Developer hours & retainers
A WordPress developer on call, without the hiring.
Book a monthly bank of developer hours and send us anything — fixes, features, content changes, ongoing projects. One team that knows your site, a priority queue and a time log for every task.
Priority queue
Time log for every task
White-label for agencies
When you need a developer on call
Small jobs shouldn’t start from zero every time.
Finding, briefing and onboarding a new freelancer costs more time than most fixes take. A WordPress support hours retainer keeps one team close to your site, so a request goes straight to work.
Instead of new freelancers
One team that already knows your site
Your codebase, hosting and quirks are learned once during onboarding — not re-explained with every ticket.
Instead of waiting in line
A priority queue
Retainer requests go ahead of one-off work, with a first response within one business day.
Instead of surprise invoices
A log of every hour
Each task is logged with the time it took, so you always know where your hours went — and unused ones roll over a month.
Hire or retain?
A salary is only part of what a developer costs.
U.S. government data puts the median web developer salary above $90,000 — and for professional roles, wages make up only about two-thirds of what an employer actually pays per hour worked. Select a segment to see the rest.
$92,650
median annual wage for U.S. web developers, May 2025
$78.88
average employer cost per hour worked for professional and related roles
BLS — Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (Table 4)
31.5%
of that cost is benefits — leave, insurance, retirement and payroll taxes
BLS — Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (Table 4)
5%
projected growth in web developer and digital designer jobs, 2025–2035
Wages and salaries 68.5%
The pay itself. For management, professional and related occupations this is $54.06 of every $78.88 an employer spends per hour worked.
Paid leave 9.3%
Vacation, holidays and sick days — hours you pay for when no work gets done.
Insurance 7.4%
Health, life and disability insurance paid by the employer.
Legally required benefits 6.4%
Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation.
Supplemental pay 4.6%
Overtime, shift differentials and bonuses.
Retirement and savings 3.7%
Employer contributions to retirement and savings plans.
Source: BLS — Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (Table 4)
In-house vs retainer
What each hour of real work costs with a full-time hire.
A full-time developer costs the same whether you have 10 hours of WordPress work a month or 160. Enter the work you really have and see the effective hourly cost — then compare it with your retainer quote.
Defaults use the BLS median web developer wage and the 68.5% wage share for professional roles. Change any number to match your market.
If you hire full-time for this much work
$564Effective cost per hour of real work
- Total employer cost per year
- $135,255
- Benefits and taxes on top of salary
- $42,605
- Hours of work you have per year
- 240h
Leaves out recruiting, equipment, software, management time and cover for holidays — all of which push the in-house figure higher. A model, not a promise.
Source: BLS — Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (Table 4)
What your hours cover
Any WordPress task, no new quote each time.
Use the hours for whatever comes up this month. Bigger items get an estimate in hours before we start, so you decide what’s worth it. Tap a card for examples.
How requests work
From intro call to request done.
The first week sets everything up. After that, every request follows the same loop — and every minute shows up in your time log.
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Learn your site and your team
We talk through the site, who will send requests and the kind of work you expect.
- Your goals and backlog
- Who can request and approve
- How to prioritise
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Get access and a safe place to work
We review the codebase and hosting, and set up staging if you don’t have it.
- Access to site, hosting and repo
- Codebase review
- Staging environment
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One place for every request
A shared ticket board or Slack channel, with an agreed way to rank urgent versus nice-to-have.
- Shared ticket board or Slack channel
- Priority rules agreed
- First requests queued
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Send it, we triage it, we ship it
A first response within one business day; bigger items get an hours estimate before work begins.
- First response within one business day
- Built and checked on staging
- Shipped and logged
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See where the hours went
A time log for every task, and unused hours carried into next month.
- Time log per task
- One-month rollover
- Warning before you go over
Dedicated WordPress developer
At 40 hours a month, you get a named developer.
For agencies and publishers with steady development work, the largest retainer puts one developer on your site every week — someone who gets to know your code as well as your own team does.
- The same person every weekNo hand-offs and no re-briefing. Context carries over from one request to the next.
- A weekly check-inA short call to agree priorities and review what shipped.
- White-label when you need itWe work under your brand and in your tools, and never contact your clients unless you ask.
Shared ticket channel
Every request, in one thread.
Send requests through a shared ticket board or a Slack channel and follow progress in one place — no email chains, no “did you see my message?”.
- Status you can seeQueued, in progress, on staging, live — at a glance.
- Approvals before anything bigLarger requests come back with an hours estimate first, so you stay in control of the budget.
- Time logged per ticketEach task shows the time spent, so you can report it upwards or bill it on.
Estimate your retainer
How many developer hours does your site need?
Pick roughly how much work you send each month. Not sure? Start smaller — unused hours roll over a month, and we tell you before you go over.
Retainers run monthly with a three-month minimum. The more hours you book, the lower the hourly rate.
Retainer + care plan
Keep developer hours for development.
A retainer doesn’t include updates and backups by default. Most clients pair it with a care plan, so routine upkeep runs on its own schedule and never eats into build time.
- Care plan: the routineWeekly updates with visual checks, daily off-site backups, uptime and security monitoring.
- Retainer: the changesFixes, features and improvements from your backlog, logged hour by hour.
- One team for bothThe people who update your site are the people who build on it.
Questions, answered
Is a retainer cheaper than hiring a developer?
It depends on how much work you have. The BLS puts the median U.S. web developer wage at $92,650, and wages are only about 68.5% of the total cost of a professional employee. If you have a full-time workload, hiring can make sense; if you have 10–40 hours a month, a retainer usually costs far less per hour of real work.
What if I need more hours one month?
We tell you before going over, and nothing extra happens without your OK. Extra hours are billed at the hourly rate in your written quote, or you can move to a larger block.
How fast will you respond?
Retainer requests sit in a priority queue ahead of one-off work, with a first response within one business day. Bigger items get an hours estimate before we start.
What happens to hours I do not use?
Unused hours roll over for one month. Hours older than that expire.
Does a retainer include updates and backups?
Not by default. Most clients pair a retainer with a care plan so routine work does not use up developer hours.
Can agencies white-label the work?
Yes. We can work under your brand and in your tools, and we do not contact your clients directly unless you ask us to.
Can I use hours for a bigger project?
Yes. Hours work well for steady improvements. For a large fixed-scope build, a quote for custom WordPress development is often better value.
Get a free quote
Let’s build something great.
Tell us about your project and goals. A WordPress engineer — not a salesperson — will reply within one business day with a plan and a fixed price.
- Free, no-obligation quote within 24 hours
- NDA available on request
- Fixed price — you approve the scope before work starts
