It covers hosting, monitoring, updates, backups, incident response, and security patching for the site(s) listed in the accepted proposal or statement of work, plus any agreed add-ons.
If there is an accepted proposal, it sets the plan, pricing, and any setup work like migration and cutover. This agreement sets how we run the service week to week, how we communicate when something breaks, and how billing and handover work.
Scope of work
Each month we run the managed hosting retainer on an ongoing basis: we host your site, watch uptime and key checks, apply routine WordPress maintenance in an agreed monthly window, and keep backups and security work running in the background.
The retainer includes the items listed below. Anything that changes features or design is not included, like new pages, new integrations, or checkout changes. If you ask for out-of-scope work, we will describe what we propose to do and price it before we start, so there are no surprises.
* Managed web hosting * WordPress updates * Uptime monitoring * Incident response * Daily backups * Security patching
Service levels
We treat issues by impact. When you report a problem, or monitoring alerts us, we reply using the response times for the severity level we assign. We will tell you the level we have assigned and why.
Severity levels: Critical (site down or checkout broken), Major (key functions degraded), Minor (non-blocking bug or content issue). Response times and after-hours coverage are set out in the accepted proposal or onboarding notes for your account. Monitoring runs continuously and pages our on-call rota after hours for urgent incidents.
If we miss a service level, we will explain what happened, what we changed to prevent a repeat, and agree a fair service credit or fee adjustment for the affected period.
Payment
There are two parts to payment: any one-time setup work, and the ongoing managed hosting retainer.
Setup work, where included, is invoiced 30% to start. The remaining 70% is invoiced when migration and cutover are complete. The ongoing managed hosting retainer is invoiced at the start of each month.
Every invoice is payable within 7 days of its date. If an invoice becomes overdue, we will contact you to fix it quickly. If we cannot reach you or payment does not arrive, we may pause non-urgent work until the account is back up to date. We will keep you informed before taking any step that could affect service.
Price review
We review the managed hosting retainer price at a regular interval, normally once per year, to reflect changes in platform costs, security workload, and the support load of your site.
If we propose a new monthly price, we will tell you in writing before it applies. The notice period is one we choose and confirm with you in writing at the time. If you do not want to continue on the new price, you can end the retainer by giving notice, and we will follow the handover steps in this agreement.
Price changes do not affect invoices already issued. Any one-off out-of-scope work is always quoted and agreed separately.
Access and logins
To run the service we need the right access. This usually includes admin access to WordPress, access to your current host during migration, and domain DNS access for cutover and SSL validation.
We will only accept logins through a safe method. Use your password manager sharing feature, or a one-time secure link that expires. Do not paste passwords into forms, tickets, or ordinary email. If you cannot share access safely, tell us and we will agree another route.
If access is removed or changed without telling us, it can delay fixes and planned maintenance. We will tell you what is missing and what we need restored.
What we need from you
This retainer works best with one named contact on your side. That person collects input internally, approves maintenance windows, and is the route we use for urgent decisions.
You agree to: keep your contact details up to date, reply to time-sensitive questions promptly during incidents, and tell us before you make changes that affect hosting or WordPress, like switching DNS, adding a proxy, changing payment providers, or installing major plugins. If another supplier is working on the site, you will introduce us so we can coordinate.
You are responsible for your store operations, products, and customer communications. We are responsible for keeping the hosting and maintenance service running as agreed.
Insurance
We carry business insurance that fits the kind of work we do, including cover for mistakes and accidents in the course of providing hosting and maintenance.
You are best placed to insure your own business risks. That usually includes cover for loss of revenue, stock and fulfilment issues, customer claims related to your products, and any contractual commitments you have to your customers.
If you need us to confirm the type of insurance we hold, ask and we will provide a short summary. If your business or a third party requires specific cover to be in place, tell us before we start so we can confirm whether we can meet it.
Putting things right
If something goes wrong, we deal with it openly and quickly. As soon as we become aware of an incident, we will log it and tell you what we know, what we are doing next, and what we need from you, if anything.
If our work causes a fault, like an update that breaks the site, we will prioritise getting you back to a working state. Depending on what is safest, we will roll back the change, restore from a known good backup, or apply a fix, then verify key journeys like login, checkout, and admin access.
If there are third-party failures involved, we will help with diagnosis and coordination, but we cannot control third-party response times.
Our team
The people who deliver this service are part of what you are paying for. We recruit, train, and retain the team so you have cover when someone is on leave and you are not dependent on one individual.
While this agreement is running, you agree not to hire or contract directly with our staff, or ask them to work for you outside this agreement. This also applies for a period after the agreement ends. The length of that period is one we choose and confirm with you in writing.
If you want extra support beyond the retainer, ask us. We can usually scale the plan or quote project work without pulling people away informally.
How the retainer runs
The managed hosting retainer is a recurring monthly service. It renews automatically each month and we invoice at the start of the month, so the service stays continuous.
Either side can end the retainer by giving notice. The notice period is one we agree and confirm in writing, and it starts when we acknowledge your notice in writing. During the notice period we keep monitoring, backups, and routine maintenance running as normal, unless you ask us to start handover earlier.
If you want to pause instead of end, tell us. We will explain what can and cannot be paused safely, because some tasks, like security patching, are there to prevent avoidable incidents.
Handover and exit
When the retainer ends, we will help you leave in a usable state. We will agree a handover plan in writing that covers hosting, DNS, backups, and any important credentials.
We will provide you with the site files and database export we hold, and we will confirm the last backup point available. If you are moving to a new host, we can share guidance on what they need. If you want us to perform a migration out as a one-off piece of work, we will quote it separately.
Once handover is complete, we will remove our access where we can, rotate shared credentials if needed, and stop monitoring alerts for your site.
Responsibility
We take responsibility for running the managed hosting retainer with care and for following the agreed processes around updates, backups, monitoring, and incident response.
We cannot promise that your site will never fail. Outages can be caused by third-party services, upstream providers, theme or plugin defects, traffic spikes, and changes made by others with access. When that happens, our job is to respond, communicate, and restore service as quickly as we reasonably can.
We are not responsible for your business losses such as lost sales, lost profit, or reputational harm. If there is a dispute, we will start by sharing logs, timelines, and the steps we took, so we are working from the same facts.
Ending this agreement
You can end the managed hosting retainer by giving notice. We can also end it by giving notice. We will confirm notice in writing and agree the finish date and handover plan.
You pay for: the retainer up to the finish date, and any agreed one-off work completed up to that date. If setup work is underway, the 30% start invoice remains payable, and the 70% completion invoice becomes due when migration and cutover are complete.
On termination we will keep the service stable during the notice period, then complete handover as set out above. If we have to end the agreement quickly for safety or non-payment, we will still act reasonably and help you recover access to your site and data.
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