How billing and retainers work

Solagon engagements run on a single monthly retainer. The build is rolled into the same monthly fee that covers hosting, maintenance, and ongoing SEO — there's no separate "build invoice" followed by "and now you also pay this each month." It's one number per month, for the whole relationship.

When billing starts

Monthly billing begins on the earlier of:

1. The website go-live date (the day your site is pointed to your real domain), or
2. Five business days after we notify you the website is production-ready and awaiting your approval.

That second clause exists so a project doesn't park indefinitely waiting on a launch decision. If we tell you it's ready and you need a couple of weeks to coordinate the cutover internally, that's fine — but billing kicks in five business days after the notice goes out.

There's no separate discovery invoice or build invoice before that. The work that happens before launch is funded by the retainer that starts at launch.

What the monthly fee covers

The default coverage on every Solagon retainer:

• Hosting and infrastructure
• Ongoing maintenance, dependency updates, security patches
• Monthly SEO audits and reasonable content updates
• Technical support during business hours
• Uptime and performance monitoring
• Built-in technical SEO setup

Your specific SOW lists anything else included in the fee — paid ads management, additional integrations, etc. The number on your SOW is the number you pay each month; it doesn't change without a written amendment.

Minimum term

The retainer has a 12-month minimum commitment because the build cost is folded into the monthly fee — without the minimum, the math doesn't work. After the 12 months are complete and all invoices are paid, you can cancel any time with 30 days' written notice.

If you need to cancel before the minimum is up, the early-termination fee in your SOW applies. It's the lesser of (a) the remaining balance of the minimum term or (b) a fixed buyout amount. We're not trying to extract more than what we lose by not getting to deliver the work.

Payment terms

• Invoices are due within 15 days of the invoice date.
• Late payments past 30 days incur a 1.5% per-month finance charge.
• Invoices come from billing@solagon.com via Stripe.
• We accept ACH, wire, or credit card. ACH is preferred for amounts over $5,000 — it saves us both the credit-card fee, which keeps the retainer where it is.

If you're going to be late on an invoice, just tell us. We'd much rather work it out together than send a chase email.

What's included in the retainer (fair-use)

The retainer is a flat fee, not a metered hour pool. Reasonable ongoing updates are covered:

• Small content / copy changes
• Image replacements
• Minor page edits
• Adding pages that match the existing design
• Bug fixes

What's not covered (scoped separately):

• Full redesigns
• Major feature additions
• New system integrations not in the original SOW
• Rebuilding large portions of the site

If something falls outside fair use, we tell you before any work starts. You decide whether to greenlight it as separate scoped work, defer it, or scrap it.

How invoices arrive

Invoices come from billing@solagon.com via Stripe. The email contains:

• A PDF of the invoice
• A "Pay invoice" button that opens a Stripe-hosted payment page
• Whatever payment method you've saved (if any)

You can also manage payment methods and view invoice history at pay.solagon.com.

What happens if payments lapse

The retainer needs active payments to keep hosting running. If invoices go materially overdue, we can:

• Suspend website hosting
• Suspend access to deployed services
• Temporarily disable the site until the balance is resolved

In practice we contact you well before any of that — usually a friendly note, then a firmer one. We'd rather work it out than disable a live site, but the contract gives us those rights because we're carrying real infrastructure costs against your account.

Something looks wrong on my invoice

Submit a ticket with the invoice number and what you think is incorrect. We'll review and either confirm the charge or issue a corrected invoice within two business days.

Changing your payment method or billing contact

Update your payment method any time at pay.solagon.com. For changes to the billing contact email or company info, submit a ticket and we'll update our records.