Key takeaways
- Long agency contracts protect the agency, not the client.
- Month-to-month terms keep an agency earning your business every month.
- A trustworthy agency is willing to be fired easily, with fair notice and full ownership handover.
Most agencies want you to sign for twelve months. There's a reason, and if you look closely, it usually isn't your benefit. Here's how I think about contracts, and why this studio runs month-to-month.
Long contracts remove the pressure to perform
When an agency already has your money locked in for a year, the incentive to deliver every single month quietly fades. Month-to-month flips that. We have to earn the next month with good work, every month. That pressure is healthy, and it's pointed in your favour.
You shouldn't pay for a bad fit
Sometimes the chemistry isn't right, or a strategy doesn't pan out the way anyone hoped. With an annual contract, you're stuck paying anyway. Month-to-month means you can walk if it isn't working, which is exactly why we work hard to make sure it is.
"But agencies need stability"
They do, and we get it from doing work clients want to keep paying for, not from contracts that trap them. If the only thing keeping a client around is a signature on a 12-month deal, the relationship was already over. We'd rather know that early and fix it.
What we ask instead
A fair 30 days' notice, so we can wrap things up cleanly and hand over everything: accounts, data, files, all of it. No exit fees. No holding your assets hostage. You own your business; we're just glad to help while it's a good fit.
Judge an agency by whether they're willing to be fired easily. The ones who are tend to be the ones worth keeping.← Back to all resources