Monthly EmDash optimization retainer
A small block of senior time per month: performance, content, plugin work, and the things your team does not have time for.
Most agencies sell retainers as a discounted hour bank. This one is closer to a standing appointment. $500 to $2,000 per month buys a senior developer who already knows your codebase, on call for the small asks your team cannot afford to context-switch on. The bullet list above is concrete; the day-to-day rhythm is plainer than that — a ticket lands in Slack on Tuesday, a PR opens by Wednesday, you review and merge or push back, and a short monthly note summarizes what shipped versus what is queued. Response inside one business day, asynchronous work through the backlog, no scheduling penalty for adding hours mid-month. Unused hours roll forward one month and then expire, so no account accumulates twelve weeks of debt to dump in week thirteen. Pause anytime after month one. The fit is sites in the 60-to-90-day window after a migration or setup, plus marketing teams whose internal dev capacity is already booked.
Built for the team that wants this solved.
- Sites that just migrated and want a steady hand on the wheel for 60–90 days.
- Marketing teams who want a developer-on-demand for plugin tweaks, custom content types, and quarterly perf passes.
- Anyone whose internal dev team is at capacity but has a backlog of small EmDash and Astro asks.
6 things, in scope from day one.
- 01 4–16 hours of senior dev time per month, depending on tier.
- 02 Monthly Lighthouse + Core Web Vitals report with prioritized fixes.
- 03 Quarterly content-type and schema review (catch drift before it costs you).
- 04 First-party plugin tweaks (GA4/GTM, schema.org, redirects, custom fields).
- 05 Slack / email response within one business day.
- 06 Pause anytime, no minimum term beyond month one.
One phase, then you ship.
Monthly cadence. We check in week 1, ship through the month, report week 4.
Investment
Monthly retainer.
Tiers up to $2,000/mo. Final scope after intro call.
3 steps. No surprises.
The tools we'll be using.
Frequently asked.
What happens to unused hours?
They roll forward one month, then expire. We will not let you accumulate a year of debt and then dump it on us in week 12.
Can I add hours mid-month?
Yes. We bill them at the same rate, no scheduling penalty.
Do you do design work on retainer?
Light design (token tweaks, component variants). Full redesigns are a separate engagement.
Not quite a fit? Try one of these.
Field notes from the work.
Ready to talk?
30 minutes, no obligation. We'll either tell you it makes sense — or that it doesn't.