Agencies are great at campaigns. They are an expensive way to rent a website. This note compares three-year total cost of a retainer-heavy setup versus owning the site — plug your numbers into the own vs rent comparator or the cost calculator.
01 · Rent side
Retainer + tooling
| Agency retainer$2,500/mo × 36 | $90,000 |
| Rented site / CMS / plugins$150/mo × 36 | $5,400 |
| Ad hoc rebuilds / redesignsOne mid-cycle redesign | $15,000 |
| Three-year rent sketch | ~$110,000 |
At the end you own brand files maybe — not the deployment, not the CMS schema, often not the repo.
02 · Own side
Build once, run cheap
| Owned marketing site buildFixed scope Astro + Cloudflare | $18,000–$40,000 |
| Run rate$0–$100/mo hosting + domain × 36 | $0–$3,600 |
| Optional care planLight retainer for content/ops | Variable |
| Three-year owned sketch | Often well under retainer TCO |