How I work
The rules I work by, written down before we start, so neither of us has to guess later.
Hours
I work with clients Monday to Thursday, 10am to 4pm Central. Those are business days, and every reply time on this site counts only those days. US holidays don't count, and neither do weeks I've announced I'm away. A message sent on a Friday or a weekend counts as arriving Monday.
How to reach me
Email or the contact form. I don't take requests by text, phone or social media DM. Everything stays in writing, so there's a record of what was asked and what was agreed.
How fast I reply
A reply means I've read it, sorted it and told you what happens next. It doesn't mean the fix is done.
| Plan | First reply |
|---|---|
| Not a client yet | Within one business day |
| Care | Within one business day |
| Care+ | Within one business day, changes done the same week |
| Organizational | Same day for requests in by 1pm Central, otherwise the next business day |
Every plan starts with a Site Checkup
Before I take on a site, I look at it properly. The Site Checkup costs $595, and the full amount is credited toward your plan or a rescue if you sign within 30 days. It means I'm never promising to keep a site healthy before I know whether it's healthy now.
What the plans include, and what they don't
Plans cover keeping the site patched, backed up and running, plus the monthly change hours on Care+ and Organizational. Changes are the small things: content edits, a layout fix, a new form, swapping one plugin or module for another.
These get quoted separately, before any work starts:
- Redesigns and new features
- Major version upgrades, including PHP upgrades
- Anything estimated at more than your plan's monthly hours
- Fixing breakage caused by someone else's changes or by a third-party service
- Writing content, training, SEO work
- Working with your other vendors on your behalf
License fees, hosting bills and other third-party costs are yours, paid directly to whoever provides them.
Change hours
Hours are tracked in 15-minute steps. This month's hours get used first, and unused hours carry over one month. They don't carry past a cancellation, and they have no cash value.
When the site goes down
Monitoring watches the site around the clock. I read its alerts on business days. When a site is down, fixing it comes before other plan work, and on Organizational it goes ahead of other clients' requests too. No plan includes nights, weekends or holidays.
If an update I applied broke it, or the host had a problem, the fix is part of your plan. If a change someone else made broke it, the fix is billed at my hourly rate.
Rates for work outside a plan
My hourly rate is $150.
Urgent help for a site that isn't on a plan costs $250 an hour, with a 2-hour minimum ($500), paid up front. It starts the next business day. I don't offer same-day or after-hours work. If urgent help is something you're likely to need, a plan is the cheaper way to get it.
Hosting and accounts
You own every account: hosting, domain, licenses, email. You pay your host directly, and I set up and manage the hosting for you. If we stop working together, you already have everything, and nothing breaks.
Billing and cancelling
Plans are billed monthly, in advance. Month to month, with 30 days' notice to cancel.
Got a site that needs looking after?
Tell me what it runs on and what's bothering you. I'll reply within one business day. Working out whether I can help costs nothing.