Dear Christy: Should I offer maintenance plans?

0:00Hi, this is a new series called Dear Christie, where I answer your questions about being a web designer, kind of Dear Abby style. So, if you have a question, drop it in at christyprice.com/dearchristy. I'll drop a link below. But, our question for today is, "I keep hearing I should offer maintenance plans, but I'm not sure if it's actually worth it for me or my clients. How do I know if it's a good fit for my business, and what

0:27should I even include in one?" Well, I think this is a great question, and there have been periods in my business where I have offered maintenance plans, and I don't currently. So, let me kind of talk you through my reasoning and the pros and the cons that I found, and maybe that will be helpful to you. So, when I was offering maintenance plans, I did this because, one, it's

0:48recurring revenue. And this is something that's really great for any business, especially this year. So, I came from a WordPress background, and in that, we always always offered maintenance plans. It was just part of the job, because you had to update plugins. It was an open-source platform, so there was maintenance that you had to do, even if the client didn't have any

1:10updates. Add that to the fact that most clients weren't comfortable hopping into WordPress and making updates, so it was kind of something you had to do. So, when I moved my business to focus on Squarespace, I thought, "Well, it'll be great. I won't have to offer maintenance plans anymore." And what I found was that for a while, people were

1:29asking for them. So, let me talk about how I set those up for Squarespace, and then talk about why I decided not to offer them any longer. So, when I was setting them up, I modeled mine after the way I did it on WordPress, which was every month, my clients got an hour of my time. And so, that was to make any updates on their site, answer any questions they had. Um at the time, I would even jump on a call with them for that amount of time. And this can vary based on where you are in your business

2:03and what you want to offer, obviously. But, what I found was that scheduling all of that was a lot of admin work. But, today with AI tools and automations, it's probably not as much admin work as it was at the time. But, what I did, so that you have an idea, is that I said for every month, um, let me know on the 15th of the month what your edits are for the month and give me a week to make those updates. So, I knew that there was a week in there that I would be busy making updates, so I didn't plan other stuff around it

2:37because it was just me. Now, if I had a team or a junior designer or a VA that could help with that sort of thing, then I might change that model on, um, when they could submit, but it was nice in that I knew exactly when those would be coming in and if they missed the window, it would get rolled to the next month. Speaking of rolled to the next month, this is something that I,

3:03um, would encourage you to think about. If they don't use that hour, you could communicate to them if it does not roll over or if it maybe rolls over 1 month. But, you don't want to be in a situation where they've stacked up 6 months or 6 hours of work that you now have to do in a week in November, the week of

3:21Thanksgiving or something like that. So, be mindful of how you're setting that up. And also track your time. So, have a time tracker. I used Toggl t o g g l at the time that, um, was a really handy way to keep up with different projects and how much time I was spending on each. So, my clients would get up to an hour and if they didn't use the full hour, in my case, it did not roll over. So, it was use it or lose it and I had some boundaries around when those updates would get done. And mostly that was because I was a solopreneur and I still

3:54am. So, it just made sense for my business. And I priced the maintenance plans low enough that people really didn't have a problem with that. At the time, it was on the order of $49 a month. This is when I was pretty new to Squarespace. If I were pricing it today with my experience and perhaps bringing on a team member to cover that, I think I would probably go to 99 a month, but it all depends on your business, where you're located in the world, who's going to be doing the work, um and what you're

4:26offering for that price. So, in the end, I decided that maintenance plans were not worth it for me or my clients. So, what I found was that clients didn't really use it that often. It was nice when they did for them, but I kind of felt bad because I was charging them for time that they didn't

4:44use. And also, I mentioned the admin, keeping up and tracking things, uh sending reminder emails, which of course you could automate. Um I was doing a lot of things manually at the time because I was really bootstrapping things. So, I wasn't spending a lot of revenue on tools that could help me. Uh my thoughts on that is very different today. I automate what I can, but still keep

5:06things really human. So, if the admin seems rough to you, you know, you just don't want to deal with that, maybe you don't you don't want to be too loosey-goosey with what you're offering or when they have to get it to you, but you also maybe you're starting to feel overwhelmed by it. There are a couple of other things you can do. Uh you could offer

5:27um blocks of time that they could use. And this is a way to still get some revenue in for your business, offer them, you know, 5 hours of time over the next 6 months. Again, that's still admin, but it's feels a little more um free form. So, in some ways it's a little easier because you can let them know what your schedule is and when you can work on things or you could keep the boundary of like it's this month, this time, this date and this is when I'll get it back. So, that's something to consider as well if you wanted to do blocks of time instead

5:58of every month at this time. Uh but like I said, in the end I decided that for me and my clients it was better if they just hired me for an hour at a time later at my regular rate. It ended up being cheaper for them honestly because I wasn't doing that many tasks for them and I was training my clients on how to update the site themselves and I found that most of my clients felt comfortable doing that. So, today I

6:24don't offer a maintenance plan. Do I miss the recurring revenue? Yeah, I mean it wasn't a huge amount for me. Um obviously if I kept it going and it compounded over time as I got more and more clients, it would be a bigger chunk today and I do sometimes think about that and you know, being able to train somebody that I could hand off the bulk of those updates to. So, that's definitely something to consider too, but I don't love managing that, the admin, I don't really love managing team members. I like to do things myself. So, for me and my business right now, it's not the right fit, but it might be for

7:00you. So, I would love to hear from you. What are your thoughts about maintenance plans? Do you currently offer them to clients? Is it just hourly clients? Is it template build out clients or custom clients? Who are you offering it to? What are your boundaries around it? I'd love to know what's working for you today. I think that could help out other folks in the comments too if you'd be willing to share. And if you have a link to your page where you are offering those services, feel free to drop that in the comments below so people can check it out. But always remember there is no one right answer. You have to

7:37decide what is best for your business and your clients and make decisions around that. I hope this video was helpful and gave you some things to think about and I wish you all the best in your web design business. Thanks so much for watching.