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What a WordPress care-plan report should tell the client

A care-plan report is the letter that justifies the month. Most of the ones I have been handed are a plugin list with a date on it. The client already assumes you updated plugins. They cannot tell, from a version bump, whether the site did its job.

Write the outcome. Keep the technical event underneath it, in a smaller line, for the person who asks. “Restored reliable email delivery” is the report. “Updated the SPF record” is how. If you only send the second sentence, you have written a log for yourself.

A copyable month

Square brackets are blanks. Use the client’s words in the work lines. The technical note is optional and should stay one line.

Client: [Client name]
Site: [https://example.com]
Period: [start date] to [end date]

Status: [All clear, or the one thing that needs a look]

Uptime: [percent] of homepage checks this period.
Misses: [none, or the date and roughly how long]
Certificate: [days] left, expires [date]
Domain: [days] left, expires [date]

Work this period:
- Restored reliable email delivery
  Technical note: [what you actually changed, and minutes if you track them]
- [Outcome the client would repeat back to you]
  Technical note: [the event underneath]

Not in this report: a plugin-update dump, a malware claim, a backup percentage you did not check.

One filled month, made up

Harbor & Co is not a customer. The numbers are not a measurement. I am showing the shape.

Client: Harbor & Co
Site: https://harbor.example
Period: 1 March 2026 to 31 March 2026

Status: All clear. One short miss, noted below.

Uptime: 99.4% of homepage checks this period.
Misses: 3 March, about 20 minutes. The host called it a network blip.
Certificate: 64 days left, expires 3 June 2026
Domain: 288 days left, expires 13 January 2027

Work this period:
- Restored reliable email delivery
  Technical note: updated the SPF record at the DNS host. 30 min
- Replaced the homepage hero and checked it on a phone
  Technical note: new image in the page builder, no theme change. 40 min

Not in this report: a plugin-update dump, a malware claim, a backup percentage you did not check.

Bad line, better line

“Updated DNS.” Better: “Restored reliable email delivery,” and under it, “updated the SPF record.”

“Cleared cache.” Better: “Product photos show again on the collection page,” and under it, “purged the image cache after the import.”

“General maintenance.” Better: delete the line. If you cannot name an outcome, it does not belong in a care-plan report.

What I leave out on purpose

Forty plugin version numbers. A green “secure” badge. A sentence about malware scans I did not run. WordPress care often includes the updates, and you should still do them. They are a poor substitute for two outcome lines. If an update broke checkout, that belongs in the work section as a sentence the client understands. The other updates can stay in the dashboard.

The same outline, without the WordPress examples, is the website maintenance report template. If the client is not on WordPress at all, do not force this page. Use reporting beyond WordPress.

Where the checks fit

I built the report so I would stop retyping the monitoring half. You add the public URL. Homepage probes run about every 15 minutes. A fuller check, on the cadence you pick, records the certificate, the domain date, a Lighthouse snapshot, and a homepage shot when one is available. You still write the work. Nothing reads the WordPress activity log. If you would rather append the lines from a script, the write API does that.

The client opens one page. In the product it is called a digest. Call it the care-plan report when you send it. They do not create an account. You can email up to five addresses after a scheduled check, or send the PDF of the same page.

How those work lines carry a retainer through the year is making maintenance visible. The page this sits inside, for a whole agency roster, is website maintenance reporting for agencies.

Start a care-plan report for one WordPress site. Keep the plugin list where it already lives.

Plans are Starter at $9/month for up to 5 sites, Studio at $29/month for up to 25 sites, and Agency at $79/month for up to 100 sites. Agency removes the RetainerProof credit on the client digest and the public status page. Prices are on the pricing page.

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