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Web Maintenance Fees

We are struggling with how to charge existing web clients for the endless calls to make small revisions to web sites. Does anyone set up web maintenance retainers, and if so, what fee structure is acceptable?

Thanks for any feedback.

Carolyn Lorence Business Manager Core Creative, Inc.

We have monthly retainers for our clients. We base our retainers on past activity. Some clients get charged $1500 a month, other gets charged $3000 a month. It only depends.

Mary Correia-Moreno Executive Vice President Stock/Alper & Associates
www.stockalper.com

We charge an agreed set price for "hosting" (only you can determine what is fair in your market - but do consider all the intangibles in maintaining your equipment and dedicated staff in keeping your network running - in our case we determined $300/month as fair). Then we charge an hourly rate ($150 for us) for changes. It is itemized and billed quarterly. (FYI: we bill hosting one quarter ahead, and itemized programming charges in arrears.)

Roxanne Cowan

We charge monthly charges of $3,000.00 based on the history of web revisions.

Ed Miller

We've set up monthly ballpark estimates for our clients' web maintenance jobs.

For example:

We have a handshake agreement with one client to charge up to $1000/month for the average month's worth of changes. We usually fall in the range of $500 to $1000 a month. If the volume of changes goes up or if we take on specific taks that would necessarily exceed the $1000 cap, it's justified on our invoice because we always itemize each task performed during the month.

This is a fairly informal means of charging for these fees, but it gives us plenty of flexibility.

Kristi Long Production Manager Blair Communications

After a job is complete we open up a separate maintenance job for that specific job which remains open for the year. Depending on the amount of updates, we bill every month or every quarter. Our maintenance fee is $105/hour.

Mary Elisa Norment eCommerce Design

We have setup an ongoing projects for each client's web site maintenance. (i.e. 2001 Web Site Maintenance). Then at the end of the year we open a new project for the next year.

Judi Durkin J2 Marketing Services

Web sites are the easiest media item for which to request revisions, because the changes are instantaneous (well, depending on your job schedule...). As such, we have found that clients think that "a few minor changes" here and there are just part of the process unless we clearly define it up-front.

What we do when we quote a project is first try to get them to commit to a time & materials basis. Failing that:

- Build into the quote how many "looks" the client will get to choose from.

- Build into the quote how many revisions the client is entitled to and make a clear statement about the hourly rate charged to make revisions beyond that point.

- Make a preliminary site map part of every project, and have the client provide you with approved text/copy for the pages. Have them sign off on the site map and the provided text so that if they do have revisions, you have a trail and they can definitely be considered beyond the original scope.

- If they are going to require ongoing changes, consider setting up a maintenance agreement. Estimate how many hours per month you think this client is going to take out of your schedule and charge accordingly for the retainer. For example, if you think you will need to do ten hours of revision work on the site per month, asking for a $500 - $800 month maintenance agreement is not out of line. If they have a problem with this, they could always fork out the $400 for Dreamweaver, learn about web server file structures and conventions, and take the time out of -their- schedule to keep their sites updated. :-)

Scot Robnett
www.kwpowell.com

We open jobs just for Web Maintenance, and all time goes in under the task WNMT at $100/hour. We then bill the client to actual on a monthly basis.

Jonathan Gundlach

We go through the same thing with one of our clients. What we do is set up new job numbers monthly for random kinds of web updates. At the end of every month, we bill the client for those updates for the actual time spent (we don't do estimates for those jobs).

Unfortunately, our client does not want to work on a retainer with us for those projects, so this is the best way we have come up with to charge for all of those little, endless revisions.

Denise Gianotti Coyne Communications

We constantly struggle with the same issues. For quite sometime we had a specific department doing just that. Now it flows through our regular department just using specific individuals.

As for retainers...we get them whenever possible. Even if they are only as little as $1000-$2000 per mo. [we have some clients that spend $25K per mo.] We bill hourly against the retainer and then provide detail at the end of each month. If the client goes over...we charge additional...if they go under...we credit forward to the next coming months. -- Not your "typical retainer" from an agency. But it works for us and our clients.

Good luck,

Shane Ettestad Founder & C.O.O. Interactive Sites, Inc.
www.interactivesites.com

It becomes important in time to get your client on a maintenance program or agreement - in order to continue making changes to the site. You might start by estimating the amount of time spent with these updates, including administration, phone, billing/bookeeping, tracking of hours, etc., and doubling it. Perhaps this number is now 3 hours per week. The agreement would be on a monthly basis, so you could charge your hourly rate x 3 x 4 weeks per month. You would invoice this the first week of each month, covering last month's work. This must be estimated and agreed upon in advance with your client, or you will never see a penny.

Once approved, we create a new job in C&P each month and track those month's time in that job. We also add expenses for hosting if applicable. If your monthly time approaches the 12 hour limit, you must adjust that amount accordingly, and again, make sure the client knows this in advance - the 12 hours are just an estimate and they will be billed based on actual time. When we are "too efficient" and fast, we do not penalize ourselves by reducing that estimated monthly - too much.

Joe Notovitz President and CEO Notovitz Communications

We too are asked to do maintenance on an ongoing basis for our clients HTML websites (and some upgrades to our dynamic sites). The way we handle it is to offer a 30 day warranty on all newly built sites and then at the same time introduce to our clients the option of a predetermined monthly retainer (or pay as you go based on an agreed hourly rate). This makes the guess work simple and our clients appreciate this arrangement.

Good luck,

Kermit G. Phillips, B. Comm Vice President Allura Communications Ltd.
www.allura.com