How web design agencies price their work: hourly, per project, productized packages and monthly plans. What each earns per client, where margins come from, and a per-client model against your platform cost.
Web design agencies price in four main ways: hourly, per project, productized packages and monthly plans. The model matters more than the number. Hourly and per-project pricing cap your income at your hours. Packages plus monthly plans let income grow with clients instead of hours, which is where healthy margins come from.
TL;DR: Charge a fixed setup fee plus a monthly plan, publish your prices, and know your cost per client. With a white label builder your platform cost can be $1 to $4 a site, so a $79 plan keeps most of its value as margin before your time. The per-client model below shows the math.
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| Model | How it works | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Bill every hour | Simple, low risk | Income capped by hours; faster work earns less |
| Per project | One price per site | Clients like certainty | Scope creep; income resets monthly |
| Productized package | Published fixed scope and price | Easy sale, repeatable | Needs discipline on scope |
| Monthly plan | Fixed monthly fee | Stacks over time, predictable | Needs a low cost to serve |
For one-off project prices, our guide on how much to charge for a website has ranges. This post focuses on how the models compare as a business.
If AI cuts a site from 30 hours to 3, hourly billing cuts your income by 90% for the same site. Price the result, not the time. That is the main reason agencies moving to AI also move to packages and monthly plans.
These are examples, not market rates:
| Offer | Setup | Monthly | What is included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $300 | $49 | 3-page site, hosting, client edits |
| Local Pro | $500 | $79 | 5-page site, contact form, basic SEO, small edits |
| Growth | $1,000 | $199 | More pages, monthly updates, report, Google Business Profile posts |
| Custom | From $5,000 | Care plan | Bespoke design or features |
Assumptions: $79 a month plan, Stripe's standard U.S. card rate of 2.9% plus 30 cents ($2.59), 30 minutes a month of your time per client valued at $50 an hour ($25).
| We.Inc plan | Plan price | Sites at full use | Platform cost per site | Margin per client per month | Margin % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | $99 | 25 | $3.96 | $47.45 | 60% |
| Launch | $499 | 250 | $2.00 | $49.41 | 63% |
| Scale | $999 | 1,000 | $1.00 | $50.41 | 64% |
Platform plan facts come from We.Inc's white-label pricing. Two lessons from the table. First, the platform is a small part of your cost; your own time is the big one, so keep monthly time per client low. Second, per-site cost only reaches these numbers when a plan is full, so move up a plan when you need the room, not before.
| Clients | Price | Monthly revenue | Plan | Revenue minus plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | $49 | $1,225 | Lite, $99 | $1,126 |
| 25 | $79 | $1,975 | Lite, $99 | $1,876 |
| 100 | $79 | $7,900 | Launch, $499 | $7,401 |
| 250 | $99 | $24,750 | Launch, $499 | $24,251 |
| 1,000 | $79 | $79,000 | Scale, $999 | $78,001 |
The last row is a big agency. Most will live in the middle rows for a long time, and that is still a healthy business.
Launch your branded builder free (7-day trial). Lite $99/mo for 25 sites on your own domain, Launch $499/mo for 250, Scale $999/mo for 1,000 with no WeInc branding, and a 0% transaction fee. Compare plans on white-label pricing.
We.Inc is an AI-powered website builder you can resell under your own brand. Launch a branded client dashboard, bill on Stripe Connect, and deliver AI-generated websites in minutes. White-label plans are custom priced, with no per-site fees.