Care is Discord bot maintenance and managed hosting in one monthly plan. For $49 a month I host the bot, watch its uptime, apply security and library updates when Discord changes things, back up its database every day, make one small change a month and reply to you within 2 business days. Care Plus, at $149 a month, adds up to 2 hours of changes a month, replies within 1 business day and a monthly health report.
You may not need either. If the bot is small, nobody depends on it and you like running servers, a $1 to $3 bot host and my guide to hosting a Discord bot 24/7 will do the job. Care is for bots a community or a business relies on, owned by people who would rather not track Node.js release dates.
What breaks a Discord bot over time
A bot that nobody touches still stops working, because everything around it keeps moving. These are the changes Care is there to catch, with recent examples.
Discord changes the API. Discord's developer change log lists breaking changes every few months:
- Since February 23, 2026, pinning messages needs the new Pin Messages permission. Manage Messages alone no longer does it.
- Since March 1, 2026, voice connections must support Discord's end-to-end encryption (DAVE). Music and voice bots on older libraries can no longer join calls.
- Since June 10, 2026, apps that reach 10,000 users have to apply for privileged intents such as Message Content, and apps with approved access must reapply every year.
- From November 16, 2026, the endpoint that lists a server's channels leaves out channels the bot can't view, which can break a bot that audits or backs up a server's channel layout.
Libraries move on. discord.js went from 14.20 in June 2025 to 14.27 in July 2026, and version 15 is in development. The DAVE fix for discord.js voice, @discordjs/voice 0.19, requires Node.js 22.12 or newer, so one Discord change can force a library update and a runtime upgrade together. discord.py only works on Python 3.13 from version 2.5, which added a fallback for the audioop module that Python 3.13 removed.
Runtimes reach end of life. Node.js 20 stopped getting security fixes on April 30, 2026, and Node.js 22 follows on April 30, 2027. Python 3.9 ended in October 2025, and 3.10 is scheduled to end in October 2026.
Hosts change the deal. Heroku ended its free dynos on November 28, 2022. Replit removed Always On on January 1, 2024. Glitch stopped hosting projects on July 8, 2025. Hetzner raised its cheapest cloud server in Germany and Finland from €3.99 to €5.49 a month for new orders on June 15, 2026. Each change left bots on those hosts needing a move or a bigger bill.
Tokens get reset. Discord allows 1,000 new gateway sessions (IDENTIFY calls) per bot per 24 hours, and a crash loop that restarts too fast uses them up; Discord then resets the token and emails the owner. A token committed to a public GitHub repository is reported to Discord by GitHub's secret scanning, and it has to be reset too.
Disks fill up. Docker's default logging driver doesn't rotate logs, and a database without backups is one bad disk away from gone.
If your bot has already stopped, Discord bot not working? covers the usual causes.
What Care and Care Plus include
| Care | Care Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $49 a month | $149 a month |
| Managed hosting and uptime monitoring | Yes | Yes |
| Security and library updates when Discord changes things | Yes | Yes |
| Daily database backups | Yes | Yes |
| Changes | One small change a month | Up to 2 hours a month |
| Reply time | Within 2 business days | Within 1 business day |
| Monthly health report: errors, usage, upcoming Discord changes | No | Yes |
A small change is something like new wording in a message, a different role or channel, or an adjusted limit. Work beyond a plan is billed at $90 an hour in prepaid 5-hour blocks. Both plans are billed monthly and you can cancel any time.
Care suits most bots that do one or two jobs. Care Plus suits bots that are part of daily operations, such as a league's registration and team setup, a paid membership server or a support desk, where waiting two days for a reply is too long and something usually needs adjusting each month.
How Care works
Setup. I move the bot to hosting I manage, set up uptime monitoring and daily database backups, and check that it comes back on its own after a crash and after a server reboot.
Monitoring. An uptime monitor checks the bot around the clock and alerts me when it goes offline.
Updates. I follow Discord's developer change log and the releases of the library your bot uses, and apply the security and library updates your bot needs when Discord changes things. Updates are tested before they go live.
Backups. The bot's database is backed up every day, so a bad update or a broken migration can be rolled back to the previous day's data.
The health report (Care Plus). Once a month you get the errors the bot logged, how much it was used, and the Discord changes coming up that affect it. A September 2026 report for a bot that reads a server's channel list, for example, would flag the November 16 change.
Discord bot maintenance: Care or do it yourself?
Hosting a bot yourself is cheaper in money. What Care replaces is the time and attention, and the risk of finding out about a problem from your members.
| Bot host, run by you | VPS or platform, run by you | Care | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost (September 2026) | $1 to $3: Sparked Host $1, Cybrancee $1.99, PebbleHost $3 | $4 to $6: DigitalOcean $4 or $6, Railway Hobby $5 including usage | $49, hosting included |
| Restart after a crash | The host's panel | You set up systemd, pm2 or Docker | Included |
| Alert when it's offline | You set up a monitor | You set up a monitor | Included |
| Library, Node.js and Discord changes | You | You | Included |
| Backups | Some hosts include them (PebbleHost: automatic 7-day backups) | You | Daily, included |
| Code changes | You | You | One small change, or up to 2 hours on Care Plus |
For comparison, Fiverr's cost guide puts basic bot maintenance at $50 to $150 a month and comprehensive maintenance at $200 to $500 or more. Some Fiverr sellers add hosting for $10 a month. Studios sell it too: Modern Grind Tech's maintenance plans for apps and sites are $199 and $499 a month, and Excalibur Interactive's care plans start at $250 a month. All prices as of September 2026.
Do it yourself if you enjoy it and someone will notice when the bot goes quiet. Choose Care when the bot is part of how your server runs and nobody on your team wants to own the server behind it.
Bots I didn't build
Care isn't only for bots I wrote. If yours was built by a freelancer who has moved on, by a former admin or by you, I can take it on as long as it's written with discord.js or discord.py.
It starts with the same review a Bot Rescue does: does it start, which library and Node.js or Python version it runs on, where the token and settings live, what it stores and whether that data is backed up. If it runs cleanly, it can move onto Care as it is. If it needs work first, such as a library upgrade or a move off a host that shut down, I fix it as a Bot Rescue for a fixed $149, and you pay nothing if I can't fix it.
I don't host selfbots, fake-member tools, gambling bots or anything else that breaks Discord's Terms or Developer Policy, whoever built them.
Cancelling: you keep everything
- Your application, your token. The bot runs on your own Discord application in the Developer Portal. One way to give me access is a Developer Team where I have the Developer role, which can reset the token and change settings such as the interactions endpoint, but can't delete the app or manage your team.
- Your code. The source stays in a repository you own, including every update I made while the bot was on Care.
- Your data. When you cancel, you get the bot's data, including a final database backup.
- A handoff document. It explains how the bot is run and updated. With it and the hosting guide, you or another developer can run it anywhere.
After the handoff, remove me from the team and reset the token, so you know you're the only one holding it. The Discord bot token guide shows how to reset and store it.
Get started
Tell me what the bot does, which library it uses and where it runs now, and I'll reply with what Care would involve and when setup can start. Ask about Care, or compare it with the build packages on the pricing page.