Ecommerce agency business models: project fees, retainers or monthly plans?

How an ecommerce agency gets paid shapes everything else: how predictable your income is, how hard you have to sell each month and what your agency is worth. Here are the four common models, what each is good for, and how to combine them.

When you start an ecommerce agency, choosing your business model is one of the first decisions, and one of the hardest to change later. It decides whether next month starts with income already booked or with an empty pipeline.

What are the main ecommerce agency business models?

There are four common ways to be paid for building and running online stores. Most agencies use more than one.

1. Project fees

You quote a fixed price for a defined piece of work, such as building a store or moving a client from one platform to another, and invoice when it’s done (often with a deposit up front).

• Good for: clear, one-off work; clients who want to know the full cost before they start.
• Watch out for: income that stops when the project ends, scope that grows after the quote, and clients who come back months later expecting free fixes.

2. Retainers

The client pays a fixed amount each month for a set amount of ongoing work: a number of hours, campaigns, product uploads or reports.

• Good for: marketing, content and support work that never really ends.
• Watch out for: retainers sold on hours tie your income to your team’s time. To earn more, you need more people.

3. Monthly plans per store

The client pays a monthly price for their online store as a product: the shop itself, the platform behind it and an agreed level of support. On a white-label platform, the plan carries your brand and your price, and you pay the platform a wholesale fee per store.

• Good for: income that grows with every client, and a lower first bill for the client than a large build fee.
• Watch out for: the platform fee you pay per store, and the need to keep clients happy month after month.

4. Partner commissions from a platform

Some store builders pay agencies for bringing them merchants. Shopify’s Partner Program is the best-known example. According to Shopify’s help centre, a partner who builds a store and transfers it to the merchant earns 20% of the merchant’s monthly subscription fee plus 0.1% of eligible sales, for four years, on qualifying plans (Starter and Lite are not eligible). Shopify also says payout terms are subject to change and that the final decision on payouts is at its discretion.

• Good for: extra income on top of your build fees, with no billing to run yourself, on a platform many merchants already know.
• Watch out for: the store is transferred to the client, who activates their own plan with the platform. The price, the brand on the account and the terms of your income belong to the platform, and the payments have an end date.

We compare this route with running stores under your own brand in Shopify Partner Program vs a white-label platform, and the wider choice in White-label vs reseller vs affiliate programmes.

How the four models compare

Why do many agencies combine a set-up fee with a monthly plan?

Because it fixes the weak point of each model on its own. The set-up fee pays for the work at the start, so you’re not out of pocket while you build. The monthly plan then pays you for as long as the client keeps their shop, so each new client adds to a base of income rather than replacing last month’s project.

Marketing, content and extra design work sit on top, as a retainer or as one-off projects. A client can stop the ads and keep the shop, or move up a plan without touching the rest of your agreement.

How to set those numbers is a separate question. We cover it in Ecommerce website pricing for agencies: a set-up fee plus a monthly plan and in How to charge clients monthly for an online store.

How do you choose the right model for your agency?

Ask yourself a few questions:

• Do your clients need you after launch? Almost every shop needs changes, products and help. If they do, a monthly plan reflects the real relationship.
• Do you want your brand or the platform’s in front of the client? If you want clients to see your agency as their shop provider, choose a model where the store runs under your name.
• Who should set the price? If you want to package plans for your niche and price them yourself, commissions alone won’t give you that.
• How much do you depend on new sales? If a quiet month for sales means a bad month for income, add something that repeats.
• Are you building a business to sell one day? Buyers tend to value income that repeats more highly than one-off project income. See why monthly store revenue makes your agency worth more.

You don’t have to choose one model forever. Many agencies start with projects, add monthly plans for new clients, then move existing clients across. Moving existing clients from one-off projects to monthly plans explains how.

How monthly store plans work on DripFunnel

DripFunnel’s partner programme is built for the monthly-plan model. More than 75 partners across the globe use it to run client stores under their own brand. Here is how the money side works:

1. You agree a wholesale fee with us. Your contract sets a fee per store, per month, for each plan.
2. You build your own plans. You name them, choose what each includes (up to DripFunnel’s limits), add a free trial of 7, 14 or 30 days or none, and set monthly and yearly prices in the currencies your contract allows. See Create your plans and prices.
3. You see your margin before you publish. For every price, the console shows DripFunnel’s fee and what you keep, and warns you if a price is below the fee. Our guide to the wholesale fee, your price and what you keep shows the maths.
4. You change prices with notice. A plan change can apply to new sign-ups only, or to everyone at their next renewal with 30 days’ notice.
5. You track recurring revenue. Partner reports show monthly recurring revenue by plan, growth and usage, with a spreadsheet export.

DripFunnel takes no fee on your clients’ orders: their shoppers pay them through their own payment account. Your set-up work and marketing stay entirely yours to price.

Which model should you start with?

If you already have website clients, start by offering new ones a set-up fee plus a monthly plan, and keep your other services as they are. If you’re still finding clients, see How to find your first ecommerce clients, and when you write your first offer, follow How to write an ecommerce website proposal so the monthly plan is clear from the start. Freelancers weighing the same choice can read From freelancer to agency.

When you’re ready to run stores under your own brand, talk to us about becoming a partner.

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