gets handled without a separate invoice every time. Most clients land here.
Care Plus - $199/mo
Everything in Pro, plus a monthly content update and a higher edit allowance (up to 8/mo). Built for sites that want someone actively keeping content current - not just technically healthy - on a predictable monthly cost instead of a per-request quote.
Any tier's flat allowance runs short some months. When that happens we quote the extra work at a flat price before doing it - no surprise invoices, on any plan.
How this is different from the one-time fix
The $149 quick fix and $299 tune-up solve what's broken today. They're not designed to catch what breaks six months from now, because nothing breaks that fast - the whole point of a one-time fix is that it's one-time. Care is the opposite bet: instead of paying once and hoping nothing decays, you pay monthly and something is always checking. Neither is wrong; they solve different problems, and most businesses need the fix first regardless, since Care is built to maintain a site that's already in good shape, not to quietly paper over one that isn't.
Is it worth it for you right now?
Depends what you're protecting. A brand-new site, or one that just had every issue fixed, has nothing worth protecting yet - there's no traffic or ranking built up that a slow slide could cost you. Care earns its cost once that's no longer true: once the site is generating real leads, or ranking for terms that took months to earn, because that's exactly what a quiet decay puts at risk, and by the time a drop is obvious enough to notice without monitoring, it's usually been happening for a while already.
If you're not sure which situation is yours, that's what the free audit answers first - it tells you where the site stands today, which is the only honest starting point for deciding whether ongoing monitoring is worth paying for.
Frequently asked questions
What's the actual difference between the Care tiers?
Basic ($49/mo) is watching-only: a monthly re-audit and before/after report - the same audit tracks uptime and speed, so a slow slide or outage shows up in it instead of going unnoticed for months. Nothing gets changed, you get told what's happening. Pro ($99/mo) adds up to 3 small edits or updates a month and priority support, so most of what the re-audit finds gets fixed without a separate invoice. Plus ($199/mo) adds a monthly content update and raises the edit allowance to 8/mo, for sites that want someone actively keeping content current, not just technically healthy.
Is a website care plan actually worth the monthly cost?
It depends what you're protecting. If your site gets no real traffic yet, there's nothing decaying that matters - a care plan is early. If it's generating leads or ranking for terms that took work to earn, the math flips: losing that traffic to a slow slide nobody caught costs far more than $49-199/mo, and by the time it's obvious, months of decay already happened. Care plans earn their cost once a site has something worth protecting, not before.
Can I switch tiers or cancel later?
Yes. There's no contract - reply to your welcome email or write to hello@bitwisedesigns.com to change tiers or cancel, and it takes effect without a cancellation fee. Most clients start on Basic to see the monthly report before deciding whether the edit allowance in Pro or Plus is worth it.
Do I need to buy a fix before starting Care?
No - Care can start on its own. But if a fresh audit shows real issues already, fixing those first is the better order: Care is built to catch a healthy site starting to slip, not to quietly maintain a site that's already broken. Start with the free audit to see which situation you're actually in.
See where your site stands, then decide
Run the free audit below first - it's the same Performance/Accessibility/SEO/Security & best practices scoring both the one-time fix and Care are built around. If something's broken, that's a flat $149 or $299 fix. If the site's already solid and you just don't want to find out later that it slipped, see the full Care plan details and start one anytime.