PRICING THAT HOLDS

There is a market for cheap WordPress builds. There always will be. You cannot win that market and run a sustainable agency at the same time. The hourly rate that sustains a London-based agency in 2026 sits around 100 to 250 USD per hour for senior delivery, depending on positioning. The hourly rate that wins the cheap-build segment is 25 to 60 USD. The cost structure of running an agency in any first-tier city does not reconcile with the lower number.

Pricing power follows positioning. A specialist agency commands premium rates because it competes with a smaller pool. A generalist agency competes with everyone and ends up at the floor of the market.

Hourly billing punishes efficiency. The faster you deliver, the less you earn. Project pricing rewards efficiency and aligns incentive with the client. Use hourly only for retainers and discovery work where the scope is genuinely uncertain.

My typical engagement pricing in 2026: a brochure WordPress site at 8K to 30K USD. A custom-coded marketing site at 25K to 90K USD. A headless WordPress migration at 25K to 90K USD. A directory or listing platform at 18K to 90K USD. Below those ranges I am competing with offshore freelance markets; above them I need to be selling outcomes, not deliverables.

Project work funds month-to-month operations. Retainers fund predictable salaries, predictable margin, and the long-term defensibility of the business. Aim for retainer revenue to cover at least 60 percent of fixed costs by the time the agency reaches ten people. Below that, every market downturn becomes existential.

Care plan retainers for WordPress maintenance start at 200 to 500 USD per month for solo sites, 1,000 to 2,000 USD for agency portfolios, and scale up. The margin on retainer work is consistently higher than on project work, partly because the client relationship is already established.

AI changed delivery economics in 2026. A six-week build is now a three to four week build with the same engineer at Seahawk. The right response is to hold prices steady and let the productivity gain flow through to margin, not to pass it through as a discount.

Clients are paying for the outcome, not the time. As long as outcomes hold or improve, capturing the productivity gain as margin is the right business decision. The agencies that pass it through as discount are commoditising themselves.