Prevention is quiet.Cure is loud.
Nothing announces that a certificate is about to lapse or that a form stopped delivering three weeks ago. This is the arrangement that makes noticing it somebody’s job, at a price you can see before you ask.
Three tiers
Exact monthly prices, shown, because the point of a retainer is that you can decide on it without a phone call. Security is built into every site we ship, at every build price. What the upper two tiers add is somebody handling it AFTER release — watching it, patching it, answering it.
Hosting
€250/year€25/month
Billed €250 a year — two months free against monthlyBilled monthly, cancel at the end of your termThe site online and the domain handled. No ongoing security or development work at this tier.
- Domain and DNS handled
- Hosting on infrastructure we run ourselves, not a reseller plan with your name on it
- SSL certificate kept valid, never lapsing quietly
- The site stays up, and you are told when it does not
Care
€600/year€60/month
Billed €600 a year — two months free against monthlyBilled monthly, cancel at the end of your termHosting, plus somebody actually looking after it — including the security work, from release onward.
Everything in Hosting, plus- Security handled after release: patches watched, applied and checked
- Updates applied and verified, not applied and hoped for
- Daily off-server backups, with restores actually tested
- Monitoring with a human reading the alerts
- Up to 2 small changes a month — text, images, prices, a minor layout tweak, each roughly under half an hour
- A stated response window, in writing — and we work daily, so it does not skip weekends
Active
€1,800/year€180/month
Billed €1,800 a year — two months free against monthlyBilled monthly, cancel at the end of your termCare with the cap taken off. Changes go in as they come up — no counting them, and no waiting for the month to reset.
Everything in Care, plus- No cap on changes — they go in as they come up, not two at a time
- Priority response ahead of the tier below
- A staging environment, so changes are seen before they are live
- Performance and architecture reviewed as the thing grows
- Assistant and automation material reviewed, where you run them
All prices exclude VAT.
What is actually included
Updates, then verification
Applying an update is the easy half. The half that matters is confirming afterwards that the forms still submit and the pages still render.
Backups you have restored
Off-server, daily, and restored on a schedule to prove they work. An untested backup is a belief, not a backup.
Monitoring with a human on it
Availability and certificate expiry watched continuously, with the alerts going to a person who can act rather than into a dashboard nobody opens.
A response window, in writing
Same day on Care, ahead of that on Active. We work daily, so the window does not stretch across a weekend.
Domain, DNS and email
Registrar, records and business email handled alongside the hosting, by the same people. One contact, one invoice, no supply chain.
Availability is the job
Keeping your site available is the job. We run the hosting ourselves and watch it continuously — and when something does go wrong, we are already working on it before you have noticed.
How a retainer starts
Taking over somebody else’s site is exactly where a studio either demonstrates seniority or reveals that it has none, so this is the sequence in full.
- [ 01 ]
Audit
What exists, where the domain is, who has access to what, whether backups happen and whether anyone has ever restored one. You get the findings whether or not you go ahead.
- [ 02 ]
Baseline
Outstanding updates applied, certificates and expiry dates brought under monitoring, and a first backup taken and restored to prove the chain works.
- [ 03 ]
Handover
Access consolidated, the things only one person knew written down, and a stated response window in effect from that date.
- [ 04 ]
The monthly rhythm
Updates and checks on a schedule, restores tested quarterly, and a short written note each month on what changed — including the months where the answer is nothing.
Questions
Do you guarantee the site stays up?
Not as a percentage, and we will say why. We run the hosting ourselves, we monitor it continuously, and keeping your site available is the job you are paying for — but any figure we published would be capped by the provider underneath us, and each further nine is roughly ten times harder than the last. A number invented for a brochure is not a commitment. What we do commit to is monitoring, daily off-server backups with tested restores, certificates kept valid, and the response window your tier states. No infrastructure on earth is immune to an outage; if one happens we are already on it, and you hear it from us rather than from a customer.
Is security included?
Security is designed into every site we build, and it is covered by us up to release. After release, ongoing security — new exploits, patches, anything that emerges once the site is live — is handled on Care and on Active. The Hosting tier keeps the site online and its certificate valid; it does not include that ongoing work.
What does Active give me that Care does not?
The cap comes off. Care includes up to 2 small changes a month; on Active there is no count — changes go in as they come up and nothing waits for the month to reset. Past the cap on Care you have three options and we will tell you which one applies: wait for next month, move to Active, or take a one-off quote for anything that is a feature rather than a change. Active also carries priority response ahead of Care and a staging environment, so changes are seen before they are live. Below both, the Hosting tier keeps the site online and the certificate valid and includes neither the ongoing security handling nor the changes.
What counts as a small change?
Text, images, prices, a minor layout tweak — the kind of edit that is roughly under half an hour of work. Two of those a month are included on Care. They do not roll over: an unused change does not bank for next month, because what you are buying is somebody available that month rather than a balance of hours. Anything that adds a capability the site did not have is a feature, and a feature gets its own quote at any tier.
How does the contract work?
It is a contract, not a rolling month. You commit to a term, we commit to the response window and the work in your tier, and ending it early carries an exit fee — that is what lets us hold capacity for you rather than selling the same hours twice. Tell us before the term ends and it simply ends; your domain, your data and your site are yours throughout. Annual billing does not change the term — it changes when you pay for it, in one invoice at the start rather than twelve.
Annual or monthly?
Annual is what the prices above show by default: €250, €600 and €1,800, invoiced once a year — two months free on every tier. Press Monthly and the same three tiers are €25, €60 and €180 a month. The work in the tier is identical both ways: you are paying for how far ahead the capacity is committed, not for a different service.
Do you work at weekends?
Yes. We work daily. There is no queue that opens on Monday, and a problem on a Saturday is looked at on the Saturday.
Start before something breaks.
No pressure to buy a tier, and no boilerplate quote. Tell us what the site has to survive and you get an honest read on which retainer actually covers it.