Retainer
A recurring fee for ongoing access or a defined monthly scope — predictable revenue, and the easiest agreement to lose money on.
A retainer is a recurring fee a client pays for ongoing work, on one of two logics: they are buying a defined amount of output each month, or they are buying access and priority. Which one it is has to be written down, because the client will assume the second and you will have priced the first.
The appeal is obvious — predictable revenue, no monthly sales cycle, a base under the practice. The failure is equally predictable. Unlike a project, a retainer has no finish line, so scope drifts upward month by month, each request too small to argue about. Eighteen months later you are delivering twice the original work at the original price and cannot point to the month it changed.
Three clauses prevent it: what is included, what happens to unused capacity, and a fixed review date. The review date matters most; it makes a price increase a scheduled event rather than a confrontation.
Worked: $3,000 a month for 20 hours is $150 an hour. Requests creep to 28 hours by month nine and the effective rate is $107 — a 29% pay cut nobody negotiated. A capacity cap plus a six-month review either restores the rate or converts the extra hours into a second line item.
Also known as
- monthly retainer
- ongoing agreement
Relevant for
- Creators
- A retainer is the way out of launch-to-launch income, but write down what a month buys — "ongoing support" is a promise with no edge, and the edge is what you are paid for.
- Business owners
- Put a fixed review date in every retainer; without one, a price increase becomes a confrontation you keep postponing while the rate quietly falls.