- What if I don’t want to sign up for a maintenance plan?
If you do not wish to be on one of our maintenance plans then you will need to identify and purchase hosting from another company. We highly recommend WPEngine or at least another host that provides Managed WordPress hosting. These hosts know WordPress and optimize their servers to run WordPress sites. You will find better support and security. Should you choose to take this path we also recommend you find someone to maintain your site OR you plan to sign up for notifications about any WordPress news and security issues, you are willing to run updates on your site at minimum once a week, and you feel confident restoring your site if it should become hacked or have a technical error.
Once you identify your host we will either launch the site for you (we will do this on most managed hosting sites) or provide you with all of the files you need to have your host put the site up on their server for you.
- I want to sign up for a maintenance plan but I’d really rather host the site on my own instead of on your enterprise hosting plan. Can I do that?
You absolutely can but we currently ONLY maintain sites on WPEngine hosting plans. If you choose to set up a WPEngine consumer account you will need to provide us with user permissions set to Full (no billing).
- I signed up for one maintenance plan but now I want to change to a different one.
Just send us an email and we can make adjustments to your plan. Depending on how near you are to your next billing date we may choose to make the change on the billing date or to prorate the plan at our discretion.
- My maintenance plan includes xx number of edits to my site per month, but I haven’t asked you to do anything in 6 months. Can I save up my edits and have you do a bunch at one time?
Unfortunately no. We managed our time and staffing levels based on the monthly model and do not offer any “rollover edits.” What we CAN do if you have a lot of edits to do is help you prioritize them and spread them out over future months if possible.
- What payment methods do you accept?
For maintenance plans we accept all major credit cards. Once you sign up for a plan your card will automatically be charged every month on or about the same day.
- I need to change my credit card.
Send us an email and we will provide you with a secure link to update your payment method.
- Why can’t I call you instead of emailing you? Do you offer ANY phone support?
We are a small agency working asynchronous hours that attempts to provide top notch support at reasonable rates to our clients. In order to offer phone support we would need to significantly increase our rates and hire additional personnel. Phone calls are also inefficient, as that means someone on our team still has to type up your questions or issues for our records and to route to the appropriate person to be addressed. If you truly think you can’t get by without talking to us on the phone we will schedule a call for a $150 charge that must be paid up front. Phone calls that take more than 30 minutes will incur additional charges. In the extremely unlikely situation where we decide to initiate a phone call you will not be charged.
- My site is down/hacked/having a problem!! I can’t wait xx days for your email support!
We check email frequently – USUALLY at least every 4 hours during business hours. Your subject line should include “Site Outage” at the very beginning so that it catches our eye as urgent. We recommend you avoid words like “important” and “urgent” simply because they increase the likelihood that you will be swept into spam. Even if we are on vacation or otherwise out of the office our emails will be checked at minimum at the end of the business day. If your site is down it will become our top priority until we get it back up. If you believe your site has been hacked send us an email and then WAIT. Do not log in to the dashboard of any site you believe to be compromised.
- I sent the email and got an out of office notification. Now what?
We do indeed take vacation time and days off. As a family business sometimes that means multiple of our staff are out of the office at the same time. Even though we still keep an eye on email for urgent situations we will also provide instructions in the out of office email for you to reach out to someone else who will make sure your site issue is dealt with. Routine issues may be put on hold during vacation times, but site outages will always be dealt with right away.
- Do you offer 24/7 support?
We do not. You may get email from us at odd hours because sometimes we keep odd hours, but our actual support hours are approximately 9am to 6pm Eastern time Monday through Friday. Note that site outages or security issues will be dealt with 7 days a week to the best of our ability, but an email sent late in the evening may not be addressed until the next day.
- Do I own my website or do you?
Your website belongs to you. We do reserve the right to reuse certain design elements, colors, etc. on other projects but your design is unique to your business and will stay that way so long as you are in business.
- If I own my website why don’t I have administrative access? Why won’t you give another 3rd party – like an SEO company – administrative access?
As long as you are a maintenance client we will provide you with Editor level access. Likewise we will provide any 3rd party you hire editor access if you wish for them to have it. In addition, we will sometimes customize access if you are having difficulty with certain tasks that usually require a higher level of access. This is another way we keep costs down for all of our clients. The only reason for anyone to have administrative access is to make changes to the code, design, or plugins. Those types of changes are also the fastest way to accidentally bring a website down. While we maintain the site we will make those types of changes for you (pursuant to the maintenance plan you chose). This way if the site goes down due to a plugin or coding conflict we can quickly solve the issue without having to do forensics to figure out the WHY first. In addition, every administrative user on a site is a doorway for bad actors to break in to. Keeping administrative users to a minimum helps maintain the security of your site.
- I want to cancel my maintenance plan. What happens to my site?
We request that you provide us with 30 days notice of cancellation as we do not provide refunds on maintenance fees.
- If you are choosing to take your current site and host it elsewhere
– We will port the site for you for a fee of $150 if possible. If you are moving to a WPEngine hosting plan of your own there is no charge to move the site for you.
– OR we will provide you with site and database files so that your new host and/or maintenance provider can install the site for you.
- If you are having a new site built by a new provider
– PLEASE give us a heads up. It is much easier for us to package up the site files for storage before the domain is switched to a new host.
– We are more than happy to provide site files to your new provider to help them import your content.
– We will work with your new provider to allow for a seamless transition so that you do not experience a site outage. We want you to stay our client, but we understand business needs change. Most of all we want you to be successful and are happy to help if it is time to make a change.
- If you are closing the business/letting the site go dark
– Let us know as soon as possible. We can assist with shutting down the site and packaging your files for storage in case you ever need them again. We can also help you put up a placeholder to let your clients know what happened should you wish to do so.
– In this situation we provide you with a copy of all of your site files for you to keep. We also keep your site files in our own storage for at least 12 months in case you should need to reinstall the site in the future.
- My site is down and there is a page saying contact Rowboat Web Services. What is going on?
The only reason we will ever take your site down without your permission is due to a prolonged period of non-payment and non-communication. This means we have been trying to contact you for weeks about an issue with your payment method and not gotten a response. Everyone experiences an expired card or a change in number – but if we have been trying to reach you without success for more than 30 days we reserve the right to take the site down until the issue is resolved.
- I have a different question.
Shoot us an email! Copy myself and Sean on all email communication for best results.