Retainer support · Shopify consultant · UK
Two options. No hourly counting, no account manager, no starting from scratch every time something needs doing. Just one person embedded in your store who actually knows it.
Why retainer
Ad-hoc work is reactive by nature. Something breaks, you find someone, they fix it, they forget your store exists. A retainer changes the relationship entirely — I know your stack, your team, your busy seasons, and your roadmap.
Most of the value isn't in the hours — it's in the context. Not having to re-explain your setup every time something needs doing is worth more than any hourly saving.
I know your store. When something comes up, we fix it — not spend the first hour getting me up to speed.
Retainer clients come first. If something breaks the day before a big campaign, you're not in a queue.
I'll flag things I spot before they become problems — a slow page, a broken flow, an app that's stopped working quietly.
One monthly figure covering everything the retainer includes. No surprises on routine work.
The options
Your Shopify person, always available. Best for stores that need reliable availability and a trusted pair of hands — without the overhead of a bigger engagement.
New features & custom dev quoted separately
Strategic, proactive, and genuinely embedded. Closer to a fractional ecommerce director than a support retainer. For stores with active development needs.
Larger builds quoted separately at day rate
Not an agency. A deliberately small client list — by design.
Side by side
| Ongoing Partner £350/mo |
Growth Partner £800/mo |
|
|---|---|---|
| Bug fixes & troubleshooting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content & product updates | ✓ | ✓ |
| App advice & configuration | ✓ | ✓ |
| Priority access | ✓ | ✓ |
| Proactive issue-spotting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monthly store health review | — | ✓ |
| Minor custom Liquid & JS | — | ✓ |
| Shopify Flow automation | — | ✓ |
| Landing pages & campaign builds | — | ✓ |
| Performance & SEO improvements | — | ✓ |
| Contract length | 90 days, then rolling | 90 days then rolling |
| Notice period | 30 days | 30 days |
Questions
Ongoing Partner covers maintenance and support — fixes, updates, advice, configuration. Anything that involves building something new (a new page template, a custom integration, a wholesale portal) is quoted separately as a project. Growth Partner includes a meaningful amount of active development in the monthly fee — most ongoing builds fit comfortably within it.
A retainer relationship takes a month or two to hit its stride — I need time to properly understand your store, your cadence, and your priorities. 90 days is the minimum for both of us to get genuine value from the arrangement. After that it's rolling monthly with 30 days notice either way.
Yes — and this is actually how most retainer relationships start. A project gives us both a chance to see how we work together before committing to an ongoing arrangement. Many clients move from project work to retainer naturally once the first build is done.
Deliberately few. The whole point of a retainer is that I know your store well enough to be genuinely useful — that doesn't work if I'm spread across twenty clients. I keep my retainer list small so each client gets real availability, not a ticket queue.
That's fine — and normal. Some months are quiet, some months are busy. The retainer isn't a set number of hours you need to use up; it's availability and priority. If a quiet month is consistently quiet, we can talk about whether the retainer level still makes sense.
Tell me where you're at with your store and what kind of support would actually be useful. I'll be straight with you about whether a retainer makes sense and which level fits.