Reclaim developer time to move your business forward
WordPress and PHP upgrades are essential, but they pull developers off the work that actually drives your business. Compatibility testing, QA, plugin remediation, deployment coordination — it adds up fast, especially on high-traffic sites where a bad upgrade isn’t just inconvenient.
Upgrade assurance transfers that work to VIP engineers who know the platform. Your team joins a kickoff call, reviews the plan, and validates the result. Everything in between is ours.
This is a structured 2–4 week engagement with defined phases and a predictable outcome, not an ongoing retainer. It’s designed for teams with upgrade deadlines to hit and better uses for their developers’ time.
What’s included
Get a 48-hour support window after you upgrade, and dedicated coverage for any related issues identified after production deployment.
What’s included
Details
A dedicated management environment
- Major WordPress version upgrades
- Major PHP version upgrades
- Incompatible third-party plugin remediation (exclusions apply; see FAQs)
Expert debugging and validation
- Full compatibility testing by VIP engineers with hands-on platform experience
Complete documentation package
- QA summary report including components tested, plugins reviewed, planned code changes
- Upgrade day plan with a step-by-step production deployment guide
- Executive summary delivered on completion
Is this service for me?
Upgrade assurance is built for teams that want the upgrade done right, without pulling developers off roadmap work.
If this sounds like your team, the service fits:
- You have a specific upgrade deadline: end-of-life PHP, security compliance timelines, or a migration schedule
- Developer bandwidth is committed to feature work, not maintenance
- Your site is high traffic or mission critical and a failed production upgrade carries significant business risk
- You want a documented record of everything tested and changed, not just a completed upgrade
- You need the upgrade coordinated across distributed or global development teams
- Your upgrade is part of a broader migration or launch engagement
Looking for something else?
Upgrade assurance
vs. platform care
Platform care is ongoing, proactive platform maintenance. Upgrade assurance is a scoped, time-limited engagement for a specific WordPress or PHP version upgrade. The two services are complementary: Upgrade assurance handles the major version event, whereas platform care handles everything in between.
How it works
A standard engagement runs 2–4 weeks for single sites or small multisites. Larger multisites, multiple applications, optional customer QA, and production upgrade coordination might extend the timeline.
Phase
VIP will
Your team will
Week 1
Discovery
- Schedule kickoff call
- Review discovery questionnaire
- Complete discovery questionnaire
Week 2
Kickoff
- Lead kickoff call to finalize scope
- Join kickoff call
Weeks 2–3
Testing / QA
- Confirm access to source site
- Review for blockers
- Perform upgrade testing in a dedicated environment
- Validate and test the site (optional)
- Confirm production upgrade date
Week 4
Implementation
- Upgrade production site
- Provide 48 hours of post-upgrade support for any issues identified
- Upgrade production site (optional)
- Validate production site
- Report upgrade-related issues within 2 business days
What customers are saying
100
%
of surveyed customers said the service delivered value and met their outcomes
60
%
cited time savings as a primary benefit
4.8/5
average satisfaction score
“The team has done a great job helping us update PHP and plugins, and also performed QA after the updates. It saves us a lot of time and effort.”
— MiTek
“The entire process was clearly explained with great documentation and updates. The guidance and partnership throughout the whole process was absolutely stellar.”
— Merck
“This saved an immense amount of time for our global team to focus their capacity on other development efforts.”
— Merck
Frequently asked questions
Which third-party plugin upgrades aren’t included in a standard service?
These plugins need additional testing and are available as an add-on: WooCommerce, bbPress, MemberPress, Event Calendar, WP Job Manager, and page builders (Divi, Elementor, Beaver Builder).
Why should I upgrade WordPress, PHP, and plugins?
Upgrading keeps your site secure, performant, and compatible. Outdated versions carry vulnerability risk, while newer versions bring performance improvements, bug fixes, and better compatibility with current plugins and themes. WordPress VIP applies core security patches automatically, but plugin updates need manual action.
How often should I update PHP?
Each PHP release is fully supported for two years including bug fixes and security, then receives only critical security fixes for one additional year. You can upgrade once a year, or jump a few versions ahead to reduce how often you need to update.
How involved does our team need to be?
After the kickoff call, your team can step back until testing is complete and a production plan is ready. Most customers do their own QA at that stage, then either follow our deployment plan or let us manage the final steps. We keep you informed of progress throughout and are available for questions as they come up.
Can we add new content after the service has started?
Yes. All testing happens in a dedicated non-production environment, so production editorial workflows are never disrupted.
Can we commit code after the service has started?
Yes, although new code commits won’t be included in testing, which uses a cloned branch. Limiting deployments to the production branch during the engagement keeps untested code from going live.
Will code we deploy after the service starts get overwritten during the upgrade?
Only updated plugins get overwritten during the upgrade — all other code changes stay intact. Let us know about any plugin-specific patches so we can preserve them. We document all code changes we make throughout the engagement.
Do you use one of our existing non-production environments for testing?
We create a new, dedicated child environment for this service unless you request otherwise. It’s removed after the production upgrade and doesn’t count against your contracted environment allotment.
What happens if an issue surfaces after the production upgrade?
We provide 48 hours of post-upgrade support for any issues directly related to the upgrade. If something surfaces within that window, report it to your VIP contact and we’ll investigate. Testing covers the components in scope. Changes introduced after the testing snapshot (new code commits or content changes) might not be reflected. We document all code changes made during the engagement so you have a clear reference point if anything unexpected comes up.
Get started
Ready when you are
A dedicated VIP team, a documented plan, a clean upgrade.
All without pulling your developers off the work that matters.