No-subscription websites.
A no-subscription website is one you buy once, own outright, and host on accounts in your name — no recurring monthly fee to keep it online. Mule Digital builds them by default. Tiers start at $799, one-time.
Why do most agencies push subscriptions?
Page-builders, ongoing retainers, and hosted-CMS subscriptions create predictable agency revenue. They also create predictable client cost — the kind that compounds year after year while delivering diminishing value.
A $50/month 'maintenance' subscription sounds harmless. Over five years it's $3,000. Over ten years it's $6,000. Most small businesses keep websites for five to ten years. Subscriptions can outpace the original build cost twice over.
What is the real total cost of a subscription website?
Add up the monthly fee × twelve months × the number of years you'll keep the site. Then add hosting, domain, and any tier upgrades you've been pushed into along the way.
A $1,499 one-time Mule project plus $10/month hosting works out to roughly $2,700 over ten years. A $40/month subscription website averages roughly $5,300 over the same period — without the source code, ownership, or portability you'd get from the one-time build.
How does Mule pricing actually work?
Tiers from $799 are one-time. Optional light retainer from $99/month exists but is never required to keep the site online — drop it any time, add it any time, no minimum term.
Hosting and domain stay in your name, billed by your providers directly, not by Mule. We don't mark them up. We don't gatekeep access. If you switch hosts, we're happy to help; we don't have a financial interest in keeping you somewhere specific.
When do monthly fees actually make sense?
Genuine maintenance — security patches, content updates, analytics review, fixing things when they break — has a real ongoing cost and can reasonably be billed monthly. That's what the optional Mule retainer covers.
Renting access to your own website is a different thing. So is paying every month for a hosted page-builder you can't export from. Mule's retainer is the first category and never the second.
About no-subscription website.
What about hosting? Isn't that a monthly fee too?
Yes — hosting has a real ongoing cost (typically $5–25 per month depending on traffic and uptime needs). That bill goes to you directly, on your hosting account, not through Mule. We don't mark it up and we don't bundle it into a subscription.
What's included in Mule's optional monthly retainer?
Monthly analytics review, content updates, security patches, broken-link checks, and being reachable when something goes wrong. From $99 per month with no minimum term. The Full Suite tier ($2,999) includes the first 90 days of retainer at no extra cost.
Will my site still work in five years without paying Mule anything?
Yes. The code is yours. The hosting account is in your name. You can hire any developer to maintain it, hand it off to staff, or maintain it yourself. We don't gatekeep credentials and we don't charge a fee to release them.
Why do some agencies require monthly subscriptions to host the site they built?
Because the recurring revenue is more valuable to the agency than the one-time build fee. When the agency owns the hosting account, the client can't leave without losing the site. The financial model rewards lock-in. Mule's pricing rewards getting the build right the first time.
Work with a studio that means it.
Send a short brief. Same-day reply. Tiers from $799.