Engagement Options
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Most WordPress problems are not really WordPress problems. They are decisions made early (or by someone else, years ago) that did not account for how the site would actually be used, who would manage it, or where the business was heading. WordPress consulting is the work of getting those decisions right.
FatLab provides WordPress consulting as a strategic layer on top of our hosting, support, optimization, and security services. For most clients, consulting is built into the managed plan. For organizations that need a one-time audit, a migration plan, or a strategic review before committing to ongoing services, we offer scoped consulting engagements as well.
WordPress Consulting Built Into Everything We Do
We do not treat consulting as a separate product. It is the layer that makes every other service we provide actually fit your situation.
Hosting That Fits Your Organization
A 50,000-member association, a regional advocacy nonprofit, and a high-traffic media publisher all need different hosting. Picking the right environment requires looking at traffic patterns, editorial workflows, plugin footprint, security requirements, and budget realities. We help you choose, not upsell.
Security Mapped to Your Actual Threat Profile
An association handling member dues data has a different threat profile than a public-facing news site. Strong consulting means matching the right security layers (WAF tier, malware scanning depth, access controls, backup retention) to what the organization actually faces, not selling everyone the maximum.
Performance Tuned to How the Site Is Used
A high-visibility media company often needs full-resolution images and rich layouts to deliver editorial impact, even at the cost of some load time. An e-commerce site competing for organic traffic needs aggressively optimized images and thin pages. Caching, minification, and image strategy are decisions, not defaults.
UX and UI Decisions Driven by Strategy
The right page builder, the right form plugin, the right search experience, and the right editorial workflow all depend on who is using the site and what they are trying to do. When the off-the-shelf tools are not enough, custom WordPress development closes the gap. Consulting keeps the technical decisions tied to the human ones.
Meet Your WordPress Consultant: Shane Larrabee
FatLab is a company, not a freelancer with a logo. But the consulting work is led personally by the company's founder.
FatLab Web Support was founded in 2011 by Shane Larrabee to provide managed WordPress hosting and expert technical support to commercial and mission-driven organizations of every size, from small businesses and nonprofits to enterprise. The company has grown into a team that manages roughly 200 WordPress sites with a near-perfect uptime track record.
The hosting infrastructure, the support team, the security stack, and the operational systems are all FatLab as a whole. That is what gives us the continuity, scale, and reliability that solo consultants simply cannot match.
The consulting work, though, is led personally by Shane. With 25+ years of web development experience starting in 1999, Shane has built sites for Fortune 500 companies, consulted with federal agencies, served professional associations and advocacy nonprofits, and worked with countless mom-and-pop businesses.
That breadth matters: the patterns that show up in enterprise WordPress also show up in small-business and nonprofit member sites, and the lessons from federal-agency work translate directly into how we think about security and compliance for any organization where those things matter.
When you engage FatLab for consulting, you get Shane on the strategy. You also get the team behind him on the implementation. That combination is the point.
How Our WordPress Consulting Works
A simple, predictable process from first call to recommendations you can act on.
Discovery Call
Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation. Tell us what you are working on, what is not working, or what decision you need help with. We use this call to understand your goals, the people involved, and the constraints we should be designing around.
Audit & Investigation
Depending on the scope, we conduct a technical audit of your site (performance, security, SEO, and infrastructure), review your current setup, and surface the issues that matter most. We work directly with the site rather than just looking at automated tool output.
Strategic Recommendations
You get a written report with prioritized findings, plain-English explanations, and specific recommendations. We separate must-fix from nice-to-have, and we are honest about which recommendations require us versus which you can hand to your existing team.
Implementation or Partnership
From there, options are open. Take the recommendations to your team, hire FatLab to implement them, or move on to a managed plan where strategic consulting is built in. We do not make implementation a condition of consulting.
When You Need a WordPress Consultant
Most organizations do not need consulting all the time. They need it at specific moments, when getting the next decision right will pay off for years.
You Inherited a Site
A previous developer left, an agency dissolved, or the original team moved on. Now you have a WordPress site nobody fully understands, with unclear documentation and decisions you would not have made. You need a strategic audit before deciding what to do next.
You Are Choosing a Path
Migrating from another platform, picking between hosts, deciding whether to rebuild or refactor, evaluating page builders, considering headless WordPress. The cost of getting these decisions wrong is high enough to justify expert input.
You Are Outgrowing Your Setup
Traffic is climbing, the editorial team is expanding, and the site is mission-critical now in a way it was not when it was originally built. The setup that worked at 10,000 monthly visits is starting to break at 100,000. Consulting helps you scale without rebuilding.
You Want a Partner, Not a Ticket Queue
The same kinds of issues keep coming back. Each one gets resolved, but the underlying causes never do. You want someone who is thinking ahead about your site, not just clearing a queue. That is what ongoing consulting (built into our managed plans) provides.
What WordPress Consulting Includes
The scope of a consulting engagement varies, but here is the menu of what we can bring to the table.
Technical Site Audits
Comprehensive review of WordPress core, themes, plugins, database, error logs, and hosting configuration. We surface the issues affecting performance, reliability, and maintainability today, plus the ones that will become problems in six to twelve months.
Hosting & Infrastructure Strategy
Evaluating managed WordPress hosts, traditional VPS or cloud providers, CDN strategy, and hybrid setups. We help you match infrastructure to actual traffic patterns and budget, and we will tell you when our hosting is not the right fit.
Migration Planning
Pre-migration audits, content and URL mapping, redirect strategy, staged rollouts, and post-migration verification. Migration is where most WordPress projects lose SEO traffic and editorial trust. Doing it well requires planning, not just tooling.
Performance & Optimization Strategy
Caching architecture, image strategy, third-party script management, Core Web Vitals analysis, and ongoing performance budgets. We adapt the optimization approach to your actual content and audience rather than applying one-size-fits-all defaults.
Security Architecture
Threat profiling, WAF and malware protection sizing, access control review, backup integrity testing, and compliance alignment. Stronger is not always better; the right security model is the one matched to your actual risk.
Plugin & Theme Architecture
Reviewing your plugin and theme stack for conflicts, redundancies, abandoned code, and security exposure. Recommending consolidations, replacements, or custom development when it makes more sense than another plugin.
SEO & Site Structure Consulting
Sitemap health, indexing posture, schema implementation, internal linking strategy, and how technical SEO interacts with your editorial workflow. Good SEO consulting is mostly architecture; we treat it that way.
Strategic Technical Partnership
For organizations that want ongoing strategic input rather than a one-time audit, we offer a retainer-based partnership where we are available for decisions, reviews, and quarterly strategic check-ins. This is also built into our managed support plans at no additional charge.
WordPress Audit and Strategy
The most common single engagement we run is a full WordPress audit. The deliverable is a written report covering four layers, each with prioritized findings and specific recommendations.
Technical health. PHP version, database integrity, plugin and theme conflicts, error logs, server configuration, and the hidden technical debt that compounds over time.
Performance. Core Web Vitals, caching strategy, image optimization, third-party script weight, server response times, and the realistic improvements available given your content and audience.
Security. Vulnerability scanning, exposed surface area, backup integrity testing, access control review, and the gap between what you have and what your actual threat profile requires.
SEO and structure. Sitemap health, indexing posture, schema implementation, internal linking, content architecture, and the technical SEO gaps that block organic growth.
The audit is fixed-price, and the scope is set during the discovery call. The deliverable is something you can take to your existing team, share with leadership, or hand back to us for implementation. There is no requirement to do any of those.
How We Engage
Different engagements call for different shapes. Here are the common ones.
Hourly Consulting
$150/hour, billed in fifteen-minute increments. Ideal for scoped questions, second opinions, plugin reviews, or short technical assessments. No retainer required.
Get in touch →Audit & Strategy Engagement
Fixed-price comprehensive WordPress audit with a written deliverable covering technical, performance, security, and SEO findings, plus prioritized recommendations.
Scope an audit →Project & Migration Consulting
Scoped consulting for migrations, rebuilds, hosting transitions, and architecture reviews. Fixed-price or retainer-based, depending on size and timeline.
Discuss your project →Included With Managed Plans
Strategic consulting and technical guidance are built into our hosting and support plans. Active managed clients do not pay separately for consulting time.
See managed plans →Bigger Than a Freelancer, Smaller Than an Agency
The WordPress consulting market is mostly two shapes. On one side, individual freelance consultants with deep expertise but a hard ceiling: when one person is sick, on vacation, or simply busy, the engagement waits. On the other side, large agencies have scale and process, but the senior people who sold the engagement are rarely the ones you actually work with. Neither shape fits most organizations well.
FatLab sits between them on purpose. We are large enough to provide real operational continuity: managed hosting infrastructure, a development team, 24/7 monitoring, and the kind of redundancy a single consultant cannot offer.
We are small enough that the founder still leads consulting engagements personally, the team knows your site by name, and decisions do not get diluted through three layers of account managers. You get senior strategic attention plus the back office that turns recommendations into reality.
The trade-off is real. A solo consultant might cost less per hour, and a large agency might have a deeper bench in a specific niche. We are not the right answer for every engagement. But for organizations that want strategic consulting from a senior practitioner backed by a real team, the middle path tends to be the one that actually delivers.
Get Started With WordPress Consulting
Not sure whether you need a one-time audit, a project engagement, or a managed plan? That is what the discovery call is for.
Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation. We will listen, ask the right questions, and recommend the engagement shape that actually fits, even if that recommendation is "you do not need consulting yet."
Schedule a Discovery CallWant to see the work first? Browse our case studies or read what clients say in our testimonials.
Looking for specific WordPress services? Our WordPress support services bundle expert troubleshooting and technical guidance into a flat monthly plan. Our managed WordPress security services handle enterprise-grade protection and 24/7 threat monitoring. Our WordPress optimization services focus on performance and Core Web Vitals. Our WordPress maintenance services handle automated preventive care. Consulting can stand alone, or it can be the strategic layer that ties any of these services to your actual situation.
WordPress Consulting FAQs
What does a WordPress consultant actually do?
A WordPress consultant provides strategic guidance on the decisions that determine whether your WordPress site succeeds or struggles: which hosting environment fits your traffic and budget, which plugins solve your problem versus create new ones, when to refactor versus rebuild, how to balance performance against editorial flexibility, and which security model matches your actual threat profile. The work is part technical audit, part architecture review, part planning. Where a developer writes code and a support team fixes problems, a consultant helps you avoid the wrong problems in the first place. Read more in our guide to when your site needs a WordPress consultant.
How is WordPress consulting different from WordPress development or support?
Development is execution: building features, custom themes, plugin code. Support is reactive maintenance: fixing what breaks, answering questions, keeping the site running. Consulting is the strategic layer that sits above both. A consultant decides what should be built, whether to use a plugin or custom code, how to structure infrastructure, when to migrate, and how to set the site up for the next three years rather than the next three weeks. At FatLab, consulting is woven into our managed services, so most clients on a hosting or support plan already get strategic guidance as part of the engagement. Standalone consulting is for projects, audits, or organizations that want strategic input without (or before) ongoing services.
Do I need a WordPress consultant or just a developer?
Hire a developer when the path forward is clear and the work is execution. Hire a consultant when you are not sure what the path forward should be, or when previous decisions are causing recurring problems. Common signals you need a consultant: you have inherited a site nobody understands, you are choosing between hosting providers or platforms, the same kind of issue keeps recurring, an upcoming migration or rebuild feels risky, or you need someone who can translate between leadership goals and technical execution. If you already know what to build and just need it built well, a developer is the right call.
How much does WordPress consulting cost?
Standalone consulting is billed at $150/hour for hourly engagements or scoped as a fixed-price project for larger initiatives like audits, migrations, and architecture reviews. Most clients on a FatLab managed hosting or support plan already receive strategic guidance as part of the plan, so dedicated paid consulting is usually reserved for one-time strategic projects or organizations not yet on a managed plan. We do not charge separately for the consulting time inside an active managed engagement. Custom retainer arrangements are available for organizations that want predictable monthly access to strategic input.
How does FatLab consulting differ from a freelance WordPress consultant?
Freelance consultants offer deep personal expertise but cap at one person. When they are sick, on vacation, or simply busy, your project waits. Agencies have scale but you usually do not work directly with senior people. FatLab sits between the two. The company was founded in 2011 by Shane Larrabee with 25+ years of web development experience, and Shane personally leads consulting engagements. But the implementation team behind the consulting is FatLab as a whole: developers, hosting infrastructure, and 24/7 monitoring. You get senior consulting attention plus the operational continuity of a real company.
Do you offer one-time WordPress consulting without a long-term commitment?
Yes. The most common one-time engagement is a comprehensive WordPress audit (technical, performance, security, SEO) followed by a written set of strategic recommendations. Other typical one-off projects include migration planning, hosting selection, plugin and architecture reviews, and pre-rebuild strategy sessions. There is no requirement to move to a managed plan after the engagement, though many organizations do once they see the value of having a strategic partner already familiar with their site.
What is included in a WordPress audit?
A FatLab WordPress audit covers four layers: (1) technical health (PHP version, database integrity, plugin and theme conflicts, error logs, hosting configuration); (2) performance (Core Web Vitals, caching strategy, image optimization, third-party script weight, server response times); (3) security (vulnerability scan, exposed surface area, backup integrity, access controls, plugin reputation); and (4) SEO and structure (sitemap health, indexing, schema, internal linking, content architecture). The deliverable is a written report with prioritized findings and specific recommendations, not a dump of automated tool output.
Do you provide WordPress consulting for nonprofits and associations?
Nonprofits, advocacy organizations, professional associations, and membership organizations are a core part of who we serve. We understand the constraints these organizations operate under: smaller budgets, volunteer or part-time technical staff, board oversight, donor and member communication needs, event-driven traffic patterns, and compliance requirements specific to mission-driven work. Our consulting accounts for these realities rather than treating mission-driven sites as just another small business.
Can WordPress consulting help with hosting and infrastructure decisions?
Yes, and it is one of the most common reasons organizations bring us in. Hosting choice has compounding effects on performance, security, scalability, cost, and developer experience for years after the decision. We help organizations evaluate managed WordPress hosts, traditional VPS or cloud providers, and hybrid setups against their actual traffic patterns, technical capacity, and budget. If FatLab managed hosting is the right fit we will say so, but we do not push it when something else makes more sense for the organization.
How do I get started with WordPress consulting?
The simplest first step is a 30-minute discovery call to describe what you are working on or what is not working. From that call we can usually scope the engagement: a single strategy session, a full audit, an ongoing retainer, or a recommendation to move to a managed plan instead. There is no charge for the discovery call itself, and there is no obligation afterward. Reach out through our contact page or any of the consultation links on this page.