Why You Need Maintenance and Backup

As a business owner you have to be prepared for anything.  When I ran my computer store in Oswego, NY I wasn’t prepared for disaster to hit my business. Back then we offered dial up Internet services but at our storefront we fixed computers and sold computers. We were at a major intersection of the city and it was great for business until… the city decided they were going to expand the roads. They notified the local businesses that would be affected and told us it would be about 2 to 3 weeks of inconvenience.

After 12 weeks of the roads mostly shut down and no customers able to get into our store easily, we were hurting. I had not prepared for this type of disaster and it was the catalyst of us finally having to shut our doors.

As a business owner there are some things that you can be prepared for. And one is the fact that if you have a website, especially a WordPress site and have several plugins, there will come a time that something breaks. Plugins break and even websites break and if you are doing updates sometimes lots of things can break. This isn’t to scare you but to tell you the hard facts of being an online business owner especially if you are responsible for your maintenance and backups.

Let’s start with maintenance. Just like your car needs to get an oil change every so many miles, your website will need maintenance usually on a monthly if not a bi-monthly basis. You will need to update your WordPress Core, Theme and all your plugins.

But WAIT STOP don’t go any further. Before you do anything further you need to make sure you have BACKUPS. A support client called us when her site was rendered useless because she had a plugin conflict when she updated her WordPress Core. Luckily she had some of her site backed up and we were able to get her site up and running again in a few hours. Those few hours probably caused her a loss of income. If you are an online business owner, you cannot afford that.

This is why we have developed some Backup Packages and Maintenance Packages to help you.

Below are the different packages and the pros and cons of each one.

1) Free WordPress Backup Plugin:
Pros: It’s free for you and we will install it on all the WordPress Websites we create if you request it.
Cons: If WordPress breaks, you will not be able to access your backups. You must set up and manage this backup system and have somewhere to store the backup.

2) Self Managed Starr Host Backups:
Pros: It’s only $1.95 a month*, it does not depend on WordPress, and is stored on Starr Host Remote servers.
Cons: You will need to set it up and manage it. Starr Host will not take responsibility for your backups, you have to. * monthly fee based on 1 GB of data

3) Starr Host Managed Backups:  $24.95 a month*
Pros: Backs up everything for you. So if something does break, we will be able to restore the site quickly to a previous state.  Starr Host manages and is responsible for backups. You don’t have to worry.  *monthly fee based on 1 GB of data

Here are our Starr Host Monthly Managed Backups and Maintenance Packages:

4) Starr Host Monthly Managed Backups and Maintenance:

$54 Includes Starr Host Managed Backups, you will constantly be up to date with your plugins, WordPress Themes and Core Updates. Also included, optimization of your database so site loads quickly. ($75 value)  Website restores included too.

5) Starr Host Premier Backups, Maintenance, and Optimization:

$97 Includes Starr Host Monthly Backups and Maintenance. But in addition to everything you get in 4 (Starr Host Monthly Managed Backups and Maintenance) once a month we will review all your files checking for out of date code or malicious code (malware, viruses, spyware, bots, etc…) We will review all image files and make sure they are optimized for the web.  What this does is allows your site and images to load quickly.

Starr Host Premier Backups, Maintenance, and Optimization is for the blogger who is making money with their site. These sites need to be in top performance, fast, secure and provide a safe environment for your visitors.

Which package is right for you?

Find out more by clicking this link.