How to price creative production: retainers, capacity, and SLAs

Pricing works when it reflects how production actually operates: throughput + risk + urgency.

Three common models

1) Project pricing

Best for: defined scopes, single campaigns
Risk: scope creep, rounds of amends

2) Retainer (service bundle)

Best for: ongoing demand, predictable delivery
Works when: you define deliverables and SLA clearly

3) Capacity / pods

Best for: high volume, shifting priorities
Works when: client trusts prioritisation and understands trade-offs

The SLA table (minimum)

• Response time (brief → plan)
• First draft time
• Amendment rounds included
• Cut-off times for approvals
• What happens when the client is late

The simplest rule

If the work involves versioning at scale, charge for:

• building the system (matrix, rules, templates),
• then a unit rate for variants,
• plus QA.

Next step

See the versioning backbone: /templates/content-matrix/