Ongoing Shopify development and support retainers
Reserve senior Shopify capacity every month. Theme work, integrations, fixes and strategy from a team that already knows your store, so nothing waits in a queue behind someone else's build.
Retainer options
Four ways to reserve capacity. Every plan is scoped after a short discovery call, so you are paying for the work you actually have.
What's included vs a separate project
Retainers cover continuous change and care. Larger, defined pieces of work are scoped separately so they don't quietly eat your monthly capacity.
| Work area | Included | Separate project |
|---|---|---|
| Theme updates | Yes | , |
| Small integrations | Yes | , |
| New custom application | , | Yes |
| Emergency fixes | Plan dependent | , |
| CRO experiments | Growth plan | , |
| Major replatforming | , | Yes |
Who needs a retainer
A retainer fits when
- You have regular development work and hate waiting on quotes
- Your marketing team needs campaign and landing-page support on tap
- Your store runs complex integrations that need looking after
- You have no senior technical leadership in-house
- You are a Shopify Plus merchant with a steady change backlog
- You are an agency needing white-label Shopify support
Probably not the right fit if
- You have a single one-off project with a clear end date
- You want a build and no ongoing work afterwards
What a retainer covers
The day-to-day work of keeping a Shopify store healthy, current and improving, grouped into how we actually run it.
Monitoring & maintenance
- Theme changes
- App updates
- Integration logs
- Checkout testing
- Performance
- Analytics
- Broken links
- Tracking
- Release quality
Development governance
- Staging environments
- Version control
- Code review
- Deployment approval
- Rollback
- Documentation
- Access controls
Request management
- Bug reports
- Feature requests
- Campaign requests
- Design changes
- Integration issues
- Tracking problems
Example monthly roadmap
A realistic month on a development retainer. Yours is shaped around your priorities, not this template.
Week 1
- Product-page improvement
- Layout and content updates
- Mobile checks
Week 2
- Collection filter update
- Merchandising rules
- QA on staging
Week 3
- Analytics repair
- Event and tracking fixes
- Data validation
Week 4
- Performance release
- Speed and Lighthouse work
- Monthly reporting
Monthly operating cadence
A retainer only works if it runs to a rhythm. This is the loop we repeat every month so work stays prioritised and visible.
Monthly planning
We agree the month's goals and the capacity available to hit them.
Backlog prioritisation
Requests are ranked by impact and effort, not just order received.
Weekly delivery
Work ships in weekly increments so you see progress, not silence.
Testing
Everything is checked on staging before it touches your live store.
Release
Approved changes go live with version control and a clear rollback path.
Performance review
We watch speed, analytics and checkout after each release.
Reporting
You get a plain summary of what shipped and what it moved.
Next-month roadmap
We line up the following month before the current one closes.
Response times & priority
Clear, honest expectations, not SLAs we can't keep. Here is how requests move through the team and what you can typically expect.
- Support runs during AU business hours, Monday to Friday, across our Sydney and Melbourne team
- Requests come in through your task system or a shared board, so nothing gets lost in email
- Every request is triaged into a priority level: critical, high, standard or backlog
- A critical issue means something customer-facing is broken, such as checkout, add-to-cart or a payment or shipping integration down
- Typical first response on critical issues is within a few business hours; standard requests are picked up in the next planning cycle
- Fixes follow a proper process: reproduce, fix on staging, test, then deploy with approval
- Unused capacity does not roll over indefinitely, but we flag a light month early so you can bank work or bring items forward
Investment
Retainers are priced on reserved monthly capacity, not guesswork. These are typical ranges, scoped properly after a discovery call.
Essential
Maintenance and a small, steady stream of development work.
Growth
Development plus CRO, SEO and analytics, prioritised against results.
Partner
High-capacity development, priority support or a fractional technical lead.
Retainer FAQs
Related services
Reserve Shopify development capacity
Tell us what your store needs each month. We'll scope a retainer that fits and put a senior developer on it, ready to ship.
Reserve development capacity
