Web Design Retainers: What to Charge and What to Include
The first retainer I ever sold was a disaster. A restaurant owner asked if I could "just be on call" for website stuff, and I said sure, $200/month, figuring it'd be easy money. Three weeks later he was texting me at 11pm to add a Valentine's Day special, then a new lunch menu, then could I redo the whole homepage because his nephew said it looked dated. I'd priced a blank check and handed it to a guy who treated it like one.
That painful month taught me the thing that makes retainers work or fail: scope. A retainer isn't "unlimited access to me." It's a defined set of deliverables at a defined price, with a clear line where extra work becomes extra money. Get the structure right and retainers are the best business model in web design. Get it wrong and you've built yourself an unpaid on-call job.
Here's exactly what I charge now and what's inside each tier.
What a retainer actually is
A retainer is a recurring monthly fee in exchange for a recurring set of services. The client pays the same amount every month, you deliver the same defined value every month, and both sides know exactly where the boundaries are. The magic is predictability for everyone: they know their bill, you know your income.
The difference between a retainer and a maintenance plan is mostly ambition. A maintenance plan keeps the lights on. A retainer actively grows the client's business, which is why you can charge a lot more for it. If you're still building out your baseline care offer, I cover that side in detail in my guide on recurring website maintenance plans.
My three-tier retainer structure
I run exactly three tiers. Not five, not one. Three is the sweet spot because it gives clients an easy middle choice and an obvious upgrade path.
| Tier | Price/month | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Care | $99 | Set-and-forget local businesses |
| Growth | $399 | Businesses that want more traffic |
| Partner | $899 | Businesses treating their site as a sales engine |
Care — $99/month
This is the maintenance floor. Everything a site needs to stay alive and nothing more:
- Managed hosting and SSL
- Weekly backups and a one-click restore promise
- Plugin, theme, and security updates
- Uptime monitoring
- Up to 30 minutes of content edits per month
- Email support with a 48-hour response window
The key constraint is that 30-minute edit cap. That's what keeps the restaurant guy from turning $99 into a part-time job. Anything beyond it gets quoted separately or pushes them toward Growth.
Growth — $399/month
This is where you stop maintaining and start improving. Everything in Care, plus:
- Up to 2 hours of design and content changes monthly
- Google Business Profile management and weekly posts
- Basic local SEO: citations, on-page optimization, review responses
- One new landing page or seasonal campaign per quarter
- Monthly traffic and leads report
- Priority support, 24-hour response
Most of my recurring clients land here. $399 feels substantial to them but it's tied to outcomes they can see: more calls, more bookings, more foot traffic.
Partner — $899/month
For the clients who get it. The site is their primary sales channel and they want a pro running it. Everything in Growth, plus:
- Up to 5 hours of work monthly
- Full local SEO program with keyword targeting
- Monthly new content (blog post, service page, or landing page)
- Conversion optimization: testing CTAs, forms, and offers
- Quarterly strategy call
- Same-day support for anything urgent
I don't have many Partner clients but each one is worth nine Care clients in revenue, so it's worth building the tier even if only one in ten upgrades.
How to actually price a retainer
Forget hourly. Price on three things: the value to the client, the predictability of your workload, and a fat margin for the months they ask for nothing.
My rule of thumb is that any retainer should average out to at least $100/hour of my actual time once you account for the months clients don't use their full allocation. On a $399 Growth plan with a 2-hour cap, even if they max it out every month I'm at roughly $200/hour effective, and most months they use half their hours. That buffer is the profit.
Never, ever sell "unlimited." The moment a plan is unlimited, your worst client sets your price. Always cap hours and always define what's included so the line between "covered" and "that's extra" is unmistakable.
The delivery problem that kills retainer margins
Here's the trap with retainers: the more clients you sign, the more small tasks land on your plate, and if each one takes you an hour of fiddly hand-work your margins evaporate. A retainer business only scales if you can deliver the recurring work fast and consistently.
The clients themselves also have to come from somewhere, and a steady flow of new retainer clients is what turns this from a side hustle into real income.
The reason I can keep stacking retainer clients without drowning is that Mahinatar feeds the top of the funnel for me — it finds local businesses with no website, builds them a demo, and gives me the script to close. I bring them on at $99 Care, and the ones who see results graduate to Growth. Pro is $19/month; Elite at $149/month is what I run when I'm scanning whole regions and want volume.
Put it in writing and bill automatically
Two non-negotiables. First, every retainer has a one-page agreement that spells out exactly what's included, the hour cap, and the out-of-scope rate (I charge $125/hour for anything beyond the plan). Second, set up automatic billing through Stripe so you're never chasing payment. A retainer you have to invoice manually every month is a retainer you'll eventually let lapse.
Do those two things and your retainers run themselves while you focus on landing the next one.
FAQ
Should I require a minimum commitment on retainers?
Yes. I require a 6-month initial term, then month-to-month after. It protects you from clients who sign up, dump a backlog of work on you in month one, then cancel. After six months they've either seen the value and stay, or they leave with no hard feelings.
What if a client constantly exceeds their hour cap?
That's a signal to upgrade them, not to absorb it. Track the overage for two months, then have the conversation: "You're consistently using more than your plan covers. Moving to Growth gets you the hours you actually need and saves you the overage fees." They almost always say yes.
How do I transition a one-time client to a retainer?
Build it into the original deal. When you deliver the site, the handoff includes the care plan as the default next step: "Your site's live. To keep it secure and updated, you're starting on the Care plan at $99/month." Frame it as the normal continuation, not an upsell, and most clients never question it.