2026-10-09 ยท All notes
Dental website vs monthly agency pricing: the math
A monthly retainer looks small next to a build price. Run it out three years and the reverse is true.
Monthly agency pricing survives because the monthly number always looks small next to a build price. $200 a month next to a $249 one-time build sounds like the agency is the slower buy. Run the calendar properly and it is not.
The plain arithmetic
A modest retainer, the kind small practices are routinely quoted, at roughly $200 a month, comes to about $2,400 a year. The math with the offer model: the hosted build is $399, paid once. Three years of the retainer is about $7,200, against a site that was paid for in full inside the first two months and never billed again.
The pattern behind most retainers compounds it: the contract auto-renews, the fixes are quoted per change rather than included, and cancelling is followed by a fee you had not read. None of this is a scheme. It is a service model that prices the relationship, and the website is incidental to it.
What has to be true for the retainer to be worth it
Some vendors genuinely work every month: content, photography, raids on the search results. If your practice is publishing, advertising and measuring, a monthly relationship can be worth its cost, and the arithmetic above assumes you are not.
For a practice that wanted a working site and occasional edits, the honest comparison is not "small monthly versus big one-time", it is what is actually delivered per month. A site that already loaded fast and said the right things is usually not improved by the third consecutive month of retainer "optimizations" at all.
The one-time structure, in the same table
The files: $249 once, you host it anywhere. Hosted: $399 once, on your own domain, with hosting covered and nothing else recurring. Studio: $499 once, and it adds photography direction and a quarterly rebuild. Hosting on the upper tiers renews at $25 a month or $250 a year.
The build never recurs. If you cancel hosting, the site is still yours and still live on whatever you point it at, with no leaving fee.
What the math should push you toward
Whatever you buy, buy the files. Ownership is the part of the purchase that survives every other decision you will make. If the numbers above are persuasive, send us your details and read the site first; the FAQ answers what happens if you do not.