Three ways to turn one-off website builds into monthly income: retainers, care plans and website subscriptions. How each works, what it earns, and a 24-month revenue model with the assumptions shown.
Web design recurring revenue is money clients pay you every month instead of once. There are three ways to get it: retainers, care plans and website subscriptions. Each suits a different client, and the strongest agencies usually run a subscription for most clients with retainers for a few.
TL;DR: Retainers sell your time, care plans sell upkeep, subscriptions sell the whole site as a service. Subscriptions scale furthest because each client needs the least time. The 24-month model below shows a studio adding 8 subscription clients a month reaching about $15,000 a month in recurring revenue, with the assumptions shown.
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| Retainer | Care plan | Website subscription | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the client buys | A block of your hours | Upkeep: hosting, updates, backups, small edits | The site itself, built, hosted and maintained |
| Upfront fee | Usually after a project | Usually after a project | Small setup fee or none |
| Time per client each month | High (5 to 20 hours) | Low to medium | Low |
| Who it suits | Clients who change things often | Clients with an existing custom site | Local and small businesses |
| Scales to many clients | Hard | Medium | Easy |
Care plans are covered in depth in our guide to website care plans. Subscriptions are covered in website as a service. This post is about choosing between them and building the revenue.
Sell a retainer when a client has a steady flow of work: new landing pages for campaigns, frequent content changes, or ongoing conversion testing. Rules that protect you:
Sell a subscription when the client mostly wants a site that works and looks good, and does not want to think about it. That is most local businesses. The subscription includes the build, hosting, security, small edits and support, for one monthly price.
On a white label AI builder, this is cheap to deliver. The AI drafts the site, you polish it, the platform handles hosting, and the client handles small text changes in your branded editor.
Assumptions, not market data:
| Month | Active clients (approx.) | Monthly recurring revenue | Platform plan | Revenue after platform |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 24 | $1,896 | Lite, $99 | $1,797 |
| 6 | 46 | $3,634 | Launch, $499 | $3,135 |
| 12 | 86 | $6,794 | Launch, $499 | $6,295 |
| 18 | 122 | $9,638 | Launch, $499 | $9,139 |
| 24 | 154 | $12,166 | Launch, $499 | $11,667 |
Now add a few retainers on top. If 5 of those clients also take a $600 a month retainer, that is $3,000 more, for about $15,000 a month in recurring revenue by month 24. The cancellation rate matters more than anything else in the table. At 5% a month, month 24 lands near 113 clients instead of 154.
An example ladder:
| Plan | Price (example) | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $49 a month | Site, hosting, SSL, client edits in the editor |
| Standard | $99 a month | Starter plus 30 minutes of edits by you each month |
| Growth | $199 a month | Standard plus a new page each quarter and a monthly report |
These prices are examples to adapt. On We.Inc your cost per site at full use is $3.96 on Lite, $2.00 on Launch and $1.00 on Scale, so even the Starter plan has room for margin.
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.