If you’re considering a website support retainer with us, or you’ve already signed on and want to understand the mechanics, we break down how hours work, what happens when you don’t use them all, and how we prioritize the work.
How Hours Are Structured
Our website support retainers start at a minimum of 10 hours per month, with packages available in 10-hour increments up to any number of hours depending on your needs. Your retainer gives you access to our team for ongoing website support; things like content updates, bug fixes, plugin updates, UX improvements, performance optimization, and development work.
You’ll have access to a dashboard in Teamwork where you can see how your hours are being used and track your burn rate throughout the month. There’s no guessing about where you stand.
Two Ways Retainers Can Work
Not every client needs the same type of support. Your needs drive the size of our engagements, and the size of your retainer shapes the nature of the partnership.
Smaller retainers (10-19 hours/month) work best for clients who know what they need and want a reliable team to execute it. You submit requests, we complete them. It’s more reactive: we’re here when you need us, working through your queue in priority order. This can be a great fit if you have a smaller budget, your site is relatively stable, or you have internal team members handling strategy and just need hands to do the work.
Mid-size retainers (20-40 hours/month) allow for a more strategic partnership. With more hours, we can have recurring meetings with you monthly or as needed, assign resources to proactively review your analytics, identify opportunities, and come to you with recommendations, not just wait for requests. We’re thinking about your site alongside you, spotting issues before they become problems and suggesting improvements based on what the data is telling us.
Larger retainers (40+ hours/month) provide the highest level of strategic partnership. At this level, we function more like a core part of your team. You’ll have dedicated resources, regular strategy sessions, and ongoing analysis of your site’s performance. We’re not waiting for requests, we’re bringing you a roadmap of opportunities, prioritizing initiatives based on business impact, and helping you make decisions about where to invest. This is ideal for clients with complex sites, aggressive growth goals, or limited internal marketing and development resources who need a partner to drive the work forward.
Any of these approaches work. It comes down to what you need and how you want to work with us.
What Happens to Unused Hours
If your retainer is 20 hours per month or more, and if you don’t use all your hours in a given month, up to 10% of your monthly retainer will automatically roll over to the following month.
A few things to know about rollover:
Rolled hours expire after 30 days. If you don’t use them in the following month, they’re gone. They don’t compound month over month.
In practice, this rarely becomes an issue. We work closely with our clients to make sure you’re getting full value from the partnership. If we notice hours going unused consistently, we’ll have a conversation about whether your retainer level is right-sized for your actual needs.
What Happens If You Need More Hours
Sometimes a month gets busy. Maybe you’re launching a promotion, making a bigger update to the site, or dealing with an unexpected issue that requires more attention.
Here’s how we handle it:
We’ll notify you as soon as we see that we’re projected to exceed your hours for the month. We won’t go over without your approval; you’ll always know before additional charges hit.
If you approve the overage, additional hours are billed for the additional hours.
You can also add hours mid-month if you know you’ll need them, subject to resource availability. If you’re consistently needing more than your retainer covers, we’ll suggest increasing your monthly hours temporarily or long-term, so you have guaranteed capacity. Otherwise, we may not have the resources available when you need them, which can slow things down.
How We Prioritize Work
We work in two-week sprints. At the start of each sprint, we prioritize the tasks in your queue and work through them in priority order.
We’ll recommend priorities based on our experience: what will have the most impact, what’s time-sensitive, what dependencies exist. You can also give input on what matters most to you. It’s a collaborative process.
For urgent issues like site downtime or a broken checkout, we have SLAs in place. These get escalated immediately and addressed according to our SLAs.
For non-urgent requests, you can expect a response within 24 hours, but resolution time will vary depending on complexity, your sprint plan, and available resources. A simple content update might be done in a day. A more involved development task might take longer and get scheduled into an upcoming sprint.
What Falls Inside vs. Outside a Retainer
Website support retainers are designed for ongoing maintenance and incremental improvements. The kind of work that keeps your site running smoothly and evolving over time.
Here’s what typically falls within a support retainer:
- Content updates (new pages, copy changes, image swaps)
- Bug fixes and troubleshooting
- Plugin and security updates
- Minor design or UX tweaks
- Speed and performance improvements
- Landing page development
- SEO and tracking fixes
- Mobile responsiveness adjustments
There’s some subjectivity here, but generally speaking, if a request would take more than 10 hours or would significantly impact your day-to-day support capacity, we’ll recommend scoping it as a separate project with its own Statement of Work. This keeps your retainer hours available for the ongoing work and ensures larger initiatives get the dedicated attention they need.
If you’re ever unsure whether something fits, just ask. We’ll advise you on the best way to approach it.
A Note on Hosting vs. Support
Website support is separate from website hosting. Hosting covers the infrastructure; keeping your site live, secure, backed up, and performing well. Support covers the work; updates, fixes, and improvements to the site itself.
Many of our clients have both, but they’re distinct services. If you have questions about our hosting options, your Account Manager can walk you through the details.
