The questions people ask before they call us
Straight answers on what our work costs, how long it takes, who owns the output, and what we will not promise. Real numbers where real numbers exist — because 'it depends on your requirements' has never helped anyone decide.
Cost and engagement
Real starting numbers rather than a request to get in touch. These are the figures we would quote you on a first call.
How much does it cost to build a website?
A marketing site starts at $4,000 and a larger web application at $8,000. What moves the number is page count, whether content is written already, and how many integrations are involved — not which framework it is built in.
How much does AI automation cost?
AI agents and WhatsApp automation start at $6,000 as a fixed-price build, or $2,500 a month on retainer. Running costs are separate and depend on volume — a few thousand conversations a month typically lands in the low hundreds of dollars.
How much does a SaaS product or MVP cost to build?
SaaS platforms and custom software start at $10,000. A genuine MVP with working authentication, a sound data model and one reliable core flow usually lands between $10,000 and $25,000 depending on how much of the product is the hard part.
Do you charge fixed price or hourly?
Fixed price for projects with a defined scope, monthly retainer for continuous work. We do not bill hourly — it makes the cost unpredictable for you and rewards us for being slow, which is the wrong incentive on both sides.
What does a monthly retainer include?
Retainers start at $2,000 a month for SEO and growth, and $2,500 for design and development. You get a set capacity each month across iteration, new features, monitoring and reporting, with the same team rather than whoever is free.
Do you work with startups on smaller budgets?
Yes, by narrowing scope rather than lowering quality. If the budget does not fit the scope, we will say which parts to cut and which to keep — and occasionally that the honest answer is to wait until it is funded.
Timelines and how we work
What actually happens week to week, and where projects genuinely slip.
How long does a website take to build?
Four to eight weeks from kickoff to launch for a marketing site, and eight to twelve for a product MVP. The most common cause of delay is content and approvals on the client side, not development — which is worth planning for up front.
How quickly can WhatsApp automation go live?
Three to five weeks including Meta's Business verification and message template approval. That approval is the slowest step and it is outside our control, so any timeline that assumes instant approval is not a real timeline.
What does the process look like week to week?
A short strategy sprint to agree scope, then weekly design and build cycles. You see working progress every week on a shared board, review it on a call, and nothing ships without your sign-off. No month-long silences.
Who owns the code and the designs?
You do, on final payment. Code lives in your repository, designs in your files, infrastructure in your accounts. There is no licensing arrangement and nothing that stops another team picking it up if you move on.
What happens after launch?
Most clients keep a support retainer for iteration, SEO and new features with the same team, so there is no re-onboarding. If you would rather take it in-house, we document and hand over — that is a normal outcome, not a failure.
Can you work with our existing team and codebase?
Yes, and a large share of our work is exactly that. We adopt your repository conventions, component library and review process, ship pull requests your team merges, and document what we build so the handback is clean.
Results and what we will not promise
The questions where most agencies overstate. We would rather be the firm you remember for being straight about this.
Can you guarantee first-page Google rankings?
No, and nobody credible can. Rankings depend on competitors and algorithm changes we do not control. What we can commit to is the technical foundation, the content structure and the measurement — and showing you honest numbers either way.
How long does SEO take to show results?
Technical and indexation fixes can show within weeks. Competitive rankings typically take four to eight months of consistent work, and longer on a new domain with no backlink history. Anyone promising faster is describing a different, riskier approach.
Will AI automation replace our staff?
In our experience it removes the first twenty minutes of repetitive work, not the people. The realistic outcome is the same team handling more volume, spending their day on the cases that need judgement rather than on data entry.
What if the AI gives customers a wrong answer?
It can, so we build for it: the agent answers only from your grounded data, is capped to topics it has sources for, escalates to a human when uncertain, and logs everything. Any vendor claiming zero hallucination is overselling.
How do you measure whether it worked?
Against numbers agreed before we start — hours recovered, response time, conversion rate, qualified leads, organic traffic. We report the ones that moved and the ones that did not, because a report showing only wins is not a report.
What if we are not happy with the work?
Weekly reviews exist so that never becomes a surprise at the end. Fixed-price projects are staged with sign-off at each stage, and retainers are monthly with no lock-in — if it is not working, you can stop at the month boundary.
Question not answered here?
Ask it directly — you will get an answer from someone who would be doing the work, not a sales team. Email contact.grizzlyminds@gmail.com or start below.