Someone looking after it. Namely, me.
A website isn't finished at launch: it needs hosting, updates, backups and the odd change. A care plan means that's handled by the person who built it, for a predictable monthly price. No lock-in, and your domain is always in your name.
Care plans. Start on Hosting Plus, upgrade when you need more.
Every plan includes hosting, so there is no second hosting bill. After your build you roll onto Hosting Plus automatically. Move up for more changes, reporting and faster replies. Included time is real development time, not a ticket queue.
Hosting only
Covers the cost of keeping your site live, and nothing else.
- Managed hosting and SSL
- No dev hours included
- No backups, monitoring or updates
- Changes at £95 an hour, quoted first
Hosting Plus
For a site that needs to stay up, secure and backed up.
- Included while you pay off a build
- Managed hosting, SSL and domain renewal
- Daily off-site backups
- Uptime monitoring
- Security patching and updates
- Changes at £65 an hour, quoted first
- Email support, replies within 3 working days
Essentials
For starter and brochure sites that need to stay up, stay fast and stay safe.
- Everything in Hosting Plus
- Backups are restore-tested
- 30 minutes of changes a month
- Email support, replies within 2 working days
Growth
For business and booking sites that earn their keep and change regularly.
- Everything in Essentials
- 2 hours of changes a month: pages, copy, images, offers
- Speed and Core Web Vitals monitoring, fixed when they slip
- Form, booking and integration checks every month
- A one-page monthly report: uptime, speed, traffic, what I did
- Replies within 1 working day
- Priority in my build queue for anything larger
Partner
For sites central to the business, where downtime or a stale site costs real money.
- Everything in Growth
- 5 hours of changes and improvements a month
- Staging site: changes reviewed before they go live
- Same-day response on anything broken, weekdays
- Quarterly analytics and conversion review
- A quarterly call: what's working, what to build next
- Named contact: me, direct, no ticket queue
App Care
Member areas, logins and Stripe payments need more than a website does: a failed webhook is lost revenue, not a cosmetic problem. Priced per app, because a five-user internal tool and a two-thousand-member platform aren't the same job.
- Everything in Partner, applied to the app
- Stripe, webhook and payment-flow monitoring
- Database backups with tested restores
- A staging environment as standard
- Error tracking with proactive fixes
- 8 hours of development a month
Not sure which fits? Tell me about your site and I'll recommend one, including telling you if you don't need a plan at all.
What a plan replaces.
A website builder bills you monthly too. Here is what the money buys in each case.
| DIY builder | LaunchCo | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | About £15 to £33 a month on a business plan | From £10 a month for hosting, £25 with backups and support |
| Who fixes things | You, from help articles | Me, the developer who built it |
| Changes | You make them yourself | Included time each month, then £65 an hour |
| Ownership | Tied to their platform | Domain in your name from day one, site and code yours once paid for |
| Leaving | Usually means rebuilding | 30 days' notice, no exit fee |
Pay-monthly website packages from £25 can look similar. Before you sign with anyone, ask about the minimum term and whether you can take the site elsewhere.
What actually goes wrong.
Sites rarely fail loudly. They drift: a form stops sending, a certificate lapses, a page slows down, and nobody notices until it's cost you something.
Forms stop sending
The single most common one. Enquiries quietly stop arriving and you assume business is slow. I check yours every month.
Backups nobody tested
Plenty of hosts take backups. Far fewer have ever restored one. On Essentials and above, mine are restore-tested.
Certificates lapse
An expired SSL certificate puts a browser warning in front of every visitor. It's a five-minute fix that costs you a fortnight of traffic if nobody's watching.
Speed creeps up
Pages get heavier as content is added. Google notices, and so do people on a phone with one bar of signal.
Small changes never happen
New prices, new staff, updated opening hours. Not hard, but they sit on a list for eight months when there's nobody to send them to.
Security drifts
Dependencies age and known vulnerabilities pile up. Patching is dull, routine and much cheaper than the alternative.
Not on a plan? That's fine too.
You're never obliged to be on a plan. But work for Hosting Plus clients and above is quicker for me: I already know the site, I already have access, and there's no cold start. That saving gets passed on.
One-off fixes and updates, minimum one hour, always quoted before I start. Fair for the work. It just includes the time it takes to get back up to speed on a site I'm not looking after.
A third less, billed in 15-minute blocks, and only once any included time is used. For most people this is the point at which a plan has already paid for itself.
Bigger pieces of work, such as new features, extra pages or a redesign, are quoted as fixed-price projects rather than billed by the hour, so you know the number before it starts.
How it works.
How you pay
Payments are taken by Direct Debit, in advance. Your first payment is taken when you book. After that, payments are taken on the same day each month. The payment day can only be the 1st to the 28th, so it exists in every month. If you book on the 29th, 30th or 31st, your payment day is the 28th. A failed payment counts as a missed payment. Each payment covers the billing month that starts on the day it is taken.
Unused time rolls over
Essentials and Growth roll into the next month. Partner builds up to twice the allowance, but not forever, because a year of banked hours is a redesign. Unused time has no cash value and ends when your service ends.
Pay yearly, get two months
Pay for ten months up front and get twelve. Same plan, same everything. Yearly plans are paid in advance and are not refundable once started. If you cancel, your service runs to the end of the year you have paid for.
Cancel with 30 days' notice
No minimum term and no exit fee. To cancel, give notice in writing by email to hello@launchco.co.uk. Stopping a payment, or telling me any other way, is not notice. Your notice takes effect on the day I receive it.
When your service ends
Your service ends at the end of the first billing month that finishes at least 30 days after I receive your notice. For example, if payments are taken on the 5th and you give notice on 10 January, your service ends on 4 March. There are no refunds for part periods.
What you keep
Once your build is paid for, your site, domain and code are yours to take. Your hosting ends when your service ends, so move your site before then if you want it to stay live.
If payments stop
Hosting costs money to run, so if payments stop I have to switch your site off. I'll send you a reminder first. Stopping payments is not cancelling: payments stay due until your service ends under the notice rules above. When you are up to date, your site goes back live and your support starts again.
Nothing is a surprise
Anything beyond your allowance gets quoted before I start. You will never get an invoice you weren't expecting.
Care plans, explained.
Do I have to be on a plan?
What is Hosting only?
What happens if I need more time than my plan includes?
Does unused time roll over?
Can I cancel?
Is hosting really included?
What is not included?
How much does website maintenance cost in the UK?
What is a fair hourly rate for website support in the UK?
Can you take over a site you didn't build?
Need something else?
Want it looked after?
Tell me about your site and I'll recommend a plan, or tell you honestly that you don't need one.
Talk about a plan