By Mehdi HassanWhat is a design and development retainer?
A design and development retainer is an ongoing monthly arrangement with a team that both designs and builds. Instead of paying a designer for Figma files and a developer to build them, you pay one team that ships the finished page or feature. It's sometimes called a dev team subscription.
The model sits between a design subscription and an in-house team. It's more involved than a request queue, because the team joins planning and customer conversations, and it's faster to start than hiring. For how it compares with design-only subscriptions, read our guide to the design subscription model.
Design subscription | Design and development retainer | In-house team | |
|---|---|---|---|
Output | Design files | Live pages and features | Live pages and features |
Copy | Usually you supply it | Written by the team | Depends on hires |
Meetings | Often async only | Joins planning and customer calls | Full-time |
Start time | Days | Soon after a trial week | About 2–3 months to hire |
Cost | Under $1,000 to about $15,000 a month | Designify: $6,000 a month | About $90k–$150k+ per designer a year, fully loaded |
The in-house figures come from sources estimating fully loaded salary and hiring time; subscription prices are from public pricing pages. All of them vary.
What does our $6,000 retainer include?
Our $6,000 retainer includes copy, design and development from one small in-house team, working on your website and product in priority order you set each week. We don't track hours, and we join your customer calls.
- Copy. New page copy, rewrites and headline tests. We start with the words, because the page layout depends on what it has to say.
- Website work. New pages, landing pages, sections and CMS templates, designed in Figma and built in Framer, Webflow or Next.js.
- Product work. UI for new features, flows and design-system updates for your app.
- Customer calls. We listen in on sales and customer calls so copy and design use the language buyers actually use.
- Shipping. Work goes live on your site, in your accounts and repository, not into a folder waiting for a developer.
- Per month, design and development
- $6,000
- Projects across 14+ industries
- 60+
- Contra rating from 11 reviews
- 4.92
For a general checklist of what any retainer should cover, see website retainer. For how retainers are priced across the market, see design retainer pricing.
How does the retainer work week to week?
The retainer works on a weekly rhythm: you set the priorities, we write, design and build the top items, and we review what shipped. The cadence is simple on purpose, so the work keeps moving.
Kickoff
We learn the product, the buyer and the goals for the quarter, and agree a first backlog.
Weekly priorities
You rank what matters this week. We say what's realistic and flag anything that needs a decision.
Words first
For any new page or feature, we draft the copy and structure before visual design.
Design and build
We design in Figma and build on your platform, so there's no handoff between teams.
Review and ship
You review on a staging link, we make changes and publish.
Learn and adjust
We bring what we hear on customer calls back into the backlog.
Because the same people design and build, details don't get lost between Figma and code. We explain why that handoff is where so much quality disappears in why design handoff fails.
How much work fits in a month?
How much work fits in a month depends on the size of each item, how quickly decisions get made, and how much copy and research each page needs. We don't sell a fixed number of requests or hours, so we agree a realistic backlog with you each week instead.
In practice, small items such as a new section, a pricing-table change or a copy test move fast. Larger items, like a new feature page with fresh copy, take more of the month. A full product flow or a new site section with CMS templates can fill several weeks. The fastest months are the ones where feedback comes back the same day.
Hypothetical example: a month for a seed-stage AI startup
For example, suppose a seed-stage AI startup brings us three priorities: a clearer homepage hero after customer calls, a new integrations page, and UI for an onboarding checklist in the app.
Week one we rewrite and ship the hero. Weeks two and three we write, design and build the integrations page with a CMS template. Week four we design and build the onboarding UI with their engineers. This is an illustrative plan, not a real client or a promise of output, but it shows how web and product work share one team.
Who is the retainer for, and who is it not for?
The retainer is for teams that ship web pages and product changes most weeks and want one team to own words, design and code. It isn't for a one-off launch, for teams that only need graphics, or for companies that need a large agency with many disciplines.
Pros
- One team for copy, design and development.
- Live work every week, not design files waiting for a build.
- Customer calls feed directly into what we write and design.
- No hourly tracking or per-request quotes.
Cons
- More than an entry design subscription if you only need graphics.
- Not the cheapest way to get a single launch; a fixed project is.
- A small team, so it's not built for many parallel workstreams across departments.
If you only need a defined launch, our fixed website or landing page is a better fit; see retainer vs project pricing. If you need lower-cost design-only help, our guides to unlimited design subscription alternatives, ManyPixels alternatives and DesignJoy vs ManyPixels compare those options.
How does a retainer compare with hiring a team or an agency project?
A retainer costs less than hiring a designer and developer in-house and starts much sooner than a hire, which sources put at two to three months. An agency project is better when you have one defined build, such as an MVP or a new site, with a clear end.
A $6,000 retainer is $72,000 a year, below the low end of the $90k–$150k+ that sources give for a single fully loaded in-house designer, and it includes development. Hiring becomes the better option when design and engineering are needed full-time in every product decision. Our comparison of an in-house team vs an agency for product development covers the switch point. For one-off builds, see MVP development cost and design and development agency cost.
