Choosing the Best Shopify Maintenance Plan

The stakes are always high for a Shopify store owner, and picking the correct Shopify maintenance and support plan from the thousands of online options is no walk in the park. Every Shopify maintenance and support service claims to bring something invaluable, but how do you figure out the best plan for you? Find out how to determine the perfect Shopify store maintenance solution to grow your store with this Coalition Technologies guide.

What Is a Maintenance Plan?

A maintenance plan is, in the simplest terms, a more structured approach to managing and optimizing a Shopify store. These plans help managers proactively improve their store’s performance, functionality, and overall security, ensuring it runs smoothly. It’s a lot like maintaining a physical store! You’ll want to keep those windows clean and shelves stocked to attract more customers.

In that sense, the best Shopify maintenance plan for your store will directly benefit your business outcomes and is tailored to your needs. Such a plan would typically impact:

• Performance: Performance boosts include compressing images, optimizing code, and minimizing HTTP requests to improve your store’s load times. A maintenance plan could also help you improve your database’s performance by regularly cleaning it and ensuring queries are processed quickly and efficiently. Finally, an expert would typically review your Shopify apps and minimize bloat, discarding unused or underperforming apps. This includes:
  • App upgrades to improve your store’s performance and add new functionalities
  • Theme upgrades to deliver security and performance enhancements
  • Custom feature additions (if needed) to improve the customer experience, such as social media integration
  • Regular bug fixes to keep your store operating smoothly, covering everything from checkout functionality to menu animations. 
  • Code review to identify potential issues and maintain your store’s performance is especially important for stores with custom code implementations.
• Security: Security optimization is a massive priority for Shopify maintenance and support plans. Undetected vulnerabilities can expose your store to customer data theft and liabilities. The best Shopify maintenance plans regularly conduct automated security scans to identify these threats proactively. Security maintenance also includes:
  • Regular updates to critical Shopify apps and themes
  • Security patches to close loopholes and protect customer data
  • Spam redressal, including the management of bot accounts and spam submissions, to protect both customers and your store’s reputation
• Merchandising and Promotional Support: This continuous process optimizes your store’s presentation and helps maximize conversions. Maintenance tasks can involve seasonal updates to your store’s theme, pricing optimization, and inventory management. The best Shopify maintenance plans will also support promotional campaigns, from creating ad copy and visuals to planning email and social media campaigns.
• General Maintenance: Shopify maintenance and support services cover many other miscellaneous tasks that will each contribute to your store’s stellar performance. These general tasks include:
  • Backup management to prevent data loss in case of any breaches or emergencies
  • Regular 3rd party integration review to help identify and address potential compatibility issues. This can include updating different API connections.
  • Customer support review to identify ways you can deliver better service for buyers
  • 24×7 analytics troubleshooting, ensuring tracking and analytics tools are functioning optimally

How Does a Shopify Maintenance Plan Benefit Me?

The best Shopify maintenance plans serve to steer your store on the right course in the dynamic and highly competitive world of ecommerce. Let’s briefly examine the benefits of Shopify maintenance and support plans before discussing the best ways to pick one.

• Improved Speed: Over half of all page visits are abandoned if the page takes longer than three seconds to load. Those expectations will only increase as more stores optimize their performance with caching and other optimization techniques. Shopify store maintenance will address those performance needs and ensure your store loads as quickly as possible, whether visitors are on their desktops or phones.
• Less Downtime: Increased security and better web performance are directly related to less downtime. Minimizing potential technical issues and proactively patching vulnerabilities will avert future downtime that would have otherwise resulted in lost valuable sales and damaged brand reputation.
• Better Customer Experience: Picking the best Shopify maintenance plan directly translates to a smoother customer experience. From attracting high-value traffic with promotional support to making conversion-oriented technical improvements, maintenance plans work equally for customers and stores.

Picking The Right Shopify Maintenance and Support Plan

Consider Your Budget

There’s virtually no limit to the price tags of certain services claiming to be the ‘best’ Shopify maintenance plans. The first thing you should do before looking for a plan is to consider your budget carefully. This will determine whether you should go for a more DIY approach or spring for a fully managed service provided by an agency.

Remember, the best plans don’t necessarily have to be expensive. Reputed ecommerce web design agencies like Coalition Technologies offer fully managed, custom solutions at reasonable rates. 

In-House Expertise

Smaller businesses run on skeleton crews and generally don’t have in-house web developers or SEO experts. If your in-house team lacks technical expertise, consulting a full-service agency that can handle your specialized maintenance tasks is usually a good idea. Being upfront about your current capacity and future requirements will help you find your store’s best Shopify maintenance plan.

Opt For Flexible Plans

A one-size-fits-all solution is rarely the correct choice in the ecommerce world. Rather than paying a premium fixed price for a Shopify maintenance and support service that includes features you don’t need, consider looking for an agency that offers custom solutions built around your unique needs and requirements. This also applies to pricing. If buying a Shopify maintenance and support plan is your first, look for agencies offering flexible payment structures and free trials.

• Businesses that optimize a few specific areas can opt for more flexible hourly packages.
• Brands seeking a more comprehensive maintenance solution will generally be better off with monthly/annual packages.
• Prioritize agencies that allow you to upgrade/downgrade services as needed.

The average cost of downtime can be as high as $9,000 per minute for larger businesses, so it pays to pick a plan built specifically for you.

Response Time

The best Shopify maintenance plan will be available during peak season. Before picking a maintenance plan, consider the agency’s support channels, response times, and availability throughout the year, especially during the holiday season. If your store operates internationally across multiple time zones, you might even prefer an agency that provides 24/7 support.

Prioritize Industry Experts

Working with agencies with an established, successful track record within your niche/industry is always better. Before finalizing a Shopify store maintenance solution, ask the agency representatives if they’ve previously worked with other businesses. More reliable agencies will typically feature case studies on their website. Take the time to go through these case studies to see how that agency might benefit your brand.

Scalability Matters

There is no fixed ‘best’ Shopify maintenance plan for any business. The right plan today might be irrelevant a year later. The plan you choose for your store should be adaptable to your future growth and your evolving needs. For instance, the ideal Shopify maintenance and support service will account for increased traffic, additional product offerings, and new website functionalities. 

A Three-Step Guide

Let’s condense all these tips into a simple, step-by-step guide to help you pick the proper Shopify maintenance and support plan.

1. Determine Your Needs & Budget: Create a lengthy, detailed list of your maintenance needs and set a fixed budget. Does your website need a comprehensive solution that includes performance optimization and technical support, or do you want to focus on just one of those areas?
2. Build a Shortlist: We can now use this information to create a shortlist of the best Shopify maintenance plans for you. List each potential agency and the services they provide, along with details like:

• Flexible pricing structures.
• Free trials (if any).
• A proven track record working with other businesses in your niche.
• Their support channels and response times, including emergency support.
• Genuine testimonials from similar businesses.
• Details about their onboarding process. Shorter is better here.

3. Finalize a Plan: Once you’ve compared your maintenance needs with the options available online, picking the right plan is as easy. Look for the agency that most closely matches your list and budget. If you’re unsure about a particular aspect of their services, it’s worth speaking to their Shopify expert before making a final decision.

Find The Best Shopify Maintenance Plan Today

If you’re looking for the perfect Shopify maintenance and support plan for your business, why not work directly with a certified Shopify partner? Coalition Technologies is a full-service digital marketing and web design agency that uses data-driven strategies to drive millions in sales for Shopify brands annually. We work with some of the best web design and SEO specialists worldwide to deliver custom maintenance plans engineered to succeed. 

Contact us for a free consultation and discover how we can grow your Shopify business today.