Pricing
Real numbers for serious work.
Cruxsmith works with small and mid-sized companies that treat the website, the search presence, and the software behind them as an investment. One senior engineer with modern AI tooling delivers what used to take a team, so these numbers sit below the big agencies without cutting a single corner. Every price is published, every engagement starts refundable, and nothing on this page locks you in.
Fixed-bid work
Builds, priced before we start
Scoped after a Crux Roadmap, quoted as one fixed number, and built to a finished, published state. You sign off at every milestone, and everything ships in your name. If you want the reasoning behind these numbers, we wrote it out in what a custom business website actually costs.
Flat fee credited forward
Three business days of real, hands-on work in your environment, at a flat fee agreed on the fit call. It's how every engagement starts, and how we earn the bigger numbers on this page.
- Real shipped work, not a slide deck
- 100% refundable if you're not happy on day three
- Credited toward your build or first program month
- Ends with a written proposal: phases, fixed prices, terms
$5,000 and up, fixed bid
A new site, a rebuild, or a whole section of your site built out properly: think a services architecture with a dedicated page per line of business, on clean URLs, ready to grow.
- Most builds land between $5,000 and $20,000
- Mockup first, then revision rounds, then publish
- Page titles and metadata written for search, on every page
- Structured so new pages slot in later without rework
- 50% to start, 50% at go-live
- Revision rounds within an agreed feature are uncapped
$7,500 and up, fixed bid
Personalized business software, built for you and handed over. The kind of system we run our own studio on: it produces and emails the invoices, keeps onboarding painless, and puts the paperwork a click away. See that system, end to end →
- Built around how your business actually runs
- Most systems land between $7,500 and $25,000
- Fixed price agreed up front, milestone sign-offs throughout
- 30 days of post-launch support included
- Yours outright when it ships, full source code included
Monthly programs
Ongoing work, run like a program
Month to month, with a hard cap on how many companies we serve at once. The seats shown are honest: they're the book of committed work, not a sales device.
$2,500/mo
The whole search side of your business, worked every month: technical, content, local, and conversion. $2,000/mo on a six-month program; the term holds the rate and reserves the seat, it doesn't bind you.
- Titles, metadata, heading structure, and internal linking, sitewide
- Pages written and rewritten as your lines of business grow
- Google Business Profile and local search kept working
- Keyword tracking against a live results report, not a PDF in your inbox
- One AI automation kept running and improved
- Monthly strategy call, same-business-day response
$5,000/mo
One senior technical partner owning the whole stack, for a company that would otherwise be hiring. All in, to the limit of one person's time. Larger engagements: studio@cruxsmith.com.
- Everything in the Optimization Program, scaled to what you need
- A new custom tool, or a real upgrade to one, every month
- On call 6:30am to 11pm, seven days: flag it, we respond within the hour
- Strategy owned end to end, from infrastructure to roadmap
- AI training for your team, as deep as you want it
Every program comes with a live report. Program clients get a live results link that updates as the work lands: rankings, clicks, deliverables, site health. Not a PDF attachment, and never a mystery about what you paid for.
Founding client rates
The first seats cost less, on purpose
The studio is new as a studio. The engineering behind it is not, and the fastest honest way to prove that is to let the first program clients pay less while the public case-study shelf fills.
Founding rates sit meaningfully below the numbers on this page and hold for your whole initial term. The exchange is named up front: we get to write up the engagement as a public case study, and pages we build carry one small line of footer text linking back to us. That is the entire price of the discount.
1/5 One of five founding seats is spoken for. When they're gone, the rates above are the rates.
How engagements run
The terms, up front
- A Master Services Agreement, with a Statement of Work per phase
- Invoices Net 14, milestone billing on builds
- Either side can stop on 30 days' notice, no early-termination fee
- A term rate is never clawed back if we stop early
- Substantive replies within two business days, worst case
- Anything broken on a live site: same day
- Scoped access to your accounts, never ownership
- Your domain, code, and data stay in your name from day one
Our guarantee
You don't pay for work you're not happy with
Most studios bill in full up front and hope you end up happy. We do the opposite. The risk of trying someone new should be ours to earn off, not yours to carry, so we put real money behind it.
The Crux Roadmap is 100% money-back. Every engagement starts there: a flat fee for three business days of real, hands-on work. If you're not happy with what we show you on day three, you get every dollar back, no questions and no scope debate. Keep going and the fee comes off what's next, so it costs you nothing either way.
Your first month on a program is money-back too. If the first month isn't worth it, you get it back. And because every build starts with a Roadmap and you sign off on real work at every milestone, you have seen exactly how we work long before the final invoice. No 14-day fine print, no "satisfaction subject to approval," no haggling. We would rather refund a fee than keep money we didn't earn.
The small end of the shop
Neighbors and smaller budgets
The programs above are what the studio is built around. But we live here, and we keep a short menu of small fixed-fee pieces for the businesses around us: a one-day visual revamp of an existing site at $500, a single useful automation at $400, and an SEO rewrite of your core pages from $500 to $2,000.
For businesses in Macon County there's also a small neighbors' plan we keep on purpose. It isn't really a product, so it lives on the Franklin page instead of here. And hosting is free for anyone who has bought anything from us, with a small footer credit as the only price. The plain-language details →
The path
Every engagement starts the same way
A free fit call, then a Crux Roadmap, then a written proposal. No pressure at any step.
Free fit call
A short, no-obligation conversation. We learn your business; you decide if we're the right partner.
Crux Roadmap
A flat-fee, three-business-day hands-on start. Refundable in full if you're not happy with what we show you on day three, and credited toward your build or first program month if we continue.
How it works →A written proposal
Fixed numbers on one page: phases, prices, and terms. Take it, shape it with us, or part on good terms.
Pricing questions
The questions we get most
Who actually does the work?
One senior engineer, with modern AI tooling doing the heavy lifting under senior review. No account managers, no handoffs: the person you talk to is the person building it. We run as a studio because the output holds up as one, and we keep the client book capped so that stays true.
Can a one-person studio handle a company our size?
It's a fair question, and the answer is built into how we work. The client book is capped, so you're never one of forty accounts. Everything we build is documented, approved at milestones, and registered in your name from day one: domain, code, accounts, data. If we ever stopped working together, nothing is stranded and nothing is held hostage. And the work itself is the strongest answer: we build and run our own production software on the same stack we sell.
Why are your prices below the big agencies?
Because the overhead is different, not the standard. Agencies commonly quote $15,000 to $50,000 for builds like these, and the average U.S. SEO retainer runs past $3,000 a month, priced around teams doing the work by hand. Modern AI lets one senior operator deliver that output. We built the studio around it and share the difference.
Are there long contracts?
No. Programs are month to month, and the six-month program rate holds a price, not a hostage: either side can stop on 30 days' notice, there's no early-termination fee, and if we stop early the term rate is not clawed back.
How does billing work?
A Master Services Agreement with a Statement of Work per phase. Builds bill 50% to start and 50% at go-live; programs bill monthly, invoices Net 14. No deposits beyond that, no surprise line items.
What are founding client rates?
The first program clients pay rates meaningfully below this page, held for their initial term, in exchange for the engagement being written up as a public case study and one small line of footer credit on pages we build. There are five founding seats; one is spoken for.
Do you offer a money-back guarantee?
Yes, and a real one. Every engagement starts with a Crux Roadmap, which is 100% refundable: if you're not happy with what we show you on day three, you get every dollar back, no questions. Your first month on a program is money-back the same way, and because every build starts with a Roadmap and you sign off at every milestone, you have seen how we work long before the final invoice. No 14-day windows, no fine print.
Do you host websites?
Free, for clients. Anyone who has bought any Cruxsmith product gets hosting on the same infrastructure our own studio runs on, with a small footer credit as the only price. The full picture, including what leaving costs, lives on the hosting page.
What about smaller budgets?
The small end of the shop is real: a $500 one-day visual revamp, a $400 starter automation, SEO content work from $500, and a neighbors' plan for Macon County businesses on the Franklin page. If budget is tight, the revamp is the right first step; it puts senior eyes on your whole stack.
What's not on this page?
Anything that depends on your specific business: full platform rewrites, multi-system automations, AI assistants trained on your data. Those are quoted after a Crux Roadmap, where we've done real work in your environment and can put fixed numbers on the rest with no guesswork.
Ready to put numbers on it?
A free fit call is the only first step. If we're a match, the Roadmap comes next, and the proposal after that has fixed prices on one page.
Book your free fit call