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Care plans, New Zealand

Website care plans, and whether you need one.

NZ$69, NZ$129 or NZ$249 a month, depending on how much your site changes. All three cover software updates and security patches, backups kept off the server, uptime monitoring, a set amount of small changes done for you, and a plain-English report each month. Cancel by email any time, with no exit fee. And if your site does not need one, you will be told that instead of sold one.

Ask which plan fitsSee the plans

Or call Nick on 021 217 1760, or send a text.

Why a plan exists at all

Websites do not break loudly.

A car makes a noise before it stops. A website just quietly gets worse, and the first person to find out is usually a customer who never tells you.

  • The certificate expires

    Most renew themselves. When one does not, every visitor gets a full page warning telling them your site is not safe, and most of them leave. It is a five minute problem that can run for a fortnight because nobody was watching.

  • The form stops arriving

    The single most expensive fault a small site has, because nothing looks wrong. A mail provider tightens a rule, your form keeps saying thank you, and the enquiries go to spam or nowhere. On a plan, the form is tested rather than assumed.

  • Updates pile up

    A platform with plugins needs updating, and the longer it is left the more likely an update breaks a layout instead of applying quietly. Done monthly it is dull. Done once every two years it is a repair job.

  • The backup was never tested

    Plenty of sites have a backup. Fewer have one kept somewhere other than the server it is backing up, which is the only kind that helps on the day the server is the problem.

  • Nobody notices it is down

    Outages tend to happen at night and get discovered at ten the next morning, by a customer. Monitoring means the alert comes to me first, which is the difference between a blip and a day.

  • The changes never get made

    Prices go up, hours change over Christmas, somebody leaves. Each change is small, so it waits for a free evening that never arrives, and the site slowly stops being true.

The honest version

Who should not buy one.

A monthly fee is easy to sell and easy to forget you are paying, which is exactly why it deserves a straight answer rather than a scare.

You probably do not need a plan if your site is a handful of pages that never change, built on something that does not run plugins, on hosting that renews itself, with no login and no payments. Put a reminder in your calendar to check the form works twice a year and spend the money elsewhere.

You probably do need one if the site takes money or bookings, if it runs a platform with plugins that update themselves, if a day offline costs you real work, if somebody else built it and you have no idea what is under it, or if you have caught yourself thinking "I must get that changed" about the same thing three times.

What a plan is not. Not hosting, which stays in your name and is billed separately. Not a redesign on the instalment plan. Not unlimited changes, because unlimited is a word that only ever means one of us is being short changed. And not insurance: it means a problem is found early and there is a tested backup, which is worth a lot and is not a promise that nothing will happen.

An app is a different animal. An app is not a website. A website left alone keeps working. An app left alone stops being accepted by the stores, usually inside a year, and then it disappears. App care is the minimum sensible cover for an app in the stores, and we say that before you buy, not after.

The plans

Three for websites, one for apps.

The difference between them is how much changes each month and how fast you want it done. Same updates, backups and monitoring underneath all of them.

Essentials

Essentials

NZ$69/monthor NZ$690 a year

For a site that does not change much and just needs to stay up, safe and backed up.

Software updates and security patches
Backups, kept off the server
Uptime monitoring. We hear about outages first.
30 minutes of small changes a month
Monthly plain-English report
Cancel any time, by email. No exit fee.Ask about Essentials
Standard

Standard

NZ$129/monthor NZ$1,290 a year

For a business that changes prices, hours, photos or staff now and then and wants it done for them.

Everything in Essentials
1 hour of small changes a month
Changes done within 3 working days
Speed and broken-link check each month
Monthly plain-English report with what we would fix next
Cancel any time, by email. No exit fee.Ask about Standard
Plus

Plus

NZ$249/monthor NZ$2,490 a year

For an online store or a busy site where the website is part of how you make money every week.

Everything in Standard
2 hours of small changes a month
Store checks: checkout, payments and shipping tested monthly
Priority on fixes when something breaks
Monthly report plus a short call if you want one
Cancel any time, by email. No exit fee.Ask about Plus
App care

App care

NZ$169/monthor NZ$1,690 a year

For a business with an app in the stores. Apple and Google change their rules every year, and an app that is not kept up stops being accepted.

Rebuilt and resubmitted when a new iOS or Android version requires it
Crash and error monitoring, so we hear about breakages before your customers tell you
Renewals and certificates kept current, so the app never falls out of a store
1 hour of small changes a month
Monthly plain-English report
Cancel any time, by email. No exit fee.Ask about App care

Care plans work for sites we built and sites we did not. Sites built elsewhere get a written review first. All prices are in New Zealand dollars, with no GST added. Tea Break Studio is not registered for GST, so no GST is charged on any price, quote or invoice.

Things being looked after

Two that are not finished projects.

Both are run rather than delivered: one is a client store I run month to month, the other is my own product.

  • Killer Groom home page in a desktop browser
    Live

    Killer Groom

    Store rebuild and care, Shopify

    A trading store rebuilt while it kept selling, and run by me since as part of my job at Jaeco Industries, which owns it. Loyalty, a wishlist, Subscribe and Save and a stockist locator, with Afterpay, PayPal and Shop Pay at checkout.

    Read the casekillergroom.com
  • Snagged home page in a desktop browser
    Live

    Snagged

    Web app, Next.js

    My own job board, so it gets the same treatment month to month. Free to post, free to apply, and still live.

    Read the casesnagged.co.nz
Straight answers

Before you commit to a monthly bill.

Including the one nobody in this industry likes answering, which is what happens when the one person is on holiday.

Anything not here, ask. 021 217 1760

Honestly, not every site does, and you will get told which one you have. A small site that never changes, on modern hosting, with no login and no payments, can sit there for a long while without anybody touching it. The sites that should not go unwatched are the ones that take money or bookings, the ones running a platform with plugins that update themselves, and the ones where a day offline costs you real work. If yours is the first kind, buy nothing and get on with your day.
Care plans work for sites we built and sites we did not. Sites built elsewhere get a written review first. The review is so nobody agrees to keep something alive without having read it first. It tells you what state the site is in, what it would take to bring it up to a condition worth covering, and whether a plan makes sense at all. You are not committed to anything by it.
The kind of thing you would ring about: new prices, changed hours, a staff photo, a paragraph reworded, a new product photo, a PDF swapped. Essentials includes 30 minutes a month, Standard an hour, Plus two hours. Something bigger, a whole new page for instance, is quoted before it is done and an extra page is NZ$390 per page. Nothing gets started on the quiet and billed afterwards.
A care plan here is not a 24 hour service desk and I am not going to dress it up as one. What it is: updates and backups run to a schedule rather than when somebody remembers, monitoring tells me a site is down before you notice, and there is one phone number, 021 217 1760, answered by the person who knows your site. If I am going to be away for any length of time, anyone on a plan hears about it in advance rather than after.
Yes. Email us any time. Your plan stays active until the end of the current month of service. If you paid yearly, we refund each complete unused month at one-twelfth of the yearly price. There is no exit fee, and your site, accounts and backups stay yours.
Third-party costs you pay directly: your domain name, hosting, the store platform's own fee, payment processing fees, and any paid plugins or stock photos. We set them all up in your name and tell you what they cost before you commit. Hosting is not part of a care plan: you keep your existing hosting, or we host it for NZ$29 a month.
Where to go next
One next step

Tell me the address of your site.

That, and who built it and where it is hosted if you happen to know. I will look at it and tell you which plan fits, or that none of them does. Either answer comes in writing and costs nothing.

Ask which plan fits021 217 1760Call NickSend a textSame number, if a call does not suitnick@teabreakstudio.comEmail instead

One person reads these. A reply in writing, usually within 2 working days.