Services and pricing
What we do, and what it costs to start
Highland Willow builds and runs one system that tells an owner-operated business the truth about itself, then keeps measuring whether it still does.
Every price below is a starting rate: the smallest budget at which that piece of work can be done properly. They are real numbers you can plan against, not a range that moves once we know who is asking. They run from a single service to a senior operator inside your business several days a week, because those are genuinely different problems and pricing them as though they were the same is how both get done badly.
The work suits a business doing real volume on records it does not fully trust: orders in one place, stock in another, a spreadsheet holding the part nobody dares touch. Usually five to fifty people, usually one owner who already knows which number is wrong and cannot prove it. The entry levels suit a business that needs one thing done well. The upper tiers suit one where the system is the operation and the honest answer is a person inside it. Builds are quoted against a written scope rather than listed, and you will have a figure before you commit to anything.
Starting prices
| Service | Starting at | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Site and page optimization | $5,900 | One-time |
| Search and content care | $3,300 | Monthly, three levels |
| Platform care | $4,400 | Monthly |
| Executive intelligence | $4,700 | Monthly, two levels |
| Embedded operations | $22,100 | Monthly, quoted from scope |
| Reviewed executive report, one off | $4,600 | One-time |
| Discovery and scope | $19,700 | One-time, credited |
| Implementation | $48,100 | Quoted from scope |
These are the smallest budgets at which each piece of work can be done properly. We have set them where they are because a retainer too small to change anything is worse than no retainer: it spends your money, occupies your attention and moves no number you care about. If your situation needs less than the entry level, we will tell you, and we will point you somewhere cheaper.
The five service lines
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1. Site and page optimization
Starting at $5,900One-time. Available now.What it is for. Knowing exactly what is wrong with your public site, ranked by what it costs you, before anybody spends money changing it.
- Every URL in your sitemap crawled, plus every link on every page: the broken ones, the forbidden ones, the ones that redirect twice, and the page that links to each.
- Two independent tool sets, one commercial and one open source, run against the same crawl, with every disagreement between them reported rather than averaged away.
- What a browser actually renders, checked separately from what the raw HTML says.
- Core Web Vitals from repeat runs, never a single reading, plus accessibility, heading and markup structure, contrast, canonicals, duplicate titles and descriptions.
- A ranked fix list, cheapest leverage first, each item marked for whether it needs access to your systems, so your developer can start on Monday without us.
Not includedNot a score out of 100. Fixing the site is separate work, quoted from the findings. We do not promise rankings, because nobody can.
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2. Search and content care
Starting at $3,300 / monthThree levels. Available now.What it is for. Being findable by the people who are already looking for what you sell, and knowing month to month whether that is improving.
The three levels of search and content care Level Monthly What it delivers Essential $3,300 Rank and keyword tracking against a named competitor set, AI-answer presence checked term by term, backlink and anchor review, and a monthly written read on what moved, what caused it and what to do next Growth $4,900 Adds the technical fixes actually implemented rather than recommended, content briefs your writer can work from, and page-level work on the pages that carry commercial intent Publishing $7,400 Adds the writing itself, researched and fact-checked against your own catalogue, plus the internal linking and structure work that makes published pages compound instead of sitting there Not includedNo advertising management and no advertising spend: that budget goes directly to Google or Meta on your own card and never passes through us. We do not promise rankings, and we will tell you when a term we were targeting has an AI answer sitting above every result on it.
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3. Platform care
Starting at $4,400 / monthMonthly. Scope written into your agreement.What it is for. Your ERPNext platform staying up, staying current and staying recoverable, without you thinking about it.
- Updates applied on a schedule, on a copy first, reversible.
- Backups with a restore actually performed and proven, not a read-back that only shows the file is there. A backup nobody has restored is not a backup.
- Uptime, certificate and integration monitoring, with the alert reaching us before it reaches you, across two time zones so overnight failures are caught overnight.
- Security hygiene and credential rotation on a stated interval, written down.
- Incident response in business hours, Eastern, with acknowledgement inside the hour and a named person who already knows your system.
Not includedNot around-the-clock cover. We acknowledge inside business hours and say so in the agreement rather than implying more. New features, reports and integrations are separate work, quoted before starting.
Before this line startsThis work reaches systems that hold money and customer records. It begins after a scoping call and signed agreements covering the work, the data and confidentiality, and we will tell you plainly what we are and are not insured for.
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4. Executive intelligence
Starting at $4,700 / monthReviewed tier $6,200 / month. One-time reviewed report from $4,600.What it is for. Being able to answer questions about your own business from your own records, with every figure checkable, instead of waiting on a bookkeeper and a hunch.
- Your systems connected and reconciled to each other: the platform, the payment processor, the shipping account, the search data, the spreadsheets that still matter.
- A monthly report where each number carries the query or record that produced it, so you can check any of it rather than trusting all of it.
- Automated checks run over every report before you see it. On one recent month-one run they found a stale reconciliation, five claims whose premise had been withdrawn, a page that had silently truncated, and four faults in our own checking.
- A retraction register. When a figure we published turns out to be wrong, the correction is written down and dated rather than quietly replaced.
- Questions answered against your connected data between reports, under a fair-use limit set in your agreement rather than a meter running while you think.
Not includedNo investment, tax or legal advice: we are none of those things. The $6,200 reviewed tier adds a human read of every page before it goes out. We are not selling you software and you are not licensing anything: this is a service.
Before this line startsSame as platform care: this line reads money and customer records, so the scoping call and the signed agreements come first.
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5. Embedded operations
Starting at $22,100 / monthQuoted from scope. Twelve-month term.What it is for. Businesses where the system is the operation, and where the honest answer is not a retainer but a senior operator inside the business several days a week. This is the tier that actually changes how a company runs.
- Everything in platform care, search and content care and executive intelligence, as one engagement with one person accountable for the result rather than three line items.
- Build capacity included, not quoted separately. New integrations, reports, automations and process changes are delivered inside the engagement as priorities change, which is the difference between a system that is maintained and one that improves.
- A standing two-zone rota, so overnight batches, restores, failures and long-running work happen while your business is closed and are resolved before you open.
- Direct access during business hours to the person doing the work, not to an account manager who relays it.
- Quarterly written review against the outcomes the engagement was bought to produce, including what did not work and what we would do differently.
Not includedThis is not a headcount replacement and we will say so if that is what you need. Advertising spend still routes directly to the platform on your card. Multi-country consolidation, statutory reporting across several jurisdictions and deep discrete manufacturing planning are declined and referred on, at any budget.
Why this existsMost firms would sell you three retainers and let the work spill past all of them. If your operation genuinely needs this much attention, a stack of small retainers is the expensive way to buy it and the one most likely to fail quietly. We would rather name the real number.
The common pairing
Platform care and search and content care together
$9,300 / monthPlatform care at $4,400 plus the Growth level of search and content care at $4,900.This is the combination most businesses want: the system kept running, and someone watching whether anyone can find it. It is the two prices added together. There is no discount for buying both, and we would rather say that than invent one.
If the work consistently runs past what this covers, we will tell you and show you the evidence, and the honest answer is usually embedded operations rather than a bigger retainer. We would rather move you up deliberately than quietly do less than you are paying for.
Starting either half on its ownThe search and content half reads public pages and can start on its own. The platform half can attach later at the same price, with no repricing of what you already have.
Why this costs what it costs
We are not the cheapest and we do not try to be. Here is the reasoning in full, so you can decide whether it applies to you rather than take our word for it.
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Most of the fee is usually money you are already spending
Before we quote, we count what the engagement switches off: duplicate systems, card fees at the register, subscriptions nobody uses, a cutover that has been quoted twice, manual re-keying somebody is paid to do. On an established business that count is often most of the fee and sometimes all of it. We do that count first, and we show you the arithmetic, because a price you have to find new money for is a different decision from a price that comes out of a budget you already have.
What this means for the priceThe honest question is not whether this is expensive in isolation. It is what your current arrangement already costs you, and nobody has usually added that up.
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The checking is the product, and it is the expensive part
Anyone can send you a number. The work is knowing whether it is right. Every figure in a monthly report traces to a named source, and automated checks run across the whole report before you ever see it.
On one recent month-one report, eight of those checks found a stale reconciliation, five claims whose premise had been withdrawn, a page that had silently truncated, and four faults in our own checking. That is the kind of thing that reaches an owner as a confident wrong number everywhere else, and it is what you are paying for.
What this means for the priceA cheaper report is cheaper because nobody checked it. The cost of one wrong figure acted on for a quarter is larger than the annual fee.
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We run tools that disagree with each other, on purpose
On a recent 605-page site audit, a paid commercial scanner graded the site 92 out of 100. It flagged four critical issues the site's own robots file already handled, and it missed both a live server error and a missing page description that open-source tools found. Neither tool set was sufficient. The pair was.
So we run both and report where they disagree, and we report performance from repeat runs or not at all, because two scans forty minutes apart returned different performance scores on 34 of 79 pages.
What this means for the priceRunning one scanner and emailing you the score takes minutes and is worth what it costs. Reconciling two and telling you which to believe is the work.
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Fixed fee, so you do not pay for our learning curve
We do not bill hourly. A month where the work goes badly for us costs you exactly what a month where it goes well costs you. The risk of a job taking longer than expected sits with us, which is the correct place for it, and it is the reason the price is not the lowest number we could have written.
What this means for the priceAn hourly firm quotes lower and bills higher. The number on this page is the number.
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Two time zones, so work happens while you are closed
The practice runs across Boone, North Carolina and a second time zone twelve hours away. Overnight batches, backups, restores and long-running checks happen while your business is shut, and you see the result in the morning rather than watching it run during your working day.
What this means for the priceThis is coverage, not a help desk. We acknowledge inside business hours, Eastern, and we say so plainly rather than implying more.
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Nothing here is designed to make leaving expensive
Thirty days' notice on any retainer, no exit fee, no clause that penalises you for going. You keep the site, the files, the written procedures and your own data. We tell you the cost of leaving before you sign, not when you ask to leave.
What this means for the priceWe have to earn the renewal every month. A cheaper price with a twelve-month lock is not cheaper.
How an engagement starts
- A call, about thirty minutes
You say in one sentence what your system cannot tell you. We ask what you have, who decides, and where the records live. If what you already run is adequate, we say so on that call and there is no second one. That has happened.
- What we need from you
For a site audit, nothing but your domain. For anything else: read access to the systems in scope, one named person who can answer questions about how the business actually works, and an export of whatever currently holds the truth, usually a spreadsheet. We tell you exactly which credentials we need and which we do not want.
- A written scope before a price on anything built
Retainers price from the list above. An implementation does not, because a build quoted blind is the single most reliable way to ruin a project. Discovery and scope starts at $19,700 and is credited in full against the build that follows. Implementation starts at $48,100 and is quoted from what discovery finds, with the unknowns named in the document rather than buried in it. If discovery shows the build is a bad idea, we say so and you have spent $19,700 instead of ten times that.
- Onboarding
A site audit is delivered within two weeks of the go-ahead. A care retainer takes two to three weeks to set up before the first monthly report, because the monitoring has to run for a cycle before a change in it means anything. We will not send you a first report built on one week of data and call it a baseline.
- Fixed fee, half on signature
We do not bill hourly. Fees are fixed against the written scope, half of a build is due on signature before work starts, and changes are priced from the same list you already have. Retainers are monthly with thirty days' notice either way, and the cost of leaving is in the agreement before you sign it.
Questions owners actually ask
Is this expensive?
Compared with the cheapest quote you can find, yes. Compared with what your current arrangement already costs, usually not, and that is the comparison worth making. Before we quote we count what the engagement switches off: duplicate systems, card fees, unused subscriptions, re-keying somebody is paid to do. On an established business that count is often most of the fee. We show you that arithmetic before you decide.
Why are you not the cheapest?
Because the cheap version of this work is the version where nobody checks the output. We run two sets of tools that disagree with each other and reconcile them, we run automated checks over every report before it reaches you, and we publish corrections when we get something wrong. That takes time, the time is most of the cost, and removing it is the only way to be meaningfully cheaper.
Why do your prices start where they do?
Because below those numbers the work cannot be done properly, and we would rather lose the sale than take a budget that cannot produce a result. A retainer too small to change anything still spends your money and occupies your attention every month. Each starting price is the smallest budget at which that line can deliver something you would notice, and if your situation needs less than our entry level we will say so and point you elsewhere.
What would this cost me to do in-house?
A retainer here is a fraction of a part-time hire, and it carries no recruitment, no payroll, no notice period, no training, and no single point of failure when that person is on holiday. The honest trade is that an employee gives you their whole attention and we give you a defined scope. If you have enough work to fill a role, hire the role. We will tell you so on the first call.
What do I actually get for the money?
Concretely: a monthly report in which every figure traces to a named source, automated checks run over it before you see it, a named human who answers your questions, work that happens overnight across two time zones, and a written correction with a date on it when something turns out to be wrong. Not a dashboard login and a quarterly call.
Can you guarantee results?
Not rankings, not revenue, and anyone who guarantees those is selling you something. What we do guarantee is process, in writing: acknowledgement inside business hours, delivery on the date we gave you, a restore actually performed rather than a backup merely taken, every figure traceable to its source, and a published correction when we are wrong. Those are the things inside our control, so those are the things we will stand behind.
What happens to my data?
It stays yours and it stays in your systems. We hold read credentials scoped to what the work needs, plus the derived files a report is built from, and those live in a per-client store that cannot reach another client's by construction rather than by our good intentions. We do not train anything on your records. When an engagement ends, you get the derived files and we destroy the credentials, and you get that in writing.
Who can see it?
Today, one person: the principal. Where a contractor is involved, their access is scoped to the task and named in the agreement, and we will tell you who they are rather than referring to "our team". If that ever changes, you hear it from us before it changes.
What if I want to leave?
Thirty days' notice on any retainer, no exit fee, no clause that makes leaving expensive. You keep the site, the files, the written procedures and the derived data. What you do not keep is the open-source tooling we run the service on, because it is not ours to give you: some of it carries licences that would attach obligations to you, and handing it over would be doing you a disfavour dressed as generosity. Everything that is yours leaves with you.
What is not included, across all of it?
Advertising spend and advertising management. Around-the-clock cover. Multi-country consolidation, statutory reporting across several jurisdictions, and deep discrete manufacturing planning: we decline those and refer them on, in writing, rather than learning them at your expense. Investment, tax and legal advice. Anything a line above says it does not include.
How is usage billed?
One invoice, two blocks, never one number. Services carries the fees above. Infrastructure cost recovery carries things like backup storage, monitoring and domain renewals at cost, with zero labour added, every line checkable against a published price page. Nothing carrying a margin appears under that heading. Advertising spend is in neither block, because it goes straight from your card to Google or Meta and we never touch it. Work beyond what a retainer covers is quoted before it is started.
What do you do when you are not sure?
We write that we do not know, and why, and what it would take to find out. Our documents label claims as measured, proposed or unknown, and the unknowns are the most useful column. When we get something wrong we publish the correction with a date on it: there are several on our own site, including two findings of our own that we retracted. You are buying a firm that tells you the number it cannot stand behind. That is the entire difference.
Say in one sentence what your system cannot tell you
Write to highlandwillowllc@gmail.com with that one sentence. If this is not the right work for you, that is a quick answer and a free one.
Prices on this page are starting points, current as of 26 October 2026, in United States dollars, and are superseded by any written proposal. Highland Willow LLC, Boone, North Carolina.