Watched by software. Checked by us.
Every site we manage gets an automated check every night, and a real person reading what comes back. Updates applied and confirmed, daily offsite backups, and a monthly report in plain English. The hosting account stays yours.
What you are actually paying for
A management plan is not insurance against a disaster somebody described to you to make the sale. It is a standing arrangement where the technical side of your website has an owner, and the owner is not you.
Every site on a plan is checked automatically every night, updated on a schedule, backed up offsite every day, and reported on every month. When something breaks, you are not the one who has to work out what happened, who to phone, or whether it is even your problem. That is the whole product.
Checked every night, automatically.
Read by a person, not just logged.
Reported once a month, in plain English.
Every automated check said the site was fine
On one of our own sites, real visitors using Safari were getting a page that would not load. Every automated check we had said the opposite. A command line request returned 200. Chrome loaded it. Lighthouse passed it. Google PageSpeed scored it. All four were reading the same server, and the server was fine.
The cause was a third party widget crashing WebKit after the page had already been delivered. No monitor was ever going to raise that, because nothing was down. We found it by opening the site on a phone, the way a customer would. Then we took the widget out.
This is the honest reason a plan is worth paying for. Monitoring tells you when a server stops answering. It does not tell you when your website has quietly stopped working for everyone using one browser.
This page couldn’t load
Two readings of the same window. The top line is every automated check we had. The bottom line is what people on Safari actually got.
And it is not a one off
A response header we added broke the site for real browsers. Command line requests were unaffected, so nothing flagged it. We found it by diffing a preview build against production.
A CDN cached POST responses using only the URL as the key, so one query’s content was being served in place of another’s. Every status code was 200.
A fetch that timed out during a build got saved as a 404 and served to real visitors from cache until we rebuilt. The build itself reported success.
What runs every night
At 03:15 every morning, every site we manage gets the same check. It takes seconds, and it runs whether or not anything is wrong. That is the point of it.
03:15
Every night
Is it answering?
We request the site the way a visitor would, and record exactly what comes back.
Is the certificate still valid?
We open a connection to your site and read the certificate’s expiry date straight off it. An alert opens at 45 days out and is escalated at 21.
Is every plugin current?
We take an inventory of every plugin installed and compare each version against the current release.
Alerts close themselves. When a certificate is renewed or a plugin is updated, the alert that was raised for it is resolved on the next run, without anyone touching it. That matters more than it sounds. A list that only ever grows gets ignored, and the entire value of the list is that it is short and true.
Updates are applied from one console rather than by logging into sites one at a time, and the next scan confirms the version actually changed rather than taking the update’s word for it.
Verified on a live production site: an analytics plugin moved from 0.10.26 to 0.10.27, stayed active, and the site never stopped answering.
The report you get every month
Once a month you get a PDF. Not a dashboard login you will never open, and not a screenshot of a graph with nothing explaining it.
It opens with a summary in plain language, and then the numbers behind it. Every plan gets one. On Essential it covers the work we did and what the checks found; from Professional up it adds everything below.
What people searched to find you, and where you came up.
Clicks, impressions, click-through rate, average position, and the queries themselves.
Who arrived, and what they did.
Visitors, sessions, how engaged they were, where they came from, what device they used, and where in the world they were.
Which pages did the work.
Your top content and top landing pages for the month.
How the site felt to use.
Core Web Vitals, measured separately for desktop and for mobile.
What we did to the site, and what we are doing next.
The work carried out that month, written down, and one named focus area for the month ahead.
The summary is drafted automatically from your own data and read by a person before it goes out. The system that writes it is only allowed to cite numbers that are in the report. It is not permitted to estimate, extrapolate or round in your favour.
The engine that produces these is the same kind of automation we build for clients. See AI automationChoose how often we are in it
The watching is the same on all three. Every site on a plan gets the nightly check, daily offsite backups, uptime monitoring, malware and file integrity scanning, its certificate kept valid, and a report every month. Those are not upgrades and they are not withheld to make a cheaper plan look thin.
What changes is how often we are hands-on, how far the search and performance work goes, how much detail the monthly report carries, and how much of our time is yours.
On every plan
- The nightly check
- Daily offsite backups
- Uptime monitoring
- Malware and file integrity scanning
- SSL watched and renewed
- A report every month
A month on this plan
Hands on once a month. Weeks we are hands on: week 4.Hands on once a month
Essential
A site that is live, correct, and does not need to change often.
A month on this plan
Hands on every second week. Weeks we are hands on: week 2, week 4.Hands on every second week
Professional
A site that is part of how you get found and get enquiries.
A month on this plan
Hands on every week. Weeks we are hands on: week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4.Hands on every week
Elite
A site you are actively pushing, where someone has to be accountable for it.
What it costs
It is a monthly retainer, billed monthly in advance, and the figure depends on which of the three fits and how big the site is. We do not publish it here for the same reason we do not publish build prices: a number with no site attached to it is a guess, and you would be comparing our guess to somebody else’s.
Month to month with 30 days notice. Move up when a season gets busy, and back down when it does not.
Hosting and your domain are billed separately, once a year, on accounts that are in your name.
Work beyond your monthly time is quoted at a fixed hourly rate, agreed before we start it, never billed as a surprise.
You get the number in writing after one call. If the plan you need and the budget you have do not meet, we say so on that call.
It stays your website
The hosting account is yours and it is billed to your card. The domain is registered in your name. We operate the infrastructure, we do not own it, and there is no part of this arrangement where leaving costs you access to something.
That is also why the plan is optional and always has been. Plenty of clients run their own site after we hand it over, and the editor we build is what makes that realistic rather than theoretical. This is what we do instead, for the people who would rather not think about it.
Where things run
WordPress builds run on South African hosting, close to the people using them.
Headless builds deploy to Vercel’s edge network. This site is served to Cape Town visitors from a Cape Town point of presence.
Every site has SSL, and the nightly check reads the expiry date directly, so a renewal never sneaks up on anyone.
Common questions
What does a management plan cost?
There are three plans, and the figure depends on which one fits and how big the site is, so we do not put a number on this page. What we can tell you before you ask: it is a monthly retainer billed in advance, it is month to month with 30 days notice, and hosting and your domain are billed separately once a year on accounts in your name. Work beyond your monthly time is quoted at a fixed hourly rate and agreed before we start it. You get the whole number in writing after one call, and if the plan you need and the budget you have do not meet, we say so on that call.
Do I have to be on a plan?
No, and it has never been a condition of a build. Plenty of clients run their own site after we hand it over, which is exactly what the editor is for. The plan exists for people who would rather the technical side had an owner who is not them. You can start it at launch, start it two years later, or never.
What is actually included?
Every plan gets the same watching: an automated check of your site every night, daily offsite backups, uptime monitoring, malware and file integrity scanning, and the certificate kept valid. What changes between the three is how often we are hands-on with updates, how far the search and performance work goes, how much detail the monthly report carries, and how much of our time is yours each month.
How fast do you respond when something breaks?
We do not publish a response time. We are a small team, and a number we could not hold to in a bad week would be worth nothing to you. What is true is that you contact a person directly rather than a ticket queue, and that a site being down goes ahead of everything else that day. If you need a contractual response window, tell us early and we will say honestly whether we can commit to it.
What if my site goes down?
Monitoring tells us the site has stopped answering, and the nightly check records it too. Then a person looks at it. Most outages are not the server: they are a plugin, a certificate, a DNS change, or a deploy that did something unexpected. Working out which one it is is the part that takes judgement, and that is the part you are paying for.
Do you back up the site, and where do the backups go?
Yes. Backups run automatically every day and are stored off the server, so a problem with the hosting cannot take the backups down with it. Restoring is a request, not a project.
Whose account is the hosting on?
Yours. The hosting is billed to you and the domain is registered in your name. We operate them, we do not own them. If you ever want to move to another provider or bring the work in-house, everything you need is already in accounts you control, and we will help you move it cleanly.
What does the site actually run on?
WordPress builds sit on South African hosting, which keeps them close to the people using them. Headless builds deploy to Vercel’s edge network, and this site is served to Cape Town visitors from a Cape Town point of presence. Every site has SSL, and the nightly check reads the certificate’s expiry date directly rather than trusting a calendar reminder.
What is in the monthly report?
Every plan gets a report. On Essential it covers the work we carried out that month and what the nightly checks found. From Professional up it adds a short summary in plain language, then the numbers behind it: what people searched to find you and where you came up, how many arrived and what they did, which pages did the work, and how the site performed on desktop and on mobile. It lists the work we carried out that month and ends with one named focus area for the month ahead. The summary is drafted from your own data by a system that may only cite numbers that are in the report, and a person reads it before it goes out.
Do you manage sites you did not build?
Sometimes. We look at the site first, because taking on something we cannot see the inside of is how you end up owning somebody else’s problem. If it is in reasonable shape we will quote for a plan. If it needs work before a plan makes sense, we will tell you what that work is and what it costs, and you are free to have someone else do it.
Can I change plans, or cancel?
Yes. Month to month with 30 days notice, either direction. You can move up when a season gets busy and back down when it does not. Cancelling does not cost you access to anything, because the accounts were never ours.
Client reviews
What our clients say
Verified Google reviews from businesses we’ve worked with across South Africa.
“I've recently had the pleasure of working with Whale Coast Web when it came to designing and maintaining our website. They were extremely professional, kept us informed regularly, and we saw our ranking on Google skyrocket to the top. I fully endorse working with Whale Coast Web. Excellent service and excellent prices!”
“What a pleasure it was working with Christiaan, thank you for creating a fantastic web page for Attwood & Associates Physiotherapy.”
“Absolute privilege to work with Christiaan. Did more than I expected and the support, after my website was finished, has been next-level! Highly recommended!”
“Working with Christiaan from Whale Coast Web has been an excellent experience from start to finish. He brought clarity, creativity, and professionalism to every stage of our website and digital setup. His communication was consistent, his timelines were reliable, and the final product reflects real care and attention to detail. Highly recommended if you're looking for someone who blends design skill with integrity and great service.”
“Very ethical company. Provides great advice. Very reasonably priced. Would highly recommend.”
“From the very first interaction, Christiaan displayed professionalism, creativity, and an unparalleled commitment to excellence. He took the time to understand my needs and brought my vision to life in ways I couldn't have imagined. His attention to detail and quick turnaround time was impressive, and the final product exceeded all my expectations. I highly recommend Whale Coast Web to anyone who wants to take their online presence to the next level.”
Hand over the upkeep
Tell us what the site is and where it runs. We will tell you which plan fits, what it covers, and what it costs, in writing.