How is this different from hiring an individual developer?

Continuity, depth, and SLA. A team of senior engineers covers each other for sick days, vacations, and load spikes. Quarterly architecture reviews catch issues before they become incidents. SLAs mean your team can plan around defined response times. An individual developer is a single point of failure.

What is the minimum commitment?

Three months. Most clients stay for years once the team is up to speed. Cancellation is 30 days notice after the initial three-month period.

What if we need more work than the retainer covers in a month?

We discuss before the month starts. Either we increase the retainer for that month, or the overflow lands in the next month, or we hire a temporary additional engineer for the project. We never silently bill overage.

Can the retainer cover emergency support?

Yes. P1 emergencies (production down) are covered with a 2-hour response SLA, 24/7. We have on-call coverage for production-critical clients. Emergency response time is included; the engineering hours used during the emergency draw down the monthly budget.

Do you support all WordPress stacks?

Yes. Single-site, multisite, headless WordPress with Astro, WooCommerce, BuddyPress, BuddyBoss, LearnDash, MemberPress, EDD, custom plugins, custom themes. Hosting on WP Engine, Kinsta, Pantheon, Pressable, AWS, GCP, or your own infrastructure.

Can we test before committing to retainer?

Yes. Most clients start on pay-as-you-go for 1 to 3 months before converting to retainer. 20 hours upfront, then additional blocks in whatever size fits velocity (15, 40, or 60 hours are typical, you decide). Every hour tracked in Basecamp. Once cadence and load are clear, we right-size the retainer tier and switch billing.

Engagement WordPress Engineering

A dedicated WordPress team, every month, fixed cost.

Senior WordPress engineering on retainer. Same team every month. Defined SLAs. Maintenance and feature work in one budget. No hourly billing surprises. Retainers are scope-dependent.

Start a project Try pay-as-you-go first

Retainers are scope-dependent. Most clients test on pay-as-you-go first.

March · 40 hour plan mid-month

Used this month 26h

Remaining 14h

Rolled over 6h

Tickets closed 19

This week Checkout bug on variable productsGroup directory filter, new fieldCore and plugin updates, staged

Unused hours roll forward rather than expiring. A quiet month funds the busy one.

Why this matters

Project-based engineering ends. Real WordPress sites need ongoing care.

The plugin update breaks a custom block at 11pm on a Saturday. The PHP 8.4 bump deprecates a function your theme relied on. The security advisory lands and needs patching this week, not next quarter. Project-based engagements do not cover that work. A retainer does, with the same team that built the site doing the maintenance, and a budget you can actually plan around.

Dedicated senior team, not a ticket queue

Same engineers across every engagement. They learn your codebase, your conventions, your business. By month three they ship faster than a brand-new contractor ever could.

Onboarding cost amortized once, not every quarter.

Fixed monthly cost, predictable budget

No hourly billing surprises. No "you used 4 extra hours" invoices. The retainer covers a defined scope of work each month. Overflow is discussed before it ships, not after.

Finance team gets a budget number that holds.

Defined response and resolution times

P1 (production down): 2-hour response, 8-hour resolution target. P2 (degraded): 8-hour response, 48-hour resolution. P3 (planned work): scheduled in the next sprint. SLAs documented before you sign.

Your team knows when help arrives.

Continuous maintenance built in

WordPress core updates, plugin updates, security patches, PHP version bumps, dependency updates, automated backups, uptime monitoring. The infrastructure stays current without you scheduling it.

Site stays current without weekly intervention.

Feature work alongside maintenance

Each retainer includes a defined number of feature engineering hours. Your team requests work, we scope it, the work ships in the next sprint. No separate purchase orders for every change.

Roadmap moves forward every month.

Quarterly architecture review

Every quarter we audit your WordPress install: performance, security, code quality, plugin health, infrastructure. Recommendations land in the next month roadmap.

Technical debt actually gets addressed.

2hr

P1 (production down) response SLA across all retainer tiers

24/7 coverage available on enterprise retainers.

Onboard

Two weeks. Codebase audit, infrastructure inventory, runbook capture, SLA agreement, on-call setup. We document everything before we touch production.

Team is operational in 14 days.

Operate

Ongoing monthly. Sprints scoped, work shipped, maintenance happens in the background, P1 emergencies handled with the agreed SLA. Weekly check-ins, monthly reporting.

Roadmap moves every month.

Review + adjust

Every quarter. Architecture audit, performance review, security audit, technical debt assessment, retainer scope review. Adjust the engagement as your needs change.

Engagement evolves with your business.

What it costs

A retainer is priced on reserved capacity, not on tickets.

Ten hours a month for small changes and a standing team shipping features every sprint are the same sentence and very different commitments. Here is what moves the number.

What moves the number

How many hours Reserved hours cost less than ad-hoc work because we can staff them. That is the whole economics of a retainer and the reason it is cheaper than calling us each time.
What happens to unused hours Ours roll forward rather than expiring, so a quiet month funds a busy one. Any retainer that expires unused hours is charging you for nothing.
How senior the work Small changes and content fixes are one rate. Architecture, performance and anything touching money is another, and most months are a mix.
How fast you need a response A next-business-day queue is straightforward. A same-day guarantee means holding capacity for you specifically, and that costs more.
How much we hold in our heads Longer retainers get cheaper per hour because we stop relearning your codebase. That is real, and it is why three months is the sensible minimum.

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 a team on hand every month?

Tell us roughly how many hours a month would clear your backlog and what kind of work it is. If you are not sure of the number, describe a typical month and we will size it.

Prefer the full form? Start a project

How is this different from hiring an individual developer?

Continuity, depth, and SLA. A team of senior engineers covers each other for sick days, vacations, and load spikes. Quarterly architecture reviews catch issues before they become incidents. SLAs mean your team can plan around defined response times. An individual developer is a single point of failure.
What is the minimum commitment?

Three months. Most clients stay for years once the team is up to speed. Cancellation is 30 days notice after the initial three-month period.
What if we need more work than the retainer covers in a month?

We discuss before the month starts. Either we increase the retainer for that month, or the overflow lands in the next month, or we hire a temporary additional engineer for the project. We never silently bill overage.
Can the retainer cover emergency support?

Yes. P1 emergencies (production down) are covered with a 2-hour response SLA, 24/7. We have on-call coverage for production-critical clients. Emergency response time is included; the engineering hours used during the emergency draw down the monthly budget.
Do you support all WordPress stacks?

Yes. Single-site, multisite, headless WordPress with Astro, WooCommerce, BuddyPress, BuddyBoss, LearnDash, MemberPress, EDD, custom plugins, custom themes. Hosting on WP Engine, Kinsta, Pantheon, Pressable, AWS, GCP, or your own infrastructure.
What does it cost?

A retainer is priced on the capacity reserved rather than on the work that turns up, because reserved hours are cheaper to staff than ad-hoc requests. Ten hours a month for small changes and a standing team shipping features are very different commitments. Unused hours roll forward rather than expiring. The section above sets out what moves the number.
Can we test before committing to retainer?

Yes. Most clients start on pay-as-you-go for 1 to 3 months before converting to retainer. 20 hours upfront, then additional blocks in whatever size fits velocity (15, 40, or 60 hours are typical, you decide). Every hour tracked in Basecamp. Once cadence and load are clear, we right-size the retainer tier and switch billing.