How to run a Squarespace website care plan.

What a Squarespace Care Plan Is For

On a self-hosted platform, a website care plan is often sold on updates and security. Squarespace is a hosted platform, so those aren't the client's problem or yours. What a Squarespace client is really paying for is a designer who knows their site and will make changes quickly, plus someone keeping an eye on it so it doesn't drift out of date.

That changes how you sell it. Lead with outcomes the client cares about: changes done within a set time, a site that stays current, and a monthly check that catches problems before their customers do.

Decide What’s Included

A care plan needs a clear boundary. Typical inclusions for a Squarespace site:

• A set amount of change time each month, such as one or two hours, for content updates, new blog posts, swapped photos and small layout tweaks.
• A monthly check: forms still delivering, links working, pages displaying correctly on mobile, nothing out of date (old events, expired offers, last year's prices).
• A short monthly note: what you changed, what you noticed, what you'd recommend.
• A response time for requests, for example within two business days.

Equally important is what's not included: new pages beyond a certain size, redesigns, new integrations, copywriting and photography. List these so nobody assumes the plan covers everything.

Choose a Pricing Model

Three structures work well, and you can offer more than one:

• Flat monthly fee with included hours: simple to sell and budget for. Decide in advance whether unused hours roll over (most designers say no, or cap the rollover).
• Smaller monthly fee for the check and priority, with changes billed separately: fairer for clients who rarely need changes.
• No retainer, pay per change: no commitment for the client, and every change priced on its own. Works well with a clear rate card.

Whichever you choose, track your time on every request. After three months you'll know whether the plan is profitable, and which clients are using far more than they pay for. Time tracking is what makes the price an informed decision rather than a guess.

Set Up Access You Can Rely On

If the client owns the site, make sure your contributor access matches the work you've agreed to do. Squarespace's Website editor role can add content to existing pages but can't add new pages, make style changes or add code. If your plan includes new pages or design tweaks, you'll need administrator access, and only the owner or an existing administrator can grant it.

Before making bigger changes, duplicate the page you're editing so you have a copy to compare against or restore from. Squarespace lets you duplicate pages and content, and site owners and administrators can duplicate a whole site from the account dashboard.

Run Requests Through One Channel

A care plan lives or dies on how requests come in. If clients text, email and call, you'll lose some, forget to log the time on others, and struggle to tell when the included hours are used up. Ask for every request through one channel, and turn each into a tracked item with a status and the time it took.

When a request goes beyond the plan, say so before starting, with a price. A care plan client is usually happy to pay for extras; what they don't like is learning about the cost on the invoice. See how to manage website revisions for a script you can reuse.

Put It in Writing

A care plan is an ongoing agreement, so write it down even if it's a single page. Include what's covered each month, what isn't, the response time, how unused hours are handled, the price for work beyond the plan, how either side can end the plan and with how much notice, and the access you need to the site to deliver it.

Send the client the agreement with the handoff, while the project is fresh. A client who has just seen the work you do is far more likely to sign up than one you contact six months later.

Billing for Ongoing Changes

The flat fee is easy: a monthly subscription through your invoicing or payments tool. The harder part is extras, because each one is small and it's tempting not to bill at all. Make billing a change as easy as doing it: the price is agreed on the request, and the client pays for that request when it's done. Summing up a month of small jobs on one invoice works too, as long as each one was priced and logged when it happened.

Review each plan every six or twelve months. If a client consistently uses more than their hours, move them to a bigger plan. If they use far less, offer a smaller one. Clients notice and appreciate both.

Where Bridge Fits

Bridge handles the request-and-billing side of a care plan on Squarespace. The client asks for a change from the widget in their Squarespace editor, from the client portal's "New request", or by email to the project, and each request becomes a task. You run the timer on hourly tasks or set a fixed price, and the client pays per task from the widget or portal through your own Stripe account. Bridge takes 2% on Link and Connect and 1% on Atlas.

Bridge doesn't bill the monthly retainer itself; there are no subscriptions or invoices outside task payments, so you'd still charge the flat fee another way. Plans are priced by number of sites: see the Link plan for five sites at $19 a month, or compare all plans.

Common Questions

Related Reading

• How to get paid for website change requests
• How to hand off a Squarespace website to a client
• What is a website care plan?
• Client payments in Bridge