Your website’s well-being is our priority
We’ve been known to tell folks to think of their website like a houseplant: they really add something to the space, but now you are left wondering how much water they need and what to do if the leaves start getting crinkly… or rather, how often to run updates in WordPress and what to do if your website suddenly won’t load on a Saturday. Luckily, we’re here to take care of all the necessary upkeep of your fiddle leaf fig—er—your website.
We’re committed to making sure that the websites we build continue to thrive, function, and stay secure after we’ve launched them.
We never want our clients to feel like they aren’t sure what to do if something isn’t working correctly.
Yes, if you choose to build your website with Valerian, you must host with us and have one of our care plans. We require this because of our commitment to quality and security. There are a lot of places that offer hosting or maintenance out there, but the results vary wildly and it’s not uncommon for folks to have issues or even experience security problems. Because of this, we handle our hosting and maintenance in-house so we can know that the websites we build won’t be crashing or dangerous to the people who use them.
You should keep your account open to make sure that your current site remains live until we launch the new one. Once we’ve launched your new Valerian site, we can help you close down your old hosting account.
No, unfortunately these kind of changes are a larger time and personnel commitment than our care plans account for. But don’t worry; with your care plan, you’ll have access to our support team at an hourly or retainer rate. If you have content that needs to be updated or other changes that require our expertise, we’ll be available to help in that expanded capacity.
We’re proud to say that in the 10+ years, we’ve only ever encountered two hacked sites, and both of those instances came down to weak administrator passwords. This isn’t to say that hacks can’t happen, but it certainly has been a rare occurrence for our websites. We have multiple monitors and scans in place, and if we find a breach, we’re quick to remove the vulnerability and install a patch to make sure it doesn’t happen again. While we can’t make any guarantees that you won’t ever be hacked, we do feel very confident in our preventative measures, and it’s likely that you won’t experience an issue.
As for downtime, our hosting provider guarantees 99.99% uptime availability. We’re alerted within minutes of any downtime issue and can quickly investigate to determine if it’s related to our hosting, your domain registrar, or other issues. There are factors outside our control, but we typically see a resolution within minutes (though in special cases it may take hours or even a business day).
There are a lot of different tasks and projects our team can help with—way too many to list here! Chances are, if it has to do with your website or something that is connected to your website, we can help. Some of the most common requests are content updates, new pages, and integrations. If you have something you’d like done, but you aren’t sure if it’s in our wheelhouse, please ask! Even if it’s not something our support team is able to do, we have a lot of connections and are likely able to give you a really great referral.
We reserve our care plans for our clients. Because we are committed to giving our clients the best service possible, we don’t allow folks to sign up for just our care plans. If you’re interested in getting this kind of hosting, maintenance, and support, please take a look at our website offerings or take our website quiz to see what website package would be the best fit for you and your business!
One way we simplify the website process is by providing hosting in our website packages. There’s no need to go find, research, and choose another company for hosting—we’ve got it covered!
Over the years, we’ve found that many hosting companies offer great deals at signup but a poor overall experience, often at a price that rises after the first year or so. To save our clients from this headache, we partnered with a hosting company to provide the best service available and bundled it with our care plans. That means you don’t have to buy yet another service or deal with another vendor. This also helps us ensure that we don’t run into any technical or performance issues while we build, launch, and maintain your site.
To top off our great hosting, we ensure your site is always globally available with a 99.99% Uptime Guarantee, configure your SSL Certificate to keep your site secure, and turn on the Global CDN to optimize for performance. Finally, our Web Application Firewall keeps the hackers out. So kick your feet up and take a deep breath.
Just like your phone and computer, your website incorporates software that needs continual updates. While the updates are important—they help ensure that your site is secure and has the newest features and best performance—running those constant updates can be annoying. Don’t worry; we’ll handle it.
Occasionally, updates can fail or cause larger issues with your site. We safeguard against this situation by taking screenshots of your site each month and creating a new backup. Then we run the updates and make sure there are no immediate errors. After the update, we take another set of screenshots to make sure there weren’t any unintended visual changes. If we discover an issue, we revert to the backup and begin tests on a staging server so we can plan our next steps.
If you’re worried about specifics, we also include security monitoring and firewall, daily offsite backups, uptime monitoring, SSL renewal, and transactional email monitoring. (If you don’t know what those things are, don’t sweat it. We base our maintenance on best practices and ensure we’ve got your bases covered.) You’ll also receive a monthly report with a high-level overview of your website analytics and further details.
We know that businesses grow and change as time goes on, and your website needs to be able to grow with you! Whether we’re looking at content updates, new pages, or expanded integrations, and functionality, our support team is happy to help!
If you find that you only need support every so often, we offer on-demand support for all of our clients. It’s easy to get in touch: simply email our team or fill out our support request form, and we’ll take it from there! You can also schedule on-demand consultations with us. We typically turn around requests within 1-2 weeks, but we’ll confirm the details within 2 business days so you know it’s on our radar. To keep things simple for you, we combine all support hours and invoice for them at the beginning of the following month.
If you have consistent ongoing support needs and want to ensure our team has the capacity to support you, we also offer retainer support options. Simply choose the number of hours you need each month and your turnaround time guarantee. Then you’ll have guaranteed access to the support you need.
