Agency Website Care Plan Checklist: Set Up, Deliver, and Report

Onboarding a new care plan client is when you establish the foundation for everything that follows. Get the access you need, document the site's current state, and set clear expectations before the first delivery month begins. A thorough onboarding prevents the 'we have always had this issue' problem that arises when something is discovered mid-care-plan and the client thinks it is new.

Run an initial website health check as part of onboarding. This establishes the baseline state of the site: reachability, SSL certificate validity and expiry date, response time, security headers, and any domain risk signals. Document anything that needs attention before the first month of service begins so the care plan scope is clear.

Get clear ownership documentation for domain registrar and hosting provider access. Who manages the domain? Who manages hosting? What email addresses are on file for renewal notifications? These details matter when something expires or an access issue arises.

• Access obtained for all necessary hosting, domain, and CMS accounts
• Initial website health check completed and documented
• SSL certificate expiry date recorded in client file
• Domain registration expiry date recorded in client file
• Backup system confirmed working with retention policy documented
• Current plugin and CMS versions documented
• Care plan scope agreed and documented
• Monthly reporting format and delivery date agreed with client

A monthly care plan delivery should follow the same process each month. This creates consistency, reduces the cognitive load of figuring out what to do each month, and makes it easy to onboard team members into the delivery workflow. If the monthly process is documented as a checklist, anyone on the team can deliver a care plan month consistently.

The core delivery items — software updates, backup verification, health check, security review — should be completed within a defined window each month so the client report is sent on a consistent date. Clients who receive a report at the same time each month come to expect and value it. Clients who receive irregular updates feel uncertain about whether the service is active.

Document what was completed, what was found, and what was addressed during each delivery period. This documentation serves multiple purposes: it gives you a basis for the client report, it creates a record of care plan delivery for dispute resolution if needed, and it reveals patterns across delivery periods that inform recommendations.

• CMS, theme, and plugin updates applied and tested
• Backup completed and backup success confirmed
• Website health check run and results documented
• SSL certificate expiry checked
• Domain expiry checked
• Security header check completed
• Response time compared to previous month
• Any issues from last month confirmed resolved
• Client report prepared
• Report sent on agreed delivery date

The website health check is the technical foundation of care plan reporting. It provides objective, current data on the signals that matter most to clients: is the site up, is HTTPS working, how fast is it responding, are security protections in place, is the domain healthy. No amount of plugin updates makes a care plan feel complete to a client if the site is slow or the SSL certificate is about to expire.

Run the health check before and after applying updates so you have both a baseline and a post-maintenance snapshot. If something changes unexpectedly after an update, the pre-update baseline helps you identify what changed and when.

Use MonitorMojo to run a combined health check that covers reachability, SSL, response time, security headers, and domain risk signals in one workflow. The results can be summarized directly into the client report format your team uses.

• Pre-maintenance health check run and results recorded
• Post-maintenance health check run and compared to pre-maintenance
• Any health check findings documented with recommended action
• SSL expiry date updated in client record after any renewal
• Domain expiry date updated in client record if changed

The client report is what makes the care plan visible to the client. Without it, the client pays a monthly fee and receives a website that works — which is what they expected. With a clear monthly report, the client pays a monthly fee and sees the specific work that was done to keep their site working.

A good care plan report is brief but complete. It does not need to list every plugin version update or every backup file. It needs to answer the client's implicit question: 'was anyone watching my site this month, and is it in good shape?' The answer should be: yes, we reviewed it, here is what we found, here is what we did, and here is the current status.

Customize the report format for each client's technical comfort level. A developer client might want specific version numbers and response time data. A local business owner wants to know their site is healthy and their certificate is not expiring next month. Both are valid — the underlying data is the same; the presentation level is different.

• Report includes month, client name, and review date
• Health check summary included (reachability, SSL, response time)
• SSL certificate expiry date and days remaining included
• Domain expiry date included if relevant
• Updates applied during the month listed
• Any issues found and resolved summarized
• Any items requiring client action clearly noted
• Report delivered on agreed date