--- title: "Onboarding — what to expect when you launch with us" description: "A transparent, step-by-step walkthrough of TechTailors onboarding. Tier-aware, with a shareable prep checklist so you arrive ready." canonical: https://techtailors.agency/policies/onboarding/ --- # Here’s exactly what happens after you sign. This page is the real playbook: every phase, milestone, and handoff written down so you can share it with your team before our first call. Showing Blueprint bands and vendor accounts for **Professional**. [Jump to the prep checklist](https://techtailors.agency/policies/onboarding/#prepare) [Build your plan first](https://techtailors.agency/pricing/calculator/) TABLE OF CONTENTS The six phases ## Six phases. Every one documented before you commit. Each phase below explains what happens, what we’ll need from you, and what you walk away with. Blueprint bands and vendor details update based on the tier you selected above. Every build, at every size, runs through the same six phases, including the fixed-fee Blueprint that produces your exact quote before any build work begins. Step 1 ### Say hello Reach out via email, phone, or our contact form. We'll respond promptly to set up your introductory consultation. What happens A short reply with two or three discovery-call time slots. No bots, no pre-qualification gauntlet. From you A sentence or two about why you're reaching out. That's genuinely it. Duration Same day – 1 business day Step 2 ### Discovery call A free 30–45 minute call. Goals, pain points, current site, growth plans. No pressure, no upsells. All ideas welcome. What happens We listen. Then we recommend a tier and add-on combination that fits your goals and budget. Honestly. If TechTailors isn't the right fit, we'll say so. From you Whoever makes the decision should join. Bring your current site, examples of sites you admire, and any pain points or wishes. Duration 30–45 minutes Step 3 ### Blueprint A fixed-fee scoping engagement. We map your sitemap, scope, and integrations, audit your existing site if you have one, and hand you an exact build quote from our published rate card. For Professional sizes: $1,500 new, or $2,500 for a rebuild; 26 or more pages that carry a build fee runs $3,000 or $5,000. What happens You receive the Blueprint deliverable: sitemap, scope document, integration inventory, remediation audit, fixed build quote, and timeline. It’s yours to keep whether or not you proceed, and 100% of the fee credits toward your build fee when you sign within 60 days. From you Brand assets (logo, fonts, colors), your priority content, and your top three competitors' sites for reference. The checklist below covers all of this. Duration Confirmed at your discovery call Step 4 ### Build Design and development, hand-coded on Astro. Work begins once your Build SOW is signed and the first milestone payment clears. What happens We design your site’s look first, with two revision rounds included; your approval (or the 10-day review window) locks the design and triggers the next milestone. Then we hand-code the build: performance, accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA), SEO, and security headers designed in from the first commit. We provision your vendor accounts (Cloudflare, Cloudinary, etc.) and stand the site up on a staging URL. Milestones bill on your net balance as each stage completes. From you Final copy and imagery (for each page-type, a content sheet with one row per page), and a single point of contact who can approve revisions. Mid-build feedback is welcome; we share the staging URL the moment the homepage is testable. Duration Stated exactly in your Blueprint Step 5 ### Go Live Your website is ready. Before deployment, you sign a one-time, 12-month contract with a 30-day guarantee. Then we launch your site to Cloudflare's global edge network. What happens The DNS switch is timed for low-traffic hours. Go Live begins the moment you sign the agreement: we start preparing your launch, and your 30-day guarantee starts too. If anything is off in the first 30 days, you can exit the remaining 11 months of your 12-month contract with no further payment obligation. The guarantee is an exit clause, not a refund: past payments (the first month’s plan payment, plus Blueprint and build-fee amounts already earned) cover service and labor already rendered. From you Signed agreement, payment method on file, DNS access (or your registrar's contact). Duration Go-Live day – full DNS propagation usually within 24 hours Step 6 ### Grow together As your business evolves, easily expand with additional services: SEO, blogging, e-commerce, analytics, and more. Each add-on plugs straight into your existing build and starts billing when we begin setting it up. What happens SEO, blogging, search, multi-language, e-commerce, CRO, premium hosting. Each is a self-contained add-on with its own pricing. Add or remove any month-to-month after the initial 12 months. Add-ons never add a Blueprint or a build fee of their own, and the pages they need, like a blog’s on Blogging Starter and up, carry no build fee. From you Tell us when you're ready. We'll quote, scope, and ship. Duration Ongoing partnership Growth reviews ## Three growth reviews, included with every monthly plan. Onboarding doesn’t end at launch. Every monthly plan includes a **day-30 launch review**, a **day-90 growth review**, and an **annual review**: a short presentation of your own numbers (traffic, rankings, form volume, blog and store activity) with at most one recommendation for what we’d do next. If the data doesn’t argue for anything new, we say so and get back to work. Prepare ahead ## Walk into our first call already armed. Tick off what you’ve gathered. Your progress is saved on this device. Share a snapshot of your prep status with a single link. Useful when you’re coordinating with us or others. 0 of 0 You vs. us ## What you provide. What we handle. Who brings what, agreed before we start. ### You provide - Brand assets: logo, fonts, colors, guidelines if you have them. Don’t have these yet? We design them as one-time packages: see [Logo & Brand Design](https://techtailors.agency/services/brand-design/). (Logo and brand design isn’t part of your **Blueprint** or build fee. Each package has a fixed price: $2,500 for a logo, $4,000 for a brand identity, $5,500 for brand guidelines. Half to start, half on final files. No monthly plan needed.) - Content: copy, photos, video, testimonials, team bios - ~5 minutes per vendor account (Cloudflare, etc.), and we walk you through each one - A single decision-maker for design feedback and approvals - Payment method on file (Stripe ACH or card) - DNS access, or your registrar’s phone number ### We handle - Custom design: mockups, iteration, final visual system - Hand-coded build on Astro + Cloudflare - All vendor configuration inside your accounts (we’re Admins, not owners) - WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility audit and remediation - Performance budget: Lighthouse 96 or higher across the board - Security headers, CSP, edge WAF rules - Deployment, DNS cutover, post-launch monitoring - 30-day guarantee (an exit, not a refund), and two design revision rounds in the build Vendor accounts ## You own the accounts. We’re the admin. Most of your stack lives in vendor accounts created in *your* name, not ours. You pay them directly. You can see every dollar. When you leave, we walk out; you stay. ### Cloudflare All plans Edge hosting on Workers, in an account that’s yours from day one. The plan follows your service level, not your page count. **Setup: who does what** **You’ll create** A free Cloudflare account (~5 min). We send a step-by-step. **We do inside it** Provision Workers, DNS, and security rules, all visible in your own dashboard. #### Monthly cost $0: Smart Casual runs on Cloudflare’s Free plan.About $250/mo (roughly $200 on annual billing) for the Cloudflare Business plan behind the Professional security baseline, billed by Cloudflare to you.About $250/mo for Cloudflare Business; scopes that need Cloudflare’s BAA or enterprise controls move to an Enterprise conversation. The Premium Hosting add-on, on any plan, is our operations layer on top. It needs Cloudflare Business, so on Smart Casual it adds that plan; either way the Cloudflare plan stays yours. #### When you leave We remove ourselves as Admin. No project transfer. No service interruption. ### Cloudinary All plans Your media layer: every image and video served from Cloudinary’s global CDN with automatic format and quality optimization, in your name. **Setup: who does what** **You’ll create** A Cloudinary account in your name (~5 min). Free tier covers most launches. **We do inside it** Folder structure, upload presets, named transformations, and the site integration that auto-optimizes every image. #### Monthly cost $0 free tier: 25 monthly credits (a credit covers 1 GB of storage, 1 GB of bandwidth, or 1,000 transformations). Plus starts at $89/mo (billed yearly; $99 month-to-month) when usage outgrows it. #### When you leave Already yours. We remove our admin access; originals download from the Media Library anytime. ### EmDash Blogging Your content management system. It runs in your own Cloudflare account, with its database and media beside it: you own the account, the content and the data. **Setup: who does what** **You’ll create** Nothing new: it runs in the Cloudflare account you already have, on the Workers Paid plan. **We do inside it** Deploy EmDash, build the content types (posts, authors, categories, tags), set up your team’s accounts and roles, and connect Cloudinary and the build that publishes your posts. #### Monthly cost EmDash is free and open-source (MIT). Cloudflare’s Workers Paid plan, from $5/mo, is billed to your account. #### When you leave Nothing to transfer: it’s already in your account. You get Admin, we disable our user, and EmDash keeps running with or without us. ### Supabase Blogging Pro The managed PostgreSQL database behind Blogging Pro’s EmDash. Cloud-hosted, in your name, with native pg\_dump and one-click migration built in. **Setup: who does what** **You’ll create** A Supabase account (~5 min). We guide project setup during onboarding. **We do inside it** Provision the project, connect EmDash to it through Cloudflare Hyperdrive, configure daily backups, and lock down access policies. #### Monthly cost Pro, from $25/mo: the free tier pauses after a week without activity. Point-in-time recovery costs extra. #### When you leave Already yours. We remove admin access and rotate keys; pg\_dump or built-in migration to any Postgres host, anytime. ### BigCommerce E-commerce Your storefront engine. Headless, in your name, with zero transaction fees from us. **Setup: who does what** **You’ll create** A BigCommerce account on the right plan for your projected revenue. **We do inside it** Configure the store, build the headless frontend, and sync catalog data into a per-client commerce vault. #### Monthly cost Core ($39/mo) up to Performance (custom). We map your E-Commerce add-on level (micro-store T0, Starter, or Pro) to the right plan during discovery. #### When you leave Already yours. We rotate API tokens and remove admin access. ### Typesense Cloud Search add-on The engine behind the full Search add-on (Black Tie plans and above): fast, accurate, open source. The all-plan Pagefind option is static and needs no vendor account. **Setup: who does what** **You’ll create** A Typesense Cloud account in your name. **We do inside it** Provision the cluster, design the schema, and sync your content and product data. #### Monthly cost From ~$7/mo for the smallest cluster; small-catalog production clusters run ~$36–$60/mo, high-volume $200+. #### When you leave Cluster transfer supported, or self-host open-source Typesense (GPLv3) in Docker. ### PostHog Analytics / CRO Open-source product analytics with session recording, conversion funnels, and A/B testing built in. Your data, your account. **Setup: who does what** **You’ll create** A PostHog Cloud account in your name. **We do inside it** Install the tracking snippet, configure conversion funnels, wire experiments (Analytics & Tracking or CRO add-on), and pipe alerts to your team. #### Monthly cost $0 up to 1M events/mo, which most sites fit inside. Usage-based past that; PostHog publishes a transparent calculator. #### When you leave Stays yours, with full CSV/SQL export anytime. Open source, so you can self-host if you ever want to. ### VWO CRO add-on Enterprise-grade A/B testing, heatmaps, and session recordings, for when experiment volume outgrows PostHog’s built-in testing. **Setup: who does what** **You’ll create** A VWO account in your name. We match the plan to your testing volume during discovery. **We do inside it** Install the testing snippet, configure experiments and segment targeting, and pipe results alongside PostHog. #### Monthly cost Growth starts around $314/mo at 10,000 monthly tracked users (billed annually) and scales with traffic up to custom Enterprise pricing. #### When you leave Stays yours. Experiment data and reports export from the VWO dashboard. Blueprint & build fee ## Every build starts with a Blueprint and a published build fee. Here’s exactly how it works. Every new build, at every size. The discovery call stays free, and production work starts only under a signed agreement and a published fee. 1. The Blueprint A fixed scoping fee, two prices per size band: **$500 or $1,000** (up to 10 billable pages), **$1,500 or $2,500** (11–25 billable pages), **$3,000 or $5,000** (26+ billable pages). The lower price is a new build; the higher applies when we rebuild an existing site (every rebuild includes an audit) or the scope has 3 or more integrations. Only pages that carry a build fee count toward the band, so an add-on’s pages never move you up one. You keep the deliverable either way, and *100% credits toward your build fee* when you sign within 60 days; any credit the build fee can’t use comes off your plan invoices, starting with the first. That credit has no cash value: any still unused when your plan ends is forfeited. Every fee above is fixed: your SOW states it in writing before any payment is due. Most Smart Casual builds sit in the first band: $500 new, $1,000 rebuild. The fee follows your build’s size and condition, not your plan.Most Professional builds sit in the middle band: $1,500 new, $2,500 rebuild. The fee follows your build’s size and condition, not your plan.Most Black Tie builds sit in the top band: $3,000 new, $5,000 rebuild. The fee follows your build’s size and condition, not your plan. 2. The build fee Priced from our public rate card, not a quote call: **$250** per page (each page-type’s overview page counts as one), **$750** per page-type (A set of like pages filled from the same fields on one layout, one of nine kinds: services, conditions, service areas, offices, team profiles, projects, blog posts, products and legal policies.), **$250** per page past a page-type’s first 25, and **$250** per standard integration; complex integrations, remediation, migration, copywriting and revision rounds past two run **$175/hr**, fixed in your Blueprint quote. Your legal pages are one page-type, $750 to build and one billable page a month, however many policies you need. On Professional and above, the privacy policy that comes with your security baseline is free: it isn’t part of that page-type and doesn’t count as a billable page. A blog’s pages carry no build fee on Blogging Starter and up, and a store’s carry none on any E-Commerce plan. Your sitemap page is free. Your Build SOW states the exact total; the total you sign is the price. Professional and Black Tie add a one-time **security-baseline setup** fee by the same bands as the Blueprint (**$750** up to 10 billable pages, **$1,000** for 11 to 25, **$1,500** for 26 and up), half-waived with annual prepay. Smart Casual has no baseline and no setup fee. A page-type’s $750 covers designing and building its layout, then publishing up to 25 pages from your content sheet: one row per page, with your final copy and photos. Each page past 25 is $250. We load every row, size every image, write each page’s search title, description and image alt text, link the pages together, and test each one. If your copy isn’t final, we can write it for you as a fixed line in your Blueprint quote. Nothing we write or polish goes live until you approve it: you’re the expert in your field, so the final say on every claim is yours, and so is the responsibility for it. Unique pages work differently. Bring outlines and we’ll polish them into final copy. 3. Pay by milestone You never prepay the whole build. Net balances of $2,500 or less split 50/50 (signing / staging approval); larger builds run 40/30/30 or monthly progress billing, and each installment is earned as its stage completes. Annual prepay at signing (pay for 10 months, get 12) *waives half the build fee* before your Blueprint credit applies; if the credit is bigger than the halved fee, the rest comes off your plan invoices, starting with the first. Prepay halves the security-baseline setup too. That setup bills once beside the build, non-refundable once the configuration ships; move up to Professional or Black Tie at any plan change and it bills once at that point instead. Never twice. Smart Casual has no setup fee, so there is nothing extra to invoice. **How the math runs** Smart Casual example: a 5-page new build 1. Count the build: 5 pages × $250 = **$1,250** 2. Blueprint for a new build this size: **$500**, paid at scoping, credits back in full 3. Balance after the credit: $1,250 − $500 = **$750** 4. Paid by milestone: **$375 at signing, $375 at staging approval** Prepay the year at signing? The $1,250 halves first: $625 − $500 credit = **$125 total**. Smart Casual carries no security-baseline setup fee, so that is the whole one-time bill after the Blueprint. Professional example: a 20-billable-page new build with 2 page-types and 2 integrations 1. Count the build: 18 pages (the 2 page-types’ overview pages included) × $250, plus 2 page-types × $750 and 2 integrations × $250 = **$6,500** 2. Blueprint for a new build this size: **$1,500**, credits back in full 3. Balance after the credit: $6,500 − $1,500 = **$5,000** 4. Paid by milestone: **$2,000 at signing, $1,500 at design approval, $1,500 at staging approval** 5. Plus the one-time security-baseline setup, medium band: **$1,000**, invoiced once beside the build; it is not part of the milestone balance Prepay the year? $6,500 halves to $3,250, minus the $1,500 credit = **$1,750**, split 50/50, and the setup halves to $500: **$2,250 one-time after the Blueprint**. Black Tie example: a 100-page rebuild with heavy integration and remediation work 1. Count the build: 26 pages (the 6 page-types’ overview pages included) × $250, plus 6 page-types × $750, 6 integrations × $250, and ~120 estimated hours × $175 = **$33,500** 2. Blueprint for a rebuild at this scale: **$5,000**, credits back in full 3. Balance after the credit: $33,500 − $5,000 = **$28,500** 4. Over $10,000, so it bills **monthly on completed work** 5. Plus the one-time security-baseline setup, top band: **$1,500**, invoiced once beside the build; it is not part of the milestone balance Prepay the year? $33,500 halves to $16,750, minus the $5,000 credit = **$11,750**, billed monthly, and the setup halves to $750. Blueprint and milestone amounts pay for work already performed, so they’re non-refundable once earned, separate from the 30-day guarantee, which starts at Go Live and is an exit from the remaining 11 months of your plan, not a refund. Work pauses if an invoice runs more than 7 days past due. After launch, a new unique page or page-type carries the same one-time price as at launch. Pages you add to a page-type you already have are free up to its first 25; past 25, each one is $250 and bills at your plan’s page rate each month, just as at launch. Add-on services (Blogging, Search, Multi-Language, E-Commerce, CRO, or any other) never add a Blueprint or a build fee of their own, and the pages they need carry no build fee: a blog’s on Blogging Starter and up, a store’s on any E-Commerce plan. Posts and products on Blogging or E-Commerce Starter and up never bill per page. FAQ ## Quick answers from the FAQ. Full FAQ at [/faqs](https://techtailors.agency/faqs/#getting-started). 1. **What happens after I reach out?** We'll respond promptly to schedule a free discovery call. During that call we'll explore your business goals, current digital presence, and pain points. From there, we'll recommend a tier and any add-on services that fit your needs and budget, without pressure or upselling. 2. **Is there an upfront cost to get started?** Yes, and it's published to the dollar. Every build starts with a fixed-fee Blueprint ($500–$5,000: two fixed prices per size band, the lower for new builds, the higher for rebuilds and integration-heavy scopes) that credits in full toward your build fee when you proceed within 60 days. The build itself is priced from our public rate card and billed by milestone as the work completes, never a percentage-of-project mystery fee. Professional and Black Tie plans also carry a one-time security-baseline setup fee by Blueprint band ($750, $1,000, or $1,500), half-waived with annual prepay. Commit to annual prepay at signing and half your build fee is waived. See the “Blueprint and build fee” section above for the full breakdown. 3. **How long does it take to launch a new site?** The exact timeline depends on your scope and add-ons — your Blueprint states it exactly, before any build work begins. After your Blueprint and design approval, development moves quickly because we're building from our current-generation architecture, not retrofitting legacy code. 4. **What if I'm not happy with the result?** Every new monthly plan is covered by our 30-day guarantee, starting at Go Live, the moment you sign the agreement. If you're not satisfied in the first 30 days of service, you can exit the remaining 11 months of your 12-month contract with no further payment obligation, no penalty, no questions asked. The guarantee is an exit clause, not a refund. The first month's plan payment is non-refundable because it covers service already provided, and Blueprint and build-fee amounts are non-refundable once earned because they pay for scoping and build work already performed before your monthly plan began. ## Ready when you are. See your exact monthly price, then talk to us when you’re ready. [Price Your Build](https://techtailors.agency/pricing/calculator/) [30-day guarantee on every new plan](https://techtailors.agency/policies/offboarding/#guarantee): an exit, not a refund. --- Prices as data: https://techtailors.agency/pricing.json · Site guide for agents: https://techtailors.agency/llms.txt