Pricing — 🔒 LOCKED 2026-07-29

Working doc for the pricing model behind the pamphlets and every client quote.

🔒 THE LOCKED MODEL — this is the answer; everything else in this doc is supporting research

Locked by Daniel 2026-07-29 (logged in DECISIONS.md; first applied on Nadia's clients/nadia/INVOICE-2026-001.html). These two numbers-sets are settled — quote them, don't re-derive them:

1. Work is billed hourly: R1 000/hr, minimum 1 hour, in half-hour increments thereafter. This is the client-facing rate and it appears on invoices. It replaces the old "R900/hr internal shadow rate never shown to a client" posture everywhere.

2. The monthly care plan is 3 tiers (replaces the old Essential R550 / Managed R1 250 pair):

Tier	Price	The one-line pitch
Host	R450/mo	We keep it online. Nothing proactive; requests at R1 000/hr, min 1 hr.
Maintain	R850/mo	Host + monthly security & performance checks + one 1-hour ticket.
Grow	R2 500/mo	Maintain + ~2 hrs/mo of active growth work + a monthly report.

Full inclusions in §5. Founding clients get 50% off their chosen tier for 12 months.

3. Builds are advertised at plain fixed prices — Refresh R2 500 / New site R3 500

• Maintain R850/mo, no discount framing; urgency is the spring launch campaign ("held to 1 Dec 2026"). Hourly is for bespoke work, overruns and anything outside a published scope. Settled 2026-07-29 — see §8.1.

Market anchors below are unchanged and still valid — the 2026-07-23 therapist research (therapist-pricing-research.md) and the 2026-07-24 Firecrawl live scan both still hold. Note their recommendations were written against the old two-tier model and are superseded by the box above; their sourced competitor numbers are not.

1. The philosophy: cheap door, recurring engine

• The build (once-off) is customer acquisition. Keep it low so the "yes" is easy — this is the hook that beats Wix/agencies. It doesn't need to be where you make money.
• The subscription is the business. Recurring revenue is the whole point of the volume model — it compounds, it's predictable, and it's what a business (vs a freelancer) is actually worth.
• So: raise the subscription, keep the build entry low. That's the lever. Daniel's instinct to push subscription prices up is correct — the builds can stay cheap as the acquisition offer.

2. Why "cheap + volume" is a trap (the real reason to raise prices)

The limit on a solo operator isn't cash cost — hosting is ~R0 (Cloudflare Pages, static, no WordPress maintenance). The limit is your time.

• Every live site needs some attention: monitoring, updates, the odd support message, small fixes. Call it a blended ~30 min/site/month across a portfolio (some months zero, some a ticket).
• 200 sites × 30 min = 100 hours/month — that's more than half your working month gone just on maintenance, before you've sold or built anything. Pure volume eats the very time you need to grow.
• Fewer sites at a higher price = the same MRR with far less support load — and room to keep selling. That's the business case for raising prices: not greed, sustainability.

Takeaway: target ~80–150 well-priced sites, not 200 cheap ones. Price so each site pays for the time it costs you, plus margin.

3. Cost to serve (per site / month)

→ A subscription below ~R400/mo doesn't reliably cover your own time. R250 was working for free.

4. Market anchors (from research, 2026)

• SA average managed package: R399/mo; full managed (design+host+SSL+SEO) R1,200–R7,999/mo; maintenance retainers R500–R2,000/mo; hosting alone R107–R500.
• Subscription-model peers: WebsiteMike $249/mo (~R4,600), Web 300 $300–500/mo, Mike Web Developer £39/mo (R900). Global care plans cluster **$100–250/mo (R1,850–4,600)**.
• Where the locked tiers land: Host R450 sits just above the SA average managed package (R399) and inside the hosting-only band; Maintain R850 sits mid-way in the R500–2,000 maintenance-retainer band; Grow R2 500 is at the low end of full-managed (R1,200–7,999). All three are a fraction of the international subscription players (~R1,850–4,600).

Therapist / health-practice specific (2026-07-23 research — full sourcing in therapist-pricing-research.md):

• Psychology Today ZA — R199/mo (localised): the dominant substitute a solo therapist compares against. Affordability is fine; the value story (owned branded site vs a rented directory row) is the real sell — and at Maintain R850 you're selling a working hour every month, not a listing.
• Storyteller — R499/mo +VAT (≈R574): the closest ZA productised recurring health competitor (doctor sites). Host R450 undercuts it; Maintain R850 does not — against Storyteller, Maintain has to win on the included hour + the checks, not on price. (Under the old R550 Essential this was a price-win claim; it no longer is. Don't reuse the old line.)
• ZA WaaS peers: Web Partner R299/499/699, VegaTech R395/650, no setup fee. Host R450 sits inside this band; Maintain R850 sits above it — deliberately, because none of them do monthly work for you.
• ZA medical-agency once-off: iNet Xis R6,500→R25,000 (entry R6,500 = the group-build number); Bunnypants healthcare R8,980→R27,980. Freelancer small site R5k–15k; agency R6.5k–17k.
• WTP: psychologist collects ~R1,250/session (medical-aid code 86205); solo gross ~R42k–110k/mo. A R450–850 care plan is ~0.4–2% of solo gross (and a R1,250–1,750 group plan ~0.3–0.4% of a 4-person group's) — affordability is never the limit. Maintain still costs less than one session/mo.

Live-scan validation 2026-07-24 (self-hosted Firecrawl — full doc: research/2026-07-24-firecrawl-market-scan.md). Every anchor above held up against the live sites (Web Partner R299/499/699, VegaTech R395/650, Storyteller R499+VAT, PsychToday R199, iNet Xis R6.5k→25k, GoodX R450–2,500). Two new competitive facts to fold into the WhatsApp add-on / product line: (1) BizAI (bizai.co.za) is a Claude-powered SA AI-CRM platform (R599–7,500/mo) that bundles a free website from R1,850/mo — direct pressure on both the WhatsApp assistant +R450/mo add-on and the care plan; needs a positioning answer. (2) The cheapest human phone-answering is R790/mo (200 calls, virtualreceptionist.co.za), not the R6k+ assumed — so the R1,800/mo WhatsApp product should sell on after-hours capture / no-shows / WhatsApp-native + booking write-back, not "cheaper than a receptionist." Also: Navitas ships a "booking on your own website" embed widget (R199–399/mo) — the literal engine for the §5b "keep your booking tool, get a real site" pitch.

5. The structure

Build (once-off) — advertised as fixed prices, no discount (§8.1)

Includes a light brand setup (colour, type, logo treatment). Advertised plainly with a launch window; hourly (R1 000/hr) covers bespoke work and anything outside a published scope.

Care plan (monthly) — 🔒 LOCKED 2026-07-29 (logged in DECISIONS.md)

Supersedes the old Essential (R550) / Managed (R1 250) pair. Work outside a plan's included hours is billed at R1 000/hr, minimum 1 hour (the client-facing rate — also locked 2026-07-29).

• Host is the floor for keeping a site we built online — nothing proactive happens.
• Maintain is the default sell and the campaign tier: the checks + a use-it-or-we-use-it hour. "Your changes first; if you don't need any, the hour goes into SEO" — the hour is never wasted, which is the answer to "why am I paying monthly for nothing".
• Grow absorbs the old "growth partnership from R2 500/mo" add-on as a proper tier.
• Every plan is month-to-month, cancel any time, no lock-in.

Add-ons

Visibility (SEO bundle) from R2 500 · Brand pack (deeper identity) from R4 500 · Conversion copy from R1 500 · WhatsApp assistant from R450/mo. (The old "Growth partnership / marketing from R2 500/mo" add-on is retired — it is now the Grow tier.)

5b. Group / medical-practice tier — re-derived onto the locked tiers 2026-07-29

For multi-practitioner practices (psychology "& Associates", family/GP practices, medical rooms) — a shared, branded practice site with every practitioner's profile. Flat, banded by practice size — NOT per-seat (a website is shared infrastructure; per-seat reads as cost-disconnected and invites pushback). Groups always get at least Maintain-level service (more people = more edits/support).

Per-practitioner add-on: full profile page + individual booking calendar + bio SEO — +R750–1 000 build / +R150–200/mo each (beyond the ~4 included in Standard). Revenue grows with the practice without per-seating the base.

Why these numbers (they moved when the solo tiers moved — the old R950/R1 250/R1 500–1 750 band was set against Essential R550 / Managed R1 250, which no longer exist): each band is Maintain (R850) × ~1.5 / 2 / 2.6+, so a group never pays less than a premium solo client and the ladder stays proportional to support load. All three still sit below every anchor — 4× solo Maintain is R3 400, an amortised R40k+ agency build is ~R1 700/mo before hosting, and 4 stacked Psychology Today listings are R796 for a rented directory row. A group of 4 pays ~R438/practitioner. Derived, not dictated — this is the one part of the locked model Daniel hasn't said out loud; see §8.2.

Anchor the group price out loud against: 4× the solo plan · a R40k+ agency build amortised (~R1 700/mo before they even host it) · what N therapists already pay for rented, un-owned directory listings.

Booking gap to lean on: ZA practice-mgmt tools (GoodX, Cliniko, RecoMed, BookEm) do booking but none bundle a marketing website, and practices' booking tooling is fragmented. A productised site that cleanly embeds their existing booking flow is an unfilled gap — a strong pitch (e.g. "keep your Cliniko, get a real site").

6. MRR on the locked tiers

The old "three postures" table (Volume / Balanced / Premium) is retired — it existed to choose between Essential/Managed price points, and that choice is now made. What matters instead is the tier mix, which is an outcome to watch, not a decision to make:

Hourly work and add-ons sit on top. Even the conservative mix beats the old Balanced posture (~R76k @ 100), because Maintain at R850 earns more than Essential at R550 did — and Host at R450 still clears the ~R400/mo cost-to-serve floor in §3. The lever to watch is Host → Maintain conversion, not the headline price: every client moved up one tier is +R400/mo for one hour of work.

7. Discounts — founding-client policy

Early clients get a real, time-boxed discount (generous now, protects the list price long-term, creates a gentle "lock in year-one pricing" urgency). List price is always shown, struck through, so the value anchors.

Nadia (founding client): (updated 2026-07-30 — actual invoice INV-2026-001 went hourly, not the Refresh package)

• Build: 50% off → billed hourly, 5.5h × R1 000 = R5 500 R2 750. This is printed on the invoice, as a discount line against the sub-total.
• Subscription: 50% off for 12 months on whichever tier she picks — Host R225/mo · Maintain R425/mo · Grow R1 250/mo, reverting to list after a year. ⚠️ Not printed on the invoice. Per §8.1 the founding trade is offered in person, off-print, so INV-2026-001 shows the list prices (R450 / R850 / R2 500) and the founding care rate is made verbally when she picks a tier. Say the revert date out loud at the same time — see clients/nadia/PAYMENTS-AND-BILLING.md §3.

8. Open decisions (for Daniel)

The old list (which posture / which care-plan price / group monthly) is resolved by the locked model. Two real questions remain.

✅ 8.1 How builds are advertised — RESOLVED by Daniel 2026-07-29

He picked while choosing the therapist-pamphlet cover band: "leave the discount off, we will just do fixed price" and "this is going to be a limited time offer." So:

• Campaign material advertises plain fixed prices — Refresh R2 500 / New site R3 500 build + Maintain R850/mo. No strikethrough, no 50%-off framing.
• Urgency comes from a launch window, not a discount — the spring launch campaign: "spring launch pricing, held to 1 Dec 2026." (Daniel moved the date out from 31 Aug on 2026-07-29 — the original window was 33 days and had been sent to nobody.)
• Hourly (R1 000/hr) is for bespoke work, overruns and anything outside a published scope — which is exactly how INV-2026-001 behaved. Fixed-fee advertised, hourly for the rest.
• Nadia's founding 50% is untouched — that was a client deal, already invoiced, not campaign copy. The founding trade (discount for case-study rights) stays available in person, off-print.

Logged in DECISIONS.md 2026-07-29. The whole pamphlet library was swept the same day.

✅ Site brought in line 2026-07-29. leachie/src/lib/components/PamHero.svelte + src/routes/+page.svelte + src/lib/data/site.ts now show plain fixed prices and the spring launch campaign; the .pwas strikethrough style was deleted from pamphlet.css so it can't come back. Built and screenshot-verified, committed and deployed separately — check git -C leachie log and the CF Pages leachie project before assuming what is live.

8.2 Group tier monthly (§5b) — confirm the derived numbers

R1 250 / R1 750 / R2 250+ were re-derived from Maintain when the solo tiers changed; Daniel hasn't said them out loud. Confirm, or set your own band.