The Problem With The Retainer You Probably Have
You’ve likely seen this cycle: the agency that built the site moves its A-team to the next build. Your retainer inherits whoever is available. Tickets sit. Small changes take weeks. You keep paying because migrating feels worse than tolerating it.
That cycle isn’t a personnel problem it’s an economic one. Retainers priced as leftover hours get leftover attention. Operate is priced and staffed as a product with its own team, its own cadence and its own definition of done.
What’s Included
Maintenance that prevents, not just patches
Updates, security patching, monitoring, backups, uptime handled on schedule, reported monthly. Boring by design. You’ll hear about problems from us, with the fix already applied, not from your customers.
Development capacity, every sprint
A committed number of senior engineering days each month for the roadmap: new sections, landing pages, integrations, features. Unused capacity within a quarter rolls, so you’re never paying for air.
Performance, accessibility and technical SEO
Core Web Vitals, WCAG compliance, schema and index health checked continuously, improved deliberately. These are the compounding assets a ticket-queue retainer never touches.
A named team and a monthly rhythm
You get a delivery lead you can call, engineers who know your codebase, and a monthly review that covers what shipped, what it changed, and what’s next. The same gated process that governs our builds governs Operate every month closes with evidence, not activity reports.
How Capacity Works
| Tier | For | Includes | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Care | Sites needing dependable upkeep | Maintenance, monitoring, security, small changes | [£X] |
| Operate | Marketing teams shipping monthly | Care + committed development sprints | [£X] |
| Accelerate | Sites central to revenue | Operate + CRO, performance and SEO programme | [£X] |
All tiers: monthly rolling, 30-day notice, your code and infrastructure access documented from day one.
Exit terms worth reading before you sign anything
We put this on the page because it’s the question that matters most and the one agencies answer least clearly:
30-day notice, any tier, no exit fee.
Everything is yours already code in your repositories, infrastructure in your accounts, documentation current.
Handover is included, not billed. If we’re not earning the retainer, leaving should be easy. That’s what keeps us honest.
Who Operate is for
Marketing teams whose site backlog outgrew internal capacity
Organisations switching from a retainer that stopped performing
SCube build clients moving from launch into continuous improvement
Agencies needing white-label retainer delivery for their clients see white-label partnerships
Start with a 1-month pilot one month, one tier, real work. Judge us on the sprint, not the sales call.
Dependable. Delivered.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ticket-queue maintenance typically runs £300–£1,500/month; retainers with real development capacity run £2,000–£10,000+ depending on team seniority and committed days. Operate tiers are fixed monthly prices published on the call — no estimate ranges after the first conversation.
Maintenance keeps a site alive. Operate keeps it improving — committed senior development capacity, performance and SEO work, and a monthly review tied to outcomes, on top of full maintenance.
No. Every tier is monthly rolling with 30-day notice and no exit fee. Handover is included.
Yes, most Operate clients arrive exactly that way. The pilot month starts with a technical audit so you get an honest picture of what you own before committing further.
Not within a quarter. Capacity rolls for up to three months, because roadmaps breathe.
