How we work
Retainer pricing for clients who want a partner, not a project
Monthly retainers for ongoing managed operations. Predictable cost, named team, contractually guaranteed performance, contractually required improvement.
Three tiers
Pick the tier closest to your shape; we'll customize from there
Operate
For clients with a single deployed workflow that requires steady-state operations and incremental improvement.
- ✓ 1 workflow under management
- ✓ Dedicated 4-person operations pod
- ✓ 24/7 monitoring & on-call
- ✓ Quarterly business review
- ✓ Standard SLAs (99.9% uptime, < 4s P95 latency)
- ✓ Up to 50 hours/month of feature work
Scale
Our most-chosen tier. For clients running 2–5 workflows in production and actively expanding the agentic footprint.
- ✓ 2–5 workflows under management
- ✓ Dedicated 6–8-person pod (incl. design partner)
- ✓ 24/7 monitoring & on-call
- ✓ Monthly business review + quarterly governance audit
- ✓ Enhanced SLAs (99.95% uptime, < 2s P95 latency)
- ✓ Up to 200 hours/month of feature work
- ✓ Reserved bench for expansion projects
Enterprise
For organizations standardizing agentic operations across multiple business units. Custom-shaped for your operating model.
- ✓ Unlimited workflows under management
- ✓ Multi-pod structure with cross-pod governance
- ✓ 24/7/365 with named senior on-call rotation
- ✓ Quarterly executive review with our partners
- ✓ Negotiated SLAs (up to 99.99% available)
- ✓ Embedded design partners on your team
- ✓ First call on emergent capabilities
Included across all tiers
The non-negotiables, regardless of tier
We don't water down our standards by tier. The cheapest engagement we run is held to the same governance, security, and reliability standards as our most expensive. The differences across tiers are scope, scale, and flexibility — never quality.
- ● Production-grade observability & alerting
- ● Audit-ready decision logs (retained per regulatory requirement)
- ● Quarterly third-party security review
- ● Roadmap input on Apison Hooks platform development
- ● Direct access to your pod via shared Slack/Teams channel
A note on contract length
Our standard retainer is 12 months with 90-day notice. We will, on request, run a 6-month pilot at a slight premium. We don't lock anyone into multi-year deals — if we're not earning the renewal every quarter, we don't deserve it.
Want a quote shaped to your operation?
A 30-minute call is enough for us to scope a retainer with confidence.
Book Discovery Call →