Do I need a retainer if you built my site?

Builds include 30 days of free Care post-launch. After that, you have three options: hire someone in-house, go without (works for static sites with no dependencies), or take a Care retainer. Most clients pick Care because the alternative is reading Vercel docs at 2am when something breaks.

What's the difference between Care, Care + Growth, and Care + Growth + AI Ops?

Care ($499/month), keep it running: hosting, security, backups, monitoring, 8 hours/month of small features. Care + Growth ($999/month), keep it running and growing: 16 hours/month + monthly SEO + CRO + A/B tests + 1 blog post. Care + Growth + AI Ops ($1,499/month), full operating partnership: 24 hours/month + everything in Growth + AI workflow operations + quarterly AI roadmap + 4 posts/month.

Can I really pause or cancel any month?

Yes. 14 days written notice (email is fine) and the next month doesn't bill. We keep the runbook, hand over admin access, and you walk. We've had clients pause for a quiet quarter and return six months later — no penalty, no friction.

What if I need more hours than my tier covers?

Two options: bump up a tier, or pay overage at the published hourly rate ($49/hour in 2026). We notify you when you cross 80% of monthly hours so there are no surprise overage bills.

Do hours roll over month to month?

Yes — unused hours roll forward up to 1 month. So a quiet January becomes a busy February at no extra cost. Beyond 1 month they expire — we want you to use them, not bank them.

What's covered in 'on-call'?

Production issues — site down, payments broken, login failing, errors spiking. We respond within 24 hours by default; faster on Tier 2 and Tier 3. We don't promise 5-minute response — that's a different price tier than what we sell.

Will you take over a site you didn't build?

Yes — most retainer clients we onboard had a previous agency. We do a 1-2 week takeover audit (code review, deps, secrets, hosting, monitoring) and then start. The audit is separately scoped before the retainer kicks in.

Run · Always-On Partnership

Always-On Partnership for businesses that want one team that built it, runs it, and keeps growing it

The 'looked after forever' promise. Pause or cancel any tier with 14 days notice. No annual contracts. We earn your business every month.

Get a Quote See pricing

95+ projects shipped5 case studies liveDubai · Bangalore4.5/5 across reviews

What we build

Every sub-service inside Always-On Partnership

Scan the list. If your need is here, we ship it. If it's not, we'll tell you who does.

Sub-service	What it is
On-call team (Slack channel + 24h response)	A shared channel with your engineers. SLA tracked. No ticket queue.
Bug fixes + small features	Hours pooled monthly. Use them for whatever ships value this month.
Hosting management (Vercel, Cloudflare, Hetzner)	Bills, scaling, deploys, DNS, SSL — handled by people who do this every day.
Security headers + HTTPS hardening	CSP, HSTS, secrets rotation, dependency upgrades. Quietly continuous.
Backup + disaster recovery	Daily backups, restore drills, runbook for the bad day.
Uptime + error monitoring	Sentry, BetterStack, custom — alert before your customers do.
Content updates	Pricing changes, new pages, image swaps — same-day for small asks.
Quarterly review	Roadmap conversation. What's working, what to build next, what to retire.
Monthly SEO improvements (Tier 2+)	Schema audits, content refreshes, broken link cleanup, snippet wins.
Conversion rate optimization (Tier 2+)	A/B tests on the pages that move revenue. Real numbers, real lift.
AI workflow operations (Tier 3)	n8n / Make / chatbot tuning. Eval re-runs. Model upgrades.
Quarterly AI roadmap session (Tier 3)	What new AI capability ships next quarter — scoped against your data.

Why Pikasso for Always-On Partnership

What you don't get from a typical web shop

01	Pause or cancel with 14 days notice. No annual lock-in. No early-termination fees.
02	Same team that built it runs it. Not a transfer to a 'managed services' desk.
03	Slack channel beats ticket queue. Real engineers, real responses, real fixes.
04	Pooled monthly hours roll over by design — quiet months pay for the busy ones.

How we build it

Four stages. Honest timelines. No reveals.

Onboarding takes 1 week — Slack channel, runbook handover, monitoring stand-up, secrets rotation. After that, ongoing operation per the tier you pick.

Stage	What happens
01 Discover	We map the buyer, the offer, the success metric, and the constraints. The proposal is what we agree to ship.
02 Design	Wireframes, then high-fidelity in your brand. We test the user flow before we build it, not after.
03 Build	Two-week sprints with a working demo at the end of each. You see progress weekly, not at the reveal.
04 Launch & Care	30 days of free Care post-launch. Then optional Always-On Partnership, the same team that built it runs it.

Tech stack

What we actually build with

Boring is good. Battle-tested is better. Every choice here exists in a real project we ship and run today.

Vercel
Cloudflare
Hetzner
Sentry
BetterStack
Slack
Linear
Supabase
GitHub Actions

Selected work

Pikasso in production

Education12 weeks

GoAusbildung

AI-Powered Job Aggregator Marketplace

Germany's first comprehensive job aggregator marketplace connecting international students with 25,000+ real Ausbildung positions from verified German companies, featuring AI-powered preparation tools, two-sided platform architecture, and global reach across 223 countries

26.4x lead increase8.3% conversion rate85,000+ monthly traffic

Read the case study

Education6 weeks

Qogent Global

AI-Powered Study Abroad Platform

Comprehensive study abroad platform democratizing international education with zero-commission model, serving 51+ countries with 14 AI-powered tools, email automation, and 88% admission success rate

2000+ lead increase15.5% conversion rate45,000+ monthly traffic

Read the case study

What clients say about Always-On Partnership

Plain words from people who hired us

Persona-based snapshots. Names, cities, and companies are illustrative; the patterns and outcomes are drawn from real engagements.

“We retainered with Pikasso instead of hiring a full-stack engineer. Saved about $14K a year, got senior judgment calls instead of a junior to manage, and our hosting + analytics + small features all just kept moving.”

“Pause-anytime is real. We paused 3 months while we figured out a brand pivot, restarted in May, and the same team picked up where we left off. No relationship rebuild, no re-onboarding fees.”

“The monthly brief is the unlock. We always know what shipped, what is in flight, and what got deprioritized. Most agencies wait for us to chase. Pikasso just sends it on the 1st.”

Pricing

Honest numbers, published

Care

Keep it running. The baseline every live site needs.

$499per month

On-call team (Slack channel, 24h response SLA)
Bug fixes + small features (8 hours/month, roll over 1 month)
Hosting management (Vercel, Cloudflare, Hetzner)
Security headers + HTTPS hardening
Daily backups + disaster recovery
Uptime + error monitoring
Content updates (same-day for small asks)
Quarterly review

Start with Care

Care + Growth

Keep it running and growing. The default for active businesses.

$999per month

Everything in Care, plus:
16 hours/month feature work (vs 8)
Monthly SEO improvements
Conversion rate optimization
A/B testing setup and analysis
Monthly performance report
1 blog post/month (SEO-targeted)

Start with Care + Growth

Care + Growth + AI Ops

Full operating partnership. For businesses where AI is core.

$1,499per month

Everything in Care + Growth, plus:
24 hours/month feature work
AI workflow operations (n8n / Make / chatbot tuning)
Monthly AI tool improvements
Quarterly AI roadmap session
Priority support (faster response, scheduled focus blocks)
4 blog posts/month + LinkedIn carousels

Start with Care + Growth + AI Ops

Three published tiers. Pause or cancel any tier with 14 days notice. Pricing is locked in your contract for 12 months from start.

See full pricing across all 8 services

Why working with Pikasso is the obvious call

Get a Quote

Frequently asked

Questions buyers actually ask

Builds include 30 days of free Care post-launch. After that, you have three options: hire someone in-house, go without (works for static sites with no dependencies), or take a Care retainer. Most clients pick Care because the alternative is reading Vercel docs at 2am when something breaks.

Pairs well with

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