How is this different from hiring a freelancer?

Three things. The developer is backed by a senior team for the spikes a freelancer cannot cover. There is a designated backup so vacation does not stop your sprint. And code quality is enforced against agency standards, not whatever the freelancer happened to learn. You also get a real entity to bill, not a personal invoice.

How is this different from your retainer service?

The maintenance retainer is hands-off operations (updates, backups, security, performance). The dedicated developer is hands-on engineering on your sprint board. Different scopes, sometimes both make sense for the same client.

What hours do dedicated developers work?

Default is 4 to 8 hours of overlap with your team timezone, with the remaining hours flexible. Most US and EU clients land on 4 hours overlap (US morning or EU afternoon), with the rest of the day in deep work mode. Full timezone alignment available for a higher rate.

How do I evaluate the developer before committing?

Two-week paid trial. We assign a developer matching your stack, you set them a representative task, you decide whether to continue. If the match is wrong, we propose a different developer or refund the trial. Most engagements continue past the trial.

What if my project finishes or shrinks?

30 days notice to scale down or pause. We do not lock you into multi-year commitments. Most clients flex hours up and down across sprints based on what is in flight. Long-term clients usually settle into a steady rate after the first three months.

An embedded developer is priced against the commitment rather than sold at a list rate, because half-time and full-time, junior and lead, are genuinely different engagements. A two-week paid trial is available before you commit to a longer one, which is usually the fastest way to find out whether the fit works. The section above sets out what moves the number.

Service Dedicated dev

A dedicated WordPress developer, embedded with your team.

Same developer every sprint. Full stack WordPress engineering. Backed by a senior agency for the spikes. Billed monthly with no surprise overages.

Start a project See our work

WordPress agency since 2013, retainers are scope-dependent

Why dedicated

Hiring a WordPress developer takes six months. You need code shipped this quarter.

In-house WordPress hires are slow to recruit, expensive to retain, and often narrow in scope. Freelancers ship fast but vanish at the worst moments and cannot cover the full stack. Project-based agencies ship features and walk away, leaving your team to maintain them.

A dedicated developer from us splits the difference. You get a single engineer embedded with your team, working to your sprint cadence, backed by a senior agency for the spikes, with code quality held to standards higher than most in-house WordPress hires would meet.

A sprint in flight

What your dedicated dev is shipping this week.

A live snapshot of the work queue we run for retained customers. Three tickets in flight, a pending backlog, throughput tracked daily. Scroll up and back down to replay.

ticket #482 in progress

Refactor member directory · pagination + cache

0 min spent · est 6h

ticket #483 in progress

BuddyPress group activity throttle

0 min spent · est 2h

ticket #481 code review

WooCommerce subscription email override

0 min · in PR review

Backlog · this sprint 4 queued · ordered by priority

#484 · Add 2FA to admin login security
#485 · Migrate page builders to FSE refactor
#486 · Custom Stripe webhook handler payments
#487 · GDPR data export endpoint compliance

Same engineer every sprint · context compounds, not resets
Senior backup · vacations and sick days do not stop your roadmap
Friday status · written, with what shipped, what is blocked, what is next

Embedded with your team

Your dedicated developer joins your standups, your Slack channels, your Jira or Linear board, your code review process. They work to your sprint cadence, not ours. They feel like a hire, not a vendor.

Velocity matches an in-house developer from week one.

Backed by the full agency

When the dedicated developer hits something outside their depth (Laravel infrastructure, Astro frontend, security incident, performance crisis), the rest of the agency steps in for the spike, then steps back out.

You get one developer plus a senior team behind them.

WordPress, WooCommerce, BuddyPress, blocks, REST

Full stack WordPress engineering. Custom plugin development, theme work, REST API, Gutenberg blocks, WooCommerce extensions, BuddyPress components. The full surface area, not a narrow specialty.

No "we need a different developer for that" surprises.

Same developer, every sprint

No swapping developers between sprints. Context stays. The developer who shipped the feature is the developer who fixes the bug. Vacation cover provided through a designated backup who already knows your codebase.

No knowledge loss between sprints.

Code review against agency standards

Every PR reviewed against the same WPCS, PHPStan, and security standards we apply to our own plugins. Code quality stays high even when sprint pressure is high. Your codebase does not degrade over time.

Tech debt growth slowed measurably.

Transparent monthly billing

Fixed monthly fee for fixed monthly hours. No surprise overages. Time tracked and reported weekly. Hours rolled forward up to one month if not used. Easy to scale up or down with notice.

Predictable budget, no contract gymnastics.

13 years

of WordPress agency experience behind every dedicated developer

Senior team available for spikes. Production proof across 100+ shipped plugins.

Scoped

Half-time

80 hours per month. Right for ongoing maintenance plus small features. Same developer, same backup coverage, same code review standards.

Right for steady-state development.

Scoped

Full-time

160 hours per month. Right for active product development with a real sprint cadence. Embedded in your standups, your Slack, your code review.

Right for product work in active development.

Scoped

Senior + lead

Senior developer with architecture experience, half-time or full-time. Right when you need someone who can lead technical decisions, not just ship features.

Right when you also need engineering leadership.

What it costs

An embedded developer is priced on the commitment, not on a list rate.

Half-time for a quarter and a lead engineer full-time for a year are the same sentence and very different engagements. Here is what moves the number.

What moves the number

How much of the week Half-time and full-time are the two shapes that work. Anything below half-time turns into context switching, and you pay for that in throughput rather than in invoice.
How senior A capable developer who takes tickets and a lead who makes architecture decisions are different people at different rates. Most teams need the first and ask for the second.
How long Three months is the minimum that makes sense, because the first few weeks are spent learning your codebase. Longer commitments cost less per month for exactly that reason.
How much overlap Our team is IST. Four hours with EU afternoons and early US mornings comes as standard. More overlap than that is arrangeable and is a real cost.
Who manages them Joining your standup and your board costs nothing. Wanting us to run the work as well is a different engagement and worth saying up front.

Small, well-defined work is usually better handled as an hourly block than scoped as a project, and we will say so rather than inflate it into one.

Rough idea to delivery

You send the details What you want built, roughly, plus budget range and timing. The form asks for all of it
Within 4 business hours We read it and reply. Nothing is scheduled before we know what it is about
Then the call Free discovery, booked once there is enough on the table to make it worth your hour
Within 48 hours of the call A written fixed-price quote you approve before anything starts

Get an estimate

Quick enquiry

Need capacity on your team?

Tell us what the backlog looks like and how many hours a week would clear it. If you are not sure whether you need half-time or full-time, say that and we will work it out on the call.

Prefer the full form? Start a project

How is this different from hiring a freelancer?

Three things. The developer is backed by a senior team for the spikes a freelancer cannot cover. There is a designated backup so vacation does not stop your sprint. And code quality is enforced against agency standards, not whatever the freelancer happened to learn. You also get a real entity to bill, not a personal invoice.
How is this different from your retainer service?

The maintenance retainer is hands-off operations (updates, backups, security, performance). The dedicated developer is hands-on engineering on your sprint board. Different scopes, sometimes both make sense for the same client.
What hours do dedicated developers work?

Default is 4 to 8 hours of overlap with your team timezone, with the remaining hours flexible. Most US and EU clients land on 4 hours overlap (US morning or EU afternoon), with the rest of the day in deep work mode. Full timezone alignment available for a higher rate.
How do I evaluate the developer before committing?

Two-week paid trial. We assign a developer matching your stack, you set them a representative task, you decide whether to continue. If the match is wrong, we propose a different developer or refund the trial. Most engagements continue past the trial.
What if my project finishes or shrinks?

30 days notice to scale down or pause. We do not lock you into multi-year commitments. Most clients flex hours up and down across sprints based on what is in flight. Long-term clients usually settle into a steady rate after the first three months.
What does it cost?

An embedded developer is priced against the commitment rather than sold at a list rate, because half-time and full-time, junior and lead, are genuinely different engagements. A two-week paid trial is available before you commit to a longer one, which is usually the fastest way to find out whether the fit works. The section above sets out what moves the number.