If you run a small digital agency or freelance as a web developer with 5-30 client sites, you already know the math: projects pay well up front, but then websites go quiet. Traffic drops, small technical debt accumulates, organic visibility stalls, and your client calls you only when something breaks. Sound familiar?
I’ve been there. Project-based income creates feast-or-famine cycles and forces you to chase new work instead of building sustainable revenue. The obvious fix is monthly retainers that include ongoing SEO, content, and technical maintenance. But not all retainers are equal. You can sell clients a maintenance plan that barely covers your time, or you can build a growth-focused retainer that actually moves metrics and justifies the price.
This guide compares practical options you can implement today. I’ll explain what matters when evaluating retainer models, analyze the common approaches I see agencies use, walk you through modern alternatives that scale, and compare other viable paths. Expect blunt, real-world advice and specific steps you can take next week.
3 Critical Factors When Choosing a Retainer Model for Client Websites
Before you pick a model, ask yourself these three questions. They shape pricing, delivery, and how clients perceive value.
1. What outcome does the client actually care about?
Is the client focused on uptime and security, on steady traffic growth, or on leads and revenue from the site? Maintenance-only packages sell peace of mind. Growth retainers sell business impact. Which one you aim at changes your deliverables and reporting.
2. How predictable is your cost to deliver?
Predictability is everything for recurring revenue. How many hours will you actually spend per month? What external costs exist - hosting, premium SEO tools, content writers? If you can’t estimate delivery cost within a 20% margin, you risk losing money or delivering subpar work.
3. Do you have repeatable processes and measurement?
Can you standardize onboarding, audits, reporting, and monthly tasks so delivery doesn’t rely on you alone? Do you track metrics that prove value—visits, rankings, leads, conversion rate? If not, you’ll fight to justify retainers in renewal conversations.
In contrast to chasing bespoke projects, recurring revenue demands process discipline and clear KPIs.
The Hourly Maintenance Block: Why Most Agencies Start There
Let’s be honest. Many agencies default to selling blocks of maintenance hours or tickets. It’s simple to package - 3, 5, or 10 hours per month for updates, backups, and small tweaks. It feels safe because you can price hours close to what you’d charge on a project.
Pros
- Easy to explain to clients: they buy time, you bill hourly for overages. Low setup effort for you. No complex onboarding or performance guarantees. Good for clients who only need occasional edits or fixes.
Cons and real costs
- Clients often treat hours as a checkbox. They don’t trust you to spend time on strategic tasks like SEO if those hours could be used for visible fixes. You’re trading recurring stability for the same time-for-money exchange as projects. Growth is unlikely because the model rewards reactive work. Overhead: ticketing, time tracking, and billing add admin load. Overhead cost can eat 10-20% of that revenue.
Implementation tips if you use this model
- Set a minimum contract length (90 days) and define unused-hour policies. Build a monthly checklist that includes at least one proactive task (security audit, small SEO tweak, performance optimization) so clients see forward movement. Price so that an average month covers your true delivery cost plus 30-40% margin.
For many agencies, the hourly block is an entry retainer. It keeps the client but rarely scales revenue or impact.
Productized Growth Retainers: A Modern Way to Keep Sites Moving
This is the model I recommend if your aim is meaningful, scalable recurring revenue. Productized growth retainers package predictable, outcome-oriented services: technical maintenance, monthly content, link building, conversion experiments, and monthly reporting tied to business metrics.
How this differs from hourly blocks
In contrast to selling time, productized retainers sell outcomes and a regular rhythm of work. You define fixed deliverables and a roadmap for each tier. The client buys a month-by-month piece of an ongoing growth plan instead of paying for tickets.
Pros
- Clients can see a plan: SEO roadmap, content calendar, and conversion experiments with milestones. That makes renewals easier. You can automate and delegate standardized work—content briefs, technical audits, monthly reporting—so margin improves as you scale. Higher price points are justified because you are claiming business outcomes not just time.
Cons and caveats
- Requires more upfront work: repeatable processes, onboarding templates, and KPIs. Clients expect measurable results. If you pick poor KPIs or don’t run proper experiments, churn will rise. Risk if you overpromise SEO. Be explicit about lead times for organic growth and avoid vague ranking guarantees.
Concrete components to include
- Monthly technical maintenance: updates, backups, uptime, and speed checks. SEO: a prioritized list of on-page tasks, target keywords tied to pages, and at least one content piece per month. Conversion optimization: one experiment every month or quarter, plus tracking and funnel analysis. Reporting: concise dashboard showing visits, leads, best-attributed pages, and actions taken. Quarterly strategy review and a 90-day roadmap.
Pricing guidelines
For agencies with 5-30 sites, use tiered pricing aligned with value and complexity:
- Maintenance tier: $150 - $400 per month. Low-touch, security-focused. Growth tier: $600 - $2,500 per month. Includes content, SEO, and CRO experiments. Premium tier: $3,000+ per month. Deeper strategy, managed ad spend integration, or dedicated team time.
Pick a minimum retainer that covers your baseline time investment. For example, if you estimate 6 hours per month of senior time plus tooling, don’t price below $800 for a growth retainer.
Onboarding and trial idea
Start with a paid 30-60 day audit and implementation sprint that sets up tracking, completes a technical clean-up, and delivers a 90-day plan. This converts skeptical clients and creates momentum. In contrast to handing over a list of fixes, the sprint demonstrates your approach and gives measurable early wins.
Bundled Hosting, White-label Services, and DIY Training: Other Paths to Monthly Income
If productized retainers sound heavy, there are other viable approaches that fit different capacity levels and risk profiles. Each has trade-offs.
Managed hosting plus maintenance bundle
Host client sites on a managed platform you control and bundle basic maintenance and backups. You sweep hosting, security, and performance into a single monthly fee.
- Pros: predictable revenue, easier ops, and you own the deployment flow. Cons: capital locked in hosting fees, support can be higher than expected, and clients may dislike vendor lock-in.
White-label or partner model
Pack work into fixed services you can hand off to other specialists or white-label agencies. You sell the retainer and the partner delivers tasks under your brand.
- Pros: scalable without hiring, faster capacity growth. Cons: margin compression, quality control challenges, and risk to your reputation if partners underdeliver.
Client training and self-service subscriptions
Offer a subscription that includes access to training materials, templates, and a limited number of hours for visualmodo.com coaching. This is lower cost for clients and positions you as a strategic advisor.
- Pros: high margin, low delivery time per client. Cons: lower price point, less lock-in, higher churn unless content stays valuable.
Performance-based retainers
Some shops attach fees to outcomes like leads or sales. This can be attractive to clients but carries high risk. You need airtight attribution, baseline agreements, and caps. On the other hand, it can win bigger deals if you can prove past results.
Picking the Best Retainer Strategy for Your Agency and Clients
So which approach should you choose? Here’s a framework that turns those three critical factors into an action plan.
Ask these diagnostic questions for each client
- Does the client need stability or growth? If stability, start with hosting + maintenance. If growth, aim for a productized growth retainer. How much can the client realistically pay monthly? Use a simple revenue rule: put the retainer at 5-15% of the monthly revenue you expect the website can generate for them. How much time will it take to deliver the promises? If your estimate exceeds 20 hours a month, it either needs a higher price or a redefined scope.
Decision flow
If the client wants peace of mind and low spend: offer managed hosting with a maintenance checklist and a 6-month minimum. If the client cares about leads or revenue but hasn’t invested in tracking: sell a 60-day audit sprint first, then a growth retainer. If the client is price-sensitive but open to learning: sell a training subscription plus a small block of hours for execution. If the client demands guarantees: propose a hybrid model with a base retainer plus performance bonuses and strict attribution rules.What to measure and report
Pick three primary KPIs per client and stick to them. Less is more. Examples:
- Organic sessions and top 3 keyword visibility. Leads from the site and lead conversion rate. Site speed and uptime percentages for technical packages.
Compare month-over-month and show the actions you took to influence each metric. In contrast to vague SEO reporting, tie reports to the agreed 90-day roadmap.
Practical contract clauses
- Minimum term and renewal terms (90/180 days is standard for growth retainers). Included deliverables and a statement on reserved hours. Definition of overages and pricing for add-on work. Exit handover requirements and data ownership clauses.
Summary: A Conservative Plan to Move Your Clients to Monthly Retainers
If you manage 5-30 client sites and you want stable monthly income that actually moves the needle for clients, here’s a practical plan you can deploy in 90 days.
Audit your client list. Classify each client as Maintenance, Growth, or DIY candidate. Create two core offers: a maintenance-focused bundle and a productized growth retainer. Price them so your minimum retainer covers senior time + tools. Run a paid 30-60 day audit sprint for growth candidates to establish tracking, quick wins, and a 90-day roadmap. Standardize onboarding, reporting, and a monthly playbook. Make sure every retainer includes one measurable experiment per month. Use the audit as a sales tool: present specific outcomes in the first month to justify the retainer in the renewal conversation.Ask clients: What would a steady increase in leads over six months mean to your business? What happens if your site keeps degrading? Those questions force the ROI discussion away from price and toward value.
In contrast to running from project to project, this approach creates predictable revenue and improves client outcomes. On the other hand, it requires you to systemize and be honest about what you can deliver without stretching capacity.
Which route will you try first: converting a single client to a growth retainer with a paid audit, or bundling controlled hosting and maintenance across your roster? Pick one, run a 90-day test, and measure churn and margin. You’ll learn faster than planning forever.
Final questions to consider
- How much recurring revenue do you need to cover your fixed costs? Can you reach that number with conservative retainer pricing? Which clients are most likely to accept a value-based conversation instead of an hourly one? What processes do you need to standardize now to deliver reliably at scale?
If you want, I can review your client list and sketch a 90-day conversion plan with suggested pricing tiers and a sample audit scope. Want me to map that out for you?