The traditional way agencies charge for websites is by the project. The freelancer or studio scopes the work up front, agrees a fee, and bills it in one or two instalments. The customer's incentive, once the fee's agreed, is to pack as much into the project as possible — every additional page, every additional feature, every additional round of revisions is “free” in the sense that they've already paid. The studio's incentive is the opposite: ship the agreed scope as efficiently as possible and avoid scope creep. The two incentives pull against each other, and the relationship suffers.
We charge by the page on rescue work, and by build-pack tier on new builds. The maths is straightforward: rescue is £20 per page surveyed; build packs are £29 (homepage), £59 (3-page) or £89 (5-page). The customer pays for what they're actually getting; we're paid for what we actually do. The incentive is to scope the right thing, not the biggest thing.
Why per-page works
Three reasons. First, it gives the customer a clean budget. They look at the rate card; they count the pages they need; they multiply. There's no “quote stage”, no negotiation, no surprise estimate three weeks in. The customer who needs three pages pays for three pages.
Second, it rewards the customer who scopes restrainedly. A small dental practice that needs three pages should pay for three. The agency model penalises that customer — the practice gets quoted £4,000 for a project that scoped honestly should have been £600. The per-page model meets the customer where they are. Smaller briefs are cheaper. As they should be.
The per-page model meets the customer where they are. Smaller briefs are cheaper. As they should be.
Third, it removes the “quote and pad” dynamicthat distorts agency relationships. Most freelancers admit, in their cups, that quotes get padded. Some pad to leave headroom for the inevitable scope creep; some pad because they don't trust their estimate; some pad because they're competing with cheaper bids from less rigorous freelancers. The customer never knows how much of the quote is the work and how much is risk premium. Per-page pricing kills the padding because the work is itemised.
What per-page misses
The honest weakness of per-page pricing is that some pages are harder than others. A booking page with date-pickers and availability logic is harder to ship than an about page with body copy. We don't price-discriminate on this; the rate is flat. The reason is that customers shouldn't need to think about the underlying complexity. They count pages; they pay; they get pages.
We absorb the variance internally — easy pages subsidise hard ones, on average. Across hundreds of customers, the maths works out.Across one customer, it might be slightly unfair in either direction; in either direction, the customer doesn't spot the unfairness because the price is flat and predictable.
Why we add a subscription
The build pack is one-off. The subscription is recurring. The subscription pays for hosting, SSL, daily backups, the in-product editor, the autonomous improvement engine, the quality gate, the support. The rationale is that a website's ongoing costs are real, and bundling them into a clean monthly fee is more honest than pretending they don't exist.
Most agencies hide the ongoing costs by quoting only the build, then surprising the customer six months later with separate invoices for hosting, certificate renewal, content updates, and emergency fixes. The customer thinks the site cost £3,000; the customer actually paid £3,000 plus £85/month plus £400 in fix-the-form invoices. Subscription pricing surfaces all of that on day one. There is no surprise.
The full rate card is on the pricing page. Per-page rates for rescue work, build packs for new builds, three subscription tiers. Cancel any time, two-click cancellation, your domain stays yours. The maths is in the open.