How we work
What a website costs to run, what you own when it ships, what happens when the business changes, and what support costs. Published, because nobody publishes it.
No subscription trap. No lock-in. No surprises.
We're not cheating. We're resourceful.
This is a small studio. It uses generators, component systems, open-source libraries and AI assistance, and it says so on the page rather than in a disclaimer. The alternative is pretending that every line was typed by hand at a price that reflects the pretence.
What that buys you is time in the only place it matters: judgment gets the hours, production gets the tooling. The studio stays accountable for everything that ships, and you stay accountable for the accuracy of what you supply. That is the whole arrangement.
The rest of this page is the part studios normally keep quiet.
A website is not a subscription trap
The fear is that a site quietly becomes a bill that never stops. It does not have to be, and the way to prove that is to publish the numbers. These are this site's own, which is the fairest test available.
This site, itemised
- Domain - roughly $12 a year, registered in the owner's name
- Hosting - $0. Static files on GitHub Pages. A busier site on paid static hosting runs $0 to $20 a month
- Contact form - $0 up to about 50 submissions a month on Formspree, then roughly $10 a month
- Chat assistant relay - $0. A Cloudflare Worker inside the free tier
- Chat assistant replies - a Fireworks AI API line, billed per use and quoted before it is built
- Typefaces - $0. Google Fonts
A brochure site with a contact form therefore costs about $12 a year to keep online. Anything with an API behind it gets its own line in the proposal, with the per-use cost stated, so you can remove it and see what the site costs without it.
Everything, and from the first day
Accounts are opened in your name at the start, not transferred at the end. There is no stage of the engagement where leaving is expensive because the studio holds something you need.
In your name
- The domain, registered to you, renewable by you
- The repository, with the full commit history
- The hosting account
- The content, and the source files behind it
- The payment processor account, and the money in it
- Any third-party account the site depends on to run
The studio keeps its own component systems and libraries, and licenses them to you inside the deliverable in perpetuity. That is the one carve-out, it is in the terms, and it is the reason the fiftieth project costs less than the first.
A pivot is not a failed website
Businesses move. The question is not whether the site will need to change, but whether the change will cost what it should. The build is structured to keep the frequent things cheap, which means being explicit about which things those are.
- 01Cheap, always. Copy, images, prices, dates, people, navigation labels, adding a page or a post on an existing template. These change constantly, so they are built to be changed by you.
- 02Moderate. A new section using existing components, a new form, a reordering of the information architecture. Quoted, small, and no rebuild.
- 03Real work. A new template, a new component type, a third-party integration, a change to how the site is structured. Quoted as a project, because it is one.
- 04Rare. A genuine rebuild. If the business has changed enough to need one, that is a migration, and it has its own service.
Bounded, tiered, and priced
Open-ended maintenance is how studios get bled dry and how clients end up unsure what they are paying for. So it is a product with edges. Retainers are set against the original build cost rather than plucked from the air.
Care Price TBC
- Uptime and dependency checks
- Platform and security updates
- Backups
- A stated number of content updates a month
- A stated response window
Care + credits Price TBC
- Everything in Care
- A monthly block of build time for campaign pages, event pages and new sections
- Unused credit rolls over one month, then expires
On request Price TBC
- No retainer, no monthly fee
- Billed per request at a higher rate
- No response guarantee
Wind-down One-off, price TBC
- The site archived, and the content exported in an open format
- Redirects set, so nothing already earned is lost
- Domain and accounts handed over
- Or a final notice published, with some dignity
Stating the exit up front is what makes the beginning comfortable to sign. It is also the offboarding path if you leave, which is the same thing viewed from the other side.
Content update, or structural change
Every retainer lives or dies on this distinction, so it is written here in the same words it is written into the terms.
Content update - covered by a retainer
- Replacing text, images, people, prices or dates
- Adding a post or a page using a template that already exists
Structural change - quoted separately
- A new template, a new component, or a new section type
- Navigation architecture
- Integrations
- Anything requiring new code
Common questions
For a static site of the kind this studio builds: a domain at roughly $12 a year, hosting at $0 on GitHub Pages, and form delivery at $0 until you pass about 50 submissions a month. Anything with an API behind it is itemised separately and quoted before it is built. That is the whole bill. A website is not a subscription you cannot leave.
The domain, the repository, the hosting account, the content and the payment processor, all registered in your name from the start rather than transferred at the end. If you stop working with this studio, nothing needs to be handed over, because nothing was ever held. That is what provider-agnostic means in practice.
A content update replaces text, images, people, prices or dates, or adds a post or page using a template that already exists. A structural change adds a new template, a new component, a new section type, navigation architecture or an integration, and requires new code. Retainers cover content updates. Structural changes are quoted separately. Without that line written down, every retainer quietly becomes an unpaid redesign.
A pivot is not a failed website. Copy, images, pages, prices and navigation labels are cheap to change and always will be, because the build is structured to keep them cheap. A new template, a new integration or a change to the information architecture costs real work. The proposal says which is which before you commit, so a pivot is a quote rather than a surprise.
There is a wind-down service, priced as a one-off. It archives the site, exports the content in an open format, sets redirects, and hands over the domain and accounts. Or it publishes a final notice, if that is the ending. Stating the exit up front is what makes the start comfortable to sign.