Yes, three of them. Essentials is one day a month at £500, Growth is two days at £950 and Partner is four days at £1,800. The days are yours to direct: bug fixes, small features, performance work, editor support or simply having a specialist on call who already knows your site. Agencies often use the larger plans as guaranteed white label capacity, so they can sell Umbraco work with confidence that someone senior will actually deliver it. Retainers also mean you are not starting a procurement conversation every time something small needs doing, which is usually where in-house teams lose the most time.
A retainer buys you guaranteed days of my time each month at a better rate than ad hoc booking. Essentials is one day a month at £500, Growth is two days at £950 and Partner is four days at £1,800. There is no minimum term dressed up in legal language and no surprise extras: the plan is the price.
In-house teams mostly use retainer days for support and maintenance: keeping packages current, fixing the odd bug, tuning performance and answering the questions that come up when editors push the CMS somewhere new. Agencies use them differently. For an agency, a retainer is white label capacity: a known number of senior Umbraco days each month that can be sold on under their own brand. About forty percent of my workload is exactly that kind of agency work.
The obvious reason is price. The less obvious reason is context. A developer who touches your site every month does not need half a day to remember how it fits together, so retainer days go further than one-off days. It also changes the relationship: small problems get raised early because raising them costs nothing extra, instead of being saved up until they have become large problems.
If your site is stable and you mainly want insurance, start with Essentials. If you have a steady trickle of change requests, Growth usually covers it. Partner suits agencies with regular Umbraco work or teams mid-way through a larger programme. Full details are on the pricing page, and moving between plans as your needs change is straightforward.
Tell me what you're working on and I'll come back within one working day.
A specialist Umbraco developer offering freelance / contract services to a wide variety of clients across the UK
Maesgwyn, 3 Claremont rd,
Llandudno, North Wales, LL30 2UF