Straight answers, before you ask

A website is a one-time build — Foundation $1,900, Growth $4,500, Signature $7,500 — owned outright, with the domain, code and content in your name.

Add-ons are priced individually and listed in the open, so you only pay for the ones you pick.

The Care plan keeps it live at $99/month; Care Plus — the same plumbing plus technical SEO upkeep, a monthly report and a quarterly conversion review — is $199/month, and Care Complete is the same again with a page written every month rather than every quarter at $349/month.

The monthly edit allowance covers changes to pages you already have. A new or rewritten page is a separate piece of work and is quoted at the add-on rate — no plan includes one. All of it is optional.

Because we'd rather show the math than hope you don't ask.

Surveys of solo and freelance designers put the most common project band at $2,500–$4,999, with full studio builds running to $10k — Growth sits inside that band, Signature starts under the $10k ceiling, and Foundation under both, which is a scope difference rather than a discount.

And Care is $99 against a market where full-service maintenance plans typically run $95–195 a month — the nearest local comparable starts at $150 — with managed hosting alone retailing at $50–90 before content edits enter it.

Care Plus is $199 where Care is $99, and that difference is priced from its parts: a single page runs about $200 at both of our direct comparables, so the page Care Plus writes each quarter is about half of it, and the technical SEO upkeep, the monthly report and the quarterly conversion review are the other half.

If one of those market numbers drifts, tell us and we'll fix the page.

Nothing to unwind on the monthly side.

There is no fixed term in what we sell: Care bills monthly, in advance, and either of us can stop with 30 days' notice. There's no exit fee and no balance that falls due when you go — nothing was fronted, so there's nothing to pay back.

A build is a fixed-price project rather than a monthly, so it works differently: leave mid-build and you pay for the work completed to that point plus 15% of what's left, which covers the weeks we'd booked out for you and can't refill at short notice. That last part doesn't apply if you're leaving because we broke the agreement and didn't put it right — then there's no fee at all.

Everything built for your site so far is yours either way — with one exception, and it is in your favour: if you take the design guarantee and we refund what you paid to begin, the design stays with us. It is the refund or the work, never both, and nothing is held back because nothing was paid for.

Your domain, code, content and accounts are registered in your name the whole way through, so leaving means walking off with what was already yours: we hand over a working copy of the site and you host it wherever you like. It reads the same in the other direction — if we are the ones who end it, you owe us for work already delivered and nothing beyond it.

Because a website isn't a thing you finish, it's a thing that stays online.

Care covers:

• hosting
• the security certificate that shows visitors the site is safe
• a backup every day
• security and software updates
• uptime monitoring so an outage reaches us rather than waiting for someone to notice
• thirty minutes of content edits a month by email

It's one flat rate, and it's optional: you own the site either way, and you can host it yourself if you'd rather.

A Foundation build typically runs 3–6 weeks from kickoff, Growth 5–8 weeks, and Signature 6–10 weeks — the exact date is in your fixed quote before we start.

You'll see progress weekly — work in your actual browser, not slide decks.

You do, all of it.

The domain is registered in your name, and the design, code and content are yours from day one — it's custom code, not a rented template, and it runs on any host.

We host it for you as part of Care because that's easier for most owners than doing it themselves; ask, and we'll hand it over instead.

There is no version of this where leaving costs you your website, your address or a line of your content.

No — it's written in code (Next.js and React) and published as plain pages, so there's no theme, no page builder and no plugins.

That matters for two practical reasons: nothing has to be updated to stay safe, and visitors don't download a page builder's framework before they can read anything.

To be fair to WordPress, it's good software and it wins on things we don't do — if you want to log in and edit pages yourself every week, or you need an off-the-shelf store or membership system, a good WordPress developer is the better buy and we'll say so on the call.

Sometimes, and finding out is what the Website Audit is for.

For $375 we look at the site you have and the thing it's built on, then tell you which of three things is true:

• it has good bones and is worth keeping, in which case we move it across as it stands — that's a Migration, $1,250 — and Care Plus keeps it found from there
• it's on a creaking page-builder stack where a rebuild is cheaper than archaeology
• it's working fine and you should keep your money

We make that call rather than leaving it to you, and we show our reasoning in plain language. Credited in full against a build — or, if the verdict is to improve the site you have rather than replace it, against your first month on the plan that does that work. And if the answer is that your site is fine as it is, we will tell you that — being told so plainly is what you paid for.

No.

Copy guidance is part of every build: we draft headlines and page copy around how your customers decide, and you correct the facts.

If you'd rather not write a word, Copywriting is an add-on — every page drafted by us from one working call, with two rounds of revisions. You know your business; we know what makes visitors reach out.

We ship every site with the foundations search engines reward: fast loads, a clear structure search engines can read, and copy aimed at what customers actually search.

For a local business we also set up your Google Business Profile and wire it to the site — for most trades, the map pack is where the calls actually come from.

What we won't do is promise a specific ranking — anyone who guarantees position one is selling something. We build the conditions for ranking and measure inquiries, not just traffic.

They can — and it's quickly becoming the second half of being found. When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude or Google's AI for a plumber who can come this week, the assistant reads websites and picks a shortlist. Marketers have started calling the work of earning that spot AEO — answer engine optimization.

Here's the useful part: AI assistants reward what good SEO already builds. Structured data that states plainly what you do and where, headings a machine can follow, and pages that answer real questions instead of stacking keywords — that's what an assistant reads before it names anyone. Every Harbor Tree build ships with those foundations, and this FAQ page itself is published in the machine-readable format assistants and search engines both consume.

Same rule as rankings, though: we won't promise you a spot in anyone's answer. Nobody controls what an AI says — anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. What can honestly be done is building pages assistants can read and cite, and that part is included in every build rather than sold as a separate service.

On Care, the site stays hosted, updated, backed up and watched: failures reach us the moment they happen, and small content changes ship by email. It's billed monthly — cancel with 30 days' notice.

Without it, we hand over the site and the documentation, and you're welcome to call us back for a one-off fix.

The website is yours whenever you leave, either way.

No.

The whole process is built to work remotely: a video call to start, work you review in your own browser each week, and email for everything else.

Plenty of clients never meet us face to face — and the fixed quote, the weekly check-ins and the ownership guarantee work exactly the same wherever you are.

Ask anyway.

Small, well-defined jobs — a landing page, an extra page or two, a speed fix — are often the best way to find out how we work. If it's genuinely not worth hiring us for, we'll say so and point you at the DIY route.

Thirty minutes for the discovery call and honest answers about your business and who you're trying to reach.

After that: feedback at weekly check-ins and the facts for your copy. We deliberately keep your homework light — you have a business to run.

Because we don't invent them.

Client quotes and case studies are published here only when they're real, named and verifiable.

If you'd like references while the first batch is being written up, ask — we'd rather connect you with a real client than paste a stock photo over a fake quote.