Cantilever offers two paired services that work together to provide Worry-Free Websites. Core Coverage and Planned Projects.

What’s Included in Each?

Core Coverage

Core Coverage is a retainer-style system that covers both the client and the website. We’ve chosen a retainer system as an alternative to billing hourly.

Also see:

Why Not Hourly?

Core Coverage provides a comprehensive set of services around managing both the relationship with the client, and the website overall. Cantilever invests in making your site the best it can be. We document and monitor everything, ensure that documentation is up-to-date, provide generous time for client communications, triage issues, makes small fixes and improvement, manage your website’s hosting, DNS and infrastructure, perform software upgrades, plan for new projects, and many other things that aren’t covered in the projects that result.

Project Plans

Project Plans are are fixed-scope features or changes to your website, costed to include the design and development, QA, documentation and project management required to complete that feature. The scope is very specific so that costs can be as competitive as possible, and our budgets rely on us being very confident in the current state of the website to deliver at that cost.

Handy Reference Table

Project Plan Core Coverage
Feature Design Accountability for Website Functionality
Feature Development Site-wide Emergency Response
Feature QA Hosting, Software and Domain Costs
Regression Testing Site Software Upgrades
Client Design Reviews and Approvals Overall Client Communication (Organizing Meetings, triaging requests, planning with other staff or agencies, answering emails)
Project Management for the Project Automated Site and Error Monitoring and triage
Project-specific Client Collaboration (collecting assets, working with other staff or agencies, arranging for translations, etc) Planning for Planned Projects
Documentation of the Feature Audits and Reviews
Included Bugs and Small Fixes Budget
Status Report Emails
Strategist Time
Maintaining Local Development Setup
Deployment and Infrastructure Management
On-Site Availability

Why do I need both?

Ok, but I just want a project done. Why do I have to pay for Core Coverage as well?

This decision is based on 15 years in the business, and comes down to our way of providing “worry-free websites”.

  1. Maintenance of the relationship, the infrastructure, and the and the tooling doesn’t stop during or between projects. Projects can take weeks to months to complete, and the world doesn’t stand still while we’re working on something. You continue to need triage, maintenance, bug fixes, and emergency response at all times.
  2. The costs of that maintenance don’t stop either. We work hard to ensure we completely manage and understand your processes, and keeping that up takes time.
  3. Hosting, domain and software costs don’t stop when a project starts or ends, we cover them all the time. They’re continuous.
  4. Planning for future projects doesn’t stop when we start a feature. We’re likely continuing to talk about and plan for the future.

Sometimes, all clients want is for an agency to build a site or feature and then disappear. If that’s your preference, Cantilever may not be a great fit for you. Cantilever is focused on long-term relationships with our clients, building and improving upon metrics over months and years to create sustained success. Our Core Coverage model is what helps us do that.