Commercial

No deposits. Websites are paid in full, upfront

Website builds here are paid in full before we start. No deposit, no milestone schedule, no balance held back until launch day. That is unusual enough in this trade that it deserves a page rather than a line buried in an agreement.

Why the deposit model exists

Website deposit vs paid in full is a real decision, and it is not obviously in your favour either way, so here is the honest case for both.

The deposit model exists because studios get burned. Half now, half on launch, and that second half quietly becomes leverage: against the client who goes silent for five weeks, the client who asks for a tenth round of revisions, the client who disputes the final invoice over a typeface. So the trade invented a payment schedule that is really a negotiating position, and then both sides spend the project managing it instead of building.

The damage is to the work. A build with money outstanding is a build where every decision is slightly political. Scope creep gets absorbed rather than scoped, because raising it risks the final payment. Launch gets rushed, because launch is when the invoice clears. You end up negotiating with a half finished website, which is the worst position either party can be in.

Websites are paid in full, upfront.

The whole fee before we start. No deposit, no milestone billing, no final payment held hostage over the launch. It is the cleaner version for both of us: we are not chasing an invoice while we build, and you are not negotiating with a half finished site. Rush is $3,500 and goes live in 5 business days. Standard is $2,500 in 15. Flex is $2,000 in 30 to 45 business days. Same build, same scope, same Ninetyfifth Marketing App. You are paying for speed, not for features.

What paying in full actually buys

• A fixed number. The price does not move because the build took longer than we estimated. That risk is ours, which is the correct place for it.
• A fixed date. The three delivery windows are commitments with a date attached, not aspirations.
• Nobody chasing an invoice. We are not emailing your bookkeeper mid build, and you are not being asked for money at the exact moment you most want to say no.
• The same build at every speed. Speed is the only variable. There is no cheaper tier with fewer pages, a template underneath it or a worse technical layer.
• You own it. The code, the content and the domain are yours, and they are yours from the day they exist rather than on final payment.

What protects you, since the money is already gone

You have paid, so the only thing standing between you and a bad outcome is whether we behave. That is a real asymmetry and we are not going to pretend it away with reassurance. What we offer against it is specific instead.

The scope is written down before you pay, as a document that lists every page and every feature, so there is no argument later about what was included. The delivery window is in writing with a date on it. If we are going to miss that date for a reason that is ours, you hear the new date the day we know it, not the week of launch. And if we cannot deliver the build at all, we refund it. There is no scenario where we keep money for a website that does not exist.

We would rather be held to that than to a payment schedule. A schedule protects an agency from a client. A written scope, a date and a refund position protects a client from an agency, which is the direction that needed fixing.

Retainers work differently

A build is a one time fee. A retainer is monthly, billed in advance of the month it covers, and it carries a term. 90 day initial term, then month to month at the same price. The industry asks for 6 to 12 months.

Where a retainer includes the custom website, the build is delivered in month one and its cost sits inside the monthly fee rather than being collected upfront. Stay past month 2 and the included website is yours outright. Cancel before that and it is invoiced at $2,500, instead of the remaining months.

$50 a month covers hosting, security, monitoring and small changes. Month to month, no initial term, and not billed at all while an SEO retainer runs. You own the code either way.

What we never ask for

• No percentage of your ad budget. That money goes straight to the platform and we never touch it.
• No setup fee bolted onto a retainer.
• No deposit to hold a slot in the calendar. If we have capacity we say so, and if we do not we say that instead.
• No annual prepayment at a discount, which is a long commitment wearing a saving as a disguise.