Pricing & Positioning

TL;DR

We're a productized vertical SaaS company. Small businesses and nonprofits subscribe to a complete, working website with built-in operational tools across three stacking tiers — $50 / $100 / $200 per month. Each tier is a strict superset of the one below it: Starter is the basics, Standard adds operational tools, Pro adds AI and advanced features. Customer brings their own brand assets; we handle everything else.

Premium custom services handle clients whose needs don't fit the SaaS box. Foundation Custom builds start at $1,000 and price up à la carte; bespoke AI workflow builds start at $15,000+ with a paid Discovery Sprint required.

Year 1 ships our first vertical (sports nonprofits, leveraging the Sheldon build). Year 3 the SaaS is the primary revenue line, with custom work as the high-margin sidebar.

The Model

Two products under one roof, both supported by the same retainer structure and contract stack:

1. Productized Vertical SaaS — standardized monthly subscription, vertical-specific, three stacking tiers. Starter ($50/mo), Standard ($100/mo), Pro ($200/mo). Each tier inherits everything below it and adds a new bucket of features on top. The primary offering — most marketing, content, and acquisition effort lives here.
2. Premium Custom Services — Foundation Custom builds from $1,000 (with custom à la carte add-ons), or bespoke AI Workflow Builds from $15,000+ (Discovery-led). The secondary tier — for clients whose needs don't fit the SaaS box.

We don't bill clients hourly under either model. Our AI tooling delivers in a fraction of the time a traditional agency takes; hourly billing would punish our own efficiency. We capture that margin internally.

Productized Vertical SaaS — The Primary Offering

Vertical-specific SaaS sold across three tiers. Theme variation and tier-feature variation only — same code, same database, same deployment pipeline for every customer. Cost-to-serve target is under two hours per customer per month at the Standard tier, which makes 100+ accounts manageable for a two-person team.

The math

100 customers at a blended ~$105/mo (30% Starter / 50% Standard / 20% Pro) = ~$126,000/year in recurring revenue, plus ~$54,000 in setup fees and à la carte. The lower tier prices are a deliberate accessibility play — the bet is that $50/mo is enough of a hook to drive substantially more signups than higher entry pricing would. The model only works if volume materializes: at 100 customers we make less than the previous $90/$149/$249 plan; at 200 we make significantly more. Track signups against signup-rate assumptions monthly.

The three stacking tiers

Each tier is a strict superset of the one below — Standard includes everything in Starter, Pro includes everything in Standard. Customers self-select on the bucket of features they actually need. Most pick Standard. Starter exists so price is never the reason a prospect walks away; Pro bundles the operational AI features into a single subscription.

What every tier includes

Regardless of tier, every customer gets:

• Custom-branded site using the customer's own logo, colors, and fonts (they bring the assets)
• Domain setup, SSL, hosting on our infrastructure
• Monthly maintenance, security patches, uptime monitoring
• Standard support (Pro gets priority support tier)

Customer brings their own brand assets. If they don't have those, that's outside scope — they source them before onboarding.

One-off add-ons (background option)

If a customer wants a single feature without jumping tiers, the full Add-ons & Services Library below is available — recurring fees added to the monthly, one-time fees billed at signup or as change orders. Most customers won't see this menu. It's a fallback for unusual asks; the primary sales motion is "pick the tier that fits."

ARPU and tier mix

If signups distribute roughly 30% Starter / 50% Standard / 20% Pro, blended ARPU is ~$105/mo plus an average ~$540 setup. At 100 active accounts that's ~$126k/yr recurring + ~$54k setup = ~$180k Year 1 total at 100 accounts. At 200 accounts (the volume bet): ~$252k recurring + ~$108k setup = ~$360k Year 1. The Pro tier rolls what used to be recurring à la carte items into a single subscription — easier to commit to, stickier once committed.

SaaS billing & commitment

• Setup fee charged on signup (one-time, non-refundable): $299 / $499 / $999 by tier
• Monthly recurring billed via Stripe on the signup anniversary
• Annual prepay option saves ~16% across all tiers: $499 / $999 / $1,999 per year
• Customers can upgrade or downgrade tiers at any monthly renewal — no penalty, no contract gymnastics
• À la carte one-time fees added to setup invoice; bespoke recurring add-ons added to monthly
• 90-day minimum on monthly subscriptions; cancel any time after

Vertical strategy — sports nonprofits first

The Sheldon Water Polo build is 80% of a sports nonprofit product. We productize that vertical first because the codebase already exists, and the audience (school sports clubs, parent boosters, volunteer-run leagues) is large enough to support 100+ accounts. Subsequent verticals: outdoor recreation / guide services, then small service businesses (salons, ski clubs).

Premium Custom Services — The Stretch Tier

For clients whose needs don't fit the productized SaaS — non-productized verticals, unique design requirements, or bespoke AI workflows. Two engagement types:

Foundation Custom — what the $1,000 base includes

The $1,000 base buys a working starter — a single-page or simple multi-page site with the customer's content, basic forms, hosting, and SSL. Anything beyond that — design, payments, integrations, AI features, content — is priced from the Add-ons & Services Library below. Most real engagements end up in the $3,000–$8,000 range after typical add-ons.

Care retainer ($500/mo) attaches to every Foundation Custom build post-launch. Discovery Sprint required for any engagement projected above $5,000 or involving AI work; optional below that.

Add-ons & Services Library

Every system, feature, and service we sell — applied à la carte to either SaaS subscriptions or Foundation Custom builds. SaaS bundles many of these into the Standard ($149) and Pro ($249) tiers already; Foundation Custom prices each individually on top of the $1,000 base. Specific prices refine during the pilot — these are the right shape, not the final numbers.

One-time setup & build add-ons

Recurring add-ons (any tier)

Bespoke / project-priced

These quote individually because scope varies wildly. Always preceded by a paid Discovery Sprint.

Pricing Rationale

The numbers above are intentionally below specialist agency floors and above commodity-freelancer ceilings. Nothing here is aspirational; it's where the work actually lives in the 2026 market.

Reference points

• A graphic designer charges $1,500–$5,000 for a single logo
• A wedding photographer charges $3,500–$8,000 for one day of work
• An attorney drafts a single contract for $2,000–$3,000
• A plumber installs a water heater for $3,000–$5,000
• Squarespace + Mailchimp + Wave (DIY stack) ≈ $80/mo with no integration, no AI, no support

$149/mo for a vertically tailored, fully integrated site with built-in payments, calendar, and AI features sits well above the DIY stack and well below local agency retainers ($500–$3,500/mo). It's a fair price, not a stretch one. $10,000+ for premium custom work is competitively priced against PNW agencies that quote $15k–$30k for comparable scopes.

Why we don't bill hourly

Our AI tooling lets us deliver in a fraction of the time a traditional agency takes. Billing by the hour would punish us for our own efficiency: a $10,000 fixed-price project completed in three days yields a strong effective margin; the same project billed hourly at $150/hour yields $3,600. Clients buy outcomes, not our hours. The margin captured by AI is ours to keep — it's the entire reason this business model works at all.

Why we lead with productized pricing, not "value-based"

Most SMBs in our band ($500k–$50M revenue) have weak internal analytics — they often can't articulate their own customer acquisition cost or hours-saved baseline. That makes "we'll take 20% of the value we create" impossible to negotiate honestly. Productized fixed pricing solves this: the customer knows the number, we know our delivery cost, the conversation is about scope, not math the customer can't do. Performance-tied pricing comes later, with clients who have mature analytics.

Retainers (post-launch, both tracks)

Discovery Sprint

$1,500–$3,000, 1–2 weeks. Required for any Premium Custom engagement. Not required for SaaS signups — the SaaS onboarding flow handles that.

Deliverables:

• Technical scope document with explicit "will / won't do" perimeter
• Data readiness assessment
• ROI projection
• Fixed-price implementation quote

Credited 100% toward the build if they proceed. Scope-creep insurance and free-consulting killer. Prospects who won't pay $1,500 to plan won't honor a $20,000 quote — qualify them out at the cheapest possible step.

Payment Terms

Productized SaaS

• $499 base setup charged on signup (one-time, non-refundable)
• $149/mo recurring via Stripe, billed on the signup anniversary
• Annual prepay option ($1,499/yr) charged at signup or any renewal
• À la carte one-time fees added to the setup invoice
• À la carte recurring fees added to monthly billing
• 90-day minimum on monthly subscriptions; cancel-any-time after

Premium Custom — 40 / 40 / 20

Not 50/50. Clients stall the launch and we starve.

The "30 days after MVP" clause is the load-bearing piece. It guarantees we're paid for technical labor even if the client indefinitely stalls the public launch.

Contract Stack (non-negotiable, both tracks)

1. Scope perimeter — explicit "what the AI will and won't do." Anything outside requires a Change Order at a $500 minimum.
2. AI Addendum — IP carve-out: client owns final outputs; we and our vendors retain underlying models, prompts, and tooling.
3. No-Training clause — guarantees client data is not used to train public foundational models. Enterprise API tiers only.
4. Hallucination liability shift — outputs delivered "as-is," human-in-the-loop required for consequential decisions.
5. Pass-through cost clause — token, compute, hosting costs billed at provider rate, no markup, no risk to us.
6. Change Order template — flat $500 minimum so small asks become real revenue.

One-time investment: ~$2,000–$3,000 with a contracts attorney to draft a master services agreement and SaaS terms-of-service we reuse forever.

Sales Playbook

Default qualification flow: SaaS first, Premium Custom second, walk away third.

Pipeline Mapping

Categorize every lead as SaaS-fit, Premium Custom, or unqualified. Default everyone to SaaS unless their requirements clearly exceed the box.

Year 1 → Year 3 Evolution

Things to Pressure-Test

• SaaS demand for sports nonprofits — the vertical is the bet. If Eugene City WP and Willamette HS WP both refuse the $499 + $149/mo pitch and demand custom, the SaaS thesis is wrong for this vertical and we shelve it. Don't iterate the SaaS for two years before validating with two real customers.
• Builder-time allocation between SaaS and Custom — Foundation Custom is more revenue per customer than SaaS, but it consumes builder hours we need for SaaS product development. If Custom builds eat >60% of available builder time in any given month, the SaaS roadmap stalls and we lose the long-term compounding play. Track total Custom-build hours monthly; treat that ratio as the leading indicator, not raw revenue mix.
• Foundation Custom add-on transparency — leads expecting "$1,000 = a website" will feel bait-and-switched if they're quoted $5,000 after add-ons. Show the Add-ons & Services Library upfront in every conversation. Build a public pricing page that walks through the math.
• Volume sensitivity at $50/$100/$200 — the lower entry pricing is a deliberate accessibility bet. At 100 active accounts the lower tiers underperform the $90/$149/$249 plan by ~$58k/yr. The math only works if accessibility drives more signups (target: 150+ active accounts by month 12). If signup velocity is flat through month 6, raise prices back up — accessibility was a hook, not the strategy.
• Tier upgrade rates within SaaS — Starter at $50/mo is intentionally a hook, but if >50% of signups land at Starter and never upgrade, the model is being undercut by its own entry price. Track upgrade rates monthly. If Standard isn't pulling its weight as the natural anchor, widen the Standard-vs-Starter feature gap (more in Standard, fewer in Starter) before considering price changes.
• Cost-to-serve discipline on SaaS — the math only works under two hours/month per account. Customers who demand custom feature requests on the SaaS plan must be politely upgraded to Premium Custom or asked to wait for a vertical roadmap update. Bespoke work at SaaS pricing is the failure mode.
• The Year 1 → Year 3 acquisition pipeline shift — Year 1's network-driven sales motion does not produce SaaS volume. Year 2 requires real content, SEO, and referral mechanics to be working. Start that work in Year 1 even though it won't pay off until later.
• Two-person context-switching — supporting 30+ SaaS accounts plus running Premium Custom builds simultaneously will saturate the builder. The standardized SaaS stack must stay rigorously standardized — bespoke creep destroys the model.
• Year 3 fractional math — $8k–$12k/mo retainers across 4–5 clients at 1–2 days/week each saturate the builder. By Year 3 the SaaS revenue should be doing most of the work, not the fractional retainers.

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