Care plans are sold with the same words and deliver wildly different things. If you are comparing providers, these are the questions that separate a real plan from a cron job with an invoice attached.
Backups you have actually restored
An untested backup is a belief, not a backup. A real plan restores to a scratch environment on a schedule and confirms the restore worked. Ask any provider when they last performed a test restore — the answer tells you most of what you need to know.
Updates with a rollback path
Updating is easy. Updating with a way back is the service. That means a snapshot before the update, a smoke test after it, and a defined rollback if the smoke test fails.
Uptime monitoring that reaches a human
Monitoring that emails an unattended inbox is theatre. The alert has to reach someone who is expected to respond, and the plan should say how quickly.
A response time in writing
“We will get to it” is not a commitment. Same-business-day is. Whatever the number is, it should be written down before you need it.
What is deliberately not included
Care is not unlimited development. New features, redesigns and migrations are separate work with their own scope. A plan that promises everything is either priced for the worst case or will be renegotiated the first time you need something real.
