A set number of hours a month
Used on whatever matters most that month — support, maintenance, small builds, or advice. You decide the priority; we tell you honestly what fits.
Someone who already knows your systems
Most of what a small company needs is not a project. It is a steady trickle of small things, and someone who does not have to be re-briefed every time.
Dublin, Ireland Ireland, EU & UK Project, retainer or fractional
- Scope
- Rolling, agreed monthly
- Commitment
- Three months minimum
- Billing
- Monthly, in advance
- Response
- Agreed in writing, not implied
Who this is for
- Something breaks and the plan is to find whoever is free.
- Small improvements never happen because none of them justifies a project.
- You have a system somebody else built and nobody currently owns it.
- You want a predictable monthly cost instead of unpredictable emergencies.
How it works
A response time that is written down
Not "we are usually quick". A stated time for urgent and non-urgent, so you know what you bought.
A monthly note of where the hours went
Sent without being asked. A retainer nobody can account for is how retainers quietly become useless to both sides.
Out of scope
What a retainer excludes
Large builds — those are projects, and we will quote them separately rather than swallow six weeks of work into a monthly allowance. Third-party licences and hosting costs. Out-of-hours work unless the agreement says so. Unused hours do not roll up forever; the carry-over rule is stated in the agreement rather than left comfortable and vague.
Your side
What we need from you
One route in for requests rather than four people messaging separately. Access that does not have to be requested each time. A rough priority when more arrives in a month than the hours cover.
The most common way a retainer fails is not too little time — it is time spent chasing whose request comes first.
Where we stop
Where this stops being the right shape
If two months running you are using the hours on one large piece of work, the retainer is the wrong container and we will say so. That is a project, and dressing it as maintenance serves nobody.
Start with a conversation
Tell us what is slowing you down. We come back within one business day with an honest read on whether we are the right fit, and which of these shapes it should be.