No Hidden Costs.
No Surprises. Ever.
We believe you should understand exactly what you're investing in and why — before you commit to a single pound or dollar. This page explains everything, including the platform gotchas other agencies never mention.
ROISynth's service fee is separate from external platform costs. Both are explained here with real numbers.
The Two Investment Types
Every Client Investment Has Two Parts
ROISynth Service Investment
This is what you pay ROISynth — for our expertise, strategy, creative work, engineering, marketing, and ongoing growth management. It covers the human time, knowledge, and effort that turns your goals into reality.
- Strategy, research & discovery
- Design & user experience
- Building your platform or system
- Marketing, SEO & advertising
- Automation & AI system setup
- Ongoing optimisation & support
External Platform Costs
Modern digital businesses run on specialist platforms — for hosting, email delivery, customer accounts, content management, AI, and monitoring. These providers charge directly for their services. Most are genuinely free to start, and costs grow only as your business grows.
- Website hosting & global delivery
- Email sending & marketing automation
- Customer account & login system
- Content management for your team
- AI-powered features & chatbots
- System monitoring & security
Important: You own all platform accounts directly in your name. We never hold your subscriptions or data hostage. Everything is yours from day one.
Our Service Fee
What You Get When You Work With ROISynth
Every engagement includes some or all of these depending on your chosen scope. All delivered by specialists, not generalists.
Strategy & Discovery
Understanding your business, market, competitors, and goals — then designing a digital roadmap that actually makes sense for your situation, your budget, and your stage.
Design & User Experience
Creating the visual identity, layouts, and user journeys that make visitors trust you, stay longer, and convert into customers. This is the difference between a site that looks good and one that sells.
Building & Engineering
Constructing the actual platform — website, customer portal, booking system, e-commerce, CRM, or custom application — to a production standard that handles real traffic.
Marketing & Growth
Driving qualified traffic through SEO, paid advertising, email marketing, and content — calibrated to your industry, your location, and your specific target audience.
Automation & AI Systems
Deploying intelligent workflows that replace manual processes, qualify leads automatically, send follow-ups, and handle routine customer interactions without human involvement.
Ongoing Optimisation & Support
Monitoring performance, running A/B tests, updating content, fixing issues, and continuously improving results month after month — so your investment compounds over time.
External Platform Cost Guide
Every Business System — Real Numbers, Plain English
Here's exactly what each platform type does, when it's free, when costs kick in — and the gotchas other agencies don't tell you about.
Website Content Management
$0 – $199/monthThe system that lets your team update website pages, blog posts, product listings, pricing, and media — without ever touching code or calling a developer. Your editors log in, make changes, and publish. Done.
Free Tier Reality
Most platforms include a free tier supporting up to 20 editors and 10,000 content pieces — genuinely useful for the majority of growing businesses. Enough for a large team and substantial content library at zero monthly cost.
When Upgrades Happen
- Content team grows beyond 20 editors needing simultaneous access
- Content library exceeds 10,000 pieces (products, articles, pages combined)
- Very high traffic drives content to API rate limits — which on some platforms causes content to stop loading entirely (not just slow — fully stopped) until limits reset
- Advanced editorial workflows: approvals, scheduling, versioning at scale
- Warning: some platforms jump from $0 directly to $199–$300/month with no middle tier
Watch out: One widely-used content platform sets a hard monthly limit on content requests. Exceed it during a traffic spike and content stops loading — the page breaks — until the counter resets next month. We architect around these limits.
Customer Data & Records Platform
$0 – $50/monthThe secure vault that stores all customer accounts, orders, bookings, form submissions, memberships, purchase history, and business data. Everything your business generates, safely stored and instantly accessible.
Free Tier Reality
Free tiers typically support up to 50,000–75,000 monthly active users and 500MB–2GB of stored data. Covers most businesses in early and growth stages without spending a penny.
When Upgrades Happen
- Monthly active users exceed 50,000–75,000 on your platform
- Storage grows beyond 500MB–2GB of customer records
- High-transaction volume requiring dedicated database performance
- Compliance requirements for data residency or regulatory standards
- Live production launch — free database tiers pause automatically on inactivity
Watch out: Free database accounts automatically pause if your system has no activity for 7 days — making your website or app completely unresponsive when you return. Production systems must be on paid infrastructure. We always ensure this transition happens before launch.
Critical: One major database platform has no spending cap by default. A bug that accidentally runs thousands of queries in a loop can generate thousands in charges overnight. We always configure hard spending limits and budget alerts before going live.
Global Performance Hosting
$0 – $40/monthThe infrastructure that delivers your website instantly to visitors anywhere in the world — from New York to Dubai to London — at any time, with no downtime. This is what makes your site load in under a second, every time.
Free Tier Reality
The top hosting platforms offer free tiers with unlimited bandwidth (no caps) and up to 500 builds/month — enough for virtually any business's traffic without paying anything. This is genuinely competitive infrastructure at $0.
When Upgrades Happen
- Development team of 3+ people (some platforms charge $20/person — 5 developers = $100/month)
- Advanced analytics, custom security headers, or enterprise performance requirements
- Multiple simultaneous build deployments needed
- Custom compliance, dedicated infrastructure, or SLA guarantees required
We choose hosting infrastructure where unlimited bandwidth is available on the free tier — meaning most businesses never pay for hosting at all, regardless of traffic volume.
Email Communication & Marketing Platform
$0 – $200/monthThe system that sends every email your business needs — customer confirmations, order receipts, password resets, newsletters, promotional campaigns, automated follow-up sequences, and re-engagement emails.
Free Tier Reality
For marketing newsletters: one platform supports up to 10,000 subscribers completely free — the most generous free tier in the industry. For automated transactional emails (receipts, confirmations): up to 3,000/month free, but with a 100-email daily cap that prevents batch sends.
When Upgrades Happen
- Newsletter list grows beyond 10,000 subscribers
- Automated transaction emails exceed 3,000/month
- Batch sends or campaigns required (daily cap blocks free tier for this)
- Advanced automation sequences, A/B testing, or team collaboration needed
- Marketing platform grows to 50,000+ subscribers ($250/month range)
Watch out: The most widely recognised email platform's free tier supports only 250 contacts — and unsubscribed people still count against that limit. A business with 500 past customers has no free option here. We always recommend platforms with genuinely useful free limits.
Secure Customer Account System
$0 – $75+/monthThe secure login and identity layer that powers customer portals, membership areas, staff dashboards, role-based access, and any feature requiring someone to 'log in'. Protects your business and your customers with enterprise-grade security.
Free Tier Reality
Free tiers support 25,000–50,000 monthly active users — far more than most growing businesses need. No monthly fees until you reach meaningful scale.
When Upgrades Happen
- Monthly active users exceed 25,000–50,000 (then $0.02/user above limit)
- Two-factor authentication (MFA) required — locked to paid plans on most platforms
- Enterprise clients requiring single sign-on with their company credentials: $75–$100/month per enterprise connection
- Removing provider branding from your login screen
- SOC2 or HIPAA compliance documentation ($250–$300/month range)
Watch out: If you're building software that sells to enterprise clients, each enterprise needing to log in with their company credentials (SSO) adds $75–$100/month per connection. For a product with 10 enterprise clients, that's $750–$1,000/month in authentication costs. Plan this early.
AI Intelligence Layer
$10 – $500+/monthThe intelligence behind AI chatbots, smart customer support, automated content generation, smart search, product recommendations, document processing, and any AI-powered feature on your platform.
Free Tier Reality
Initial trial credits provided — typically enough to test and validate your AI features. Ongoing production use requires pay-as-you-use billing with no monthly minimum.
When Upgrades Happen
- AI chatbot handling hundreds of conversations per day
- Complex AI tasks requiring premium model capability
- AI features becoming a core part of your business model
- Multiple AI systems running simultaneously (support + content + search)
AI model selection matters enormously for cost. Entry-level models cost 16× less than premium models and handle the majority of business tasks perfectly. We match the right model to each task — not a single expensive model for everything.
Business System Monitoring & Protection
$0 – $300+/monthThe always-on surveillance system that watches every part of your digital business 24/7 — detecting errors, performance degradation, security threats, and downtime before your customers notice. Sends instant alerts to our team.
Free Tier Reality
Free tiers support a single developer monitoring up to 5,000 error events/month with basic alerting — functional for early-stage products in development.
When Upgrades Happen
- More than one developer or team member needs monitoring access (free tier is 1 user only)
- Error volume exceeds 5,000 events/month (any active product will reach this quickly)
- Multiple services requiring simultaneous monitoring
- Enterprise monitoring: $15/server/month — a 20-server infrastructure costs $300/month in monitoring alone
- SLA or uptime guarantee requirements for compliance
For complex infrastructure with many servers, enterprise-grade monitoring compounds quickly at $15/server/month. We size monitoring to your actual infrastructure — not the enterprise default.
Lead Capture & Form Delivery
$0 – $40/monthThe reliable delivery system for every form submission on your website — contact requests, booking enquiries, quote requests, newsletter sign-ups — delivered instantly to your inbox, CRM, or automation system.
Free Tier Reality
Free tier supports 50 form submissions/month — genuinely only suitable for very low-traffic or pre-launch websites.
When Upgrades Happen
- Receiving more than 50 form submissions/month — a single successful campaign exhausts this in one day
- File uploads required in forms (CV, documents, images)
- Multiple team members need access to submission data
- CRM integration or Zapier automation required
Watch out: 50 submissions/month is the free limit — any active marketing, SEO ranking, or ad campaign will hit this in hours, not weeks. The $10/month paid tier is almost always the real starting point for live business websites.
What Others Don't Tell You
The Platform Gotchas That Catch Businesses Off Guard
These are real issues from real platform pricing — issues that cost businesses money, cause downtime, or create compliance problems. We plan around all of them before your first line of work begins.
Free databases pause after 7 days of inactivity
Some database platforms automatically put free-tier projects to sleep if they receive no activity for a week. Your website or application then becomes unresponsive until the database wakes up — which can take 30–60 seconds. For any live production system, this is unacceptable. We move all production systems to paid infrastructure before launch.
Some cloud services have no default spending cap
One major database and cloud platform bills on pure pay-as-you-use with no spending limit configured by default. A bug in your application that accidentally loops through database queries can generate thousands of pounds in charges in a single night. We always configure hard spending limits and budget alert notifications before any system goes live.
Content API hard limits break websites — not just slow them
Certain content platforms set a monthly hard limit on how many times content can be fetched. When a traffic spike causes this limit to be exceeded, content stops loading entirely — your pages return errors, not slow responses — until the monthly counter resets. We architect content delivery so these hard limits are never a single point of failure.
Per-person hosting costs compound with team size
Some hosting platforms charge per developer — typically $20/person/month. A 5-person engineering team costs $100/month just for deployment access, before a single visitor arrives. We factor team size into platform selection from day one.
Enterprise SSO is priced per customer — not per plan
If your software allows corporate clients to log in using their company credentials (single sign-on), each enterprise connection adds $75–$100/month. Building a B2B product with 10 enterprise clients means $750–$1,000/month purely in authentication costs. This is a business model consideration, not a surprise — we plan it in.
Email platforms count unsubscribed contacts against your limit
The most recognised email marketing platform counts everyone on your list — including people who have unsubscribed — toward your contact limit and your monthly charge. A business that has ever marketed before can find itself paying for contacts they can no longer reach. We choose platforms that bill only for active, reachable subscribers.
What to Expect at Every Stage
Platform Costs Grow With Your Revenue — Not Before It
These are external platform costs only — not ROISynth's service fee. Costs scale because your business is generating more. Not because we add hidden charges.
Starter
Launching or pre-revenue
Almost every platform used in a modern digital business has a meaningful free tier. A well-built new business can launch with near-zero monthly platform costs. Your investment at this stage is in getting the foundation built right — not in software subscriptions.
- Content management: $0 (up to 10,000 pieces, 20 editors)
- Website hosting: $0 (unlimited bandwidth on top platforms)
- Customer records: $0 (up to 50,000 users) — but NOT on free DB for production
- Email (up to 10,000 subscribers): $0
- Automated emails (up to 3,000/month): $0
- Secure login (up to 50,000 users): $0
- Lead forms: $10/month (free tier too limited for live sites)
Growing
500–10,000 customers, real traffic
As your business grows, live production infrastructure costs kick in. The primary shift is moving databases and email from free to paid tiers — costs remain modest and are easily covered by the additional revenue growth brings.
- Customer records database (production): $25/month
- Email (1,000–10,000 subscribers): $0–$33/month
- Automated email sending (up to 50,000/month): $20/month
- Hosting (solo developer): $0–$20/month
- Monitoring (basic, team access): $26/month
- Forms (active enquiries): $10/month
- Authentication: $0–$20/month
Scaling
10,000–100,000 customers, high transaction volume
At scale, platform costs are a small fraction of the revenue your systems generate. The upgrade investments here — stronger databases, better email delivery, AI features, comprehensive monitoring — directly protect and grow that revenue.
- Email marketing (10,000–50,000 subscribers): $100–$250/month
- Customer data platform: $25–$50/month
- AI features (active daily usage): $50–$300/month
- Monitoring (multi-service): $26–$100/month
- Content management (large teams): $0–$90/month
- Authentication (MFA + team): $20–$75/month
- Hosting (multi-developer team): $0–$100/month
Enterprise
100,000+ customers, mission-critical systems
Enterprise-level platform costs reflect enterprise-level revenue and compliance requirements. At this stage, infrastructure is handling millions in transactions — the investment in reliability, compliance, and performance is essential and proportionally small.
- Enterprise email (100,000+ subscribers): $250–$500+/month
- Enterprise data platform (high volume): $50–$500+/month
- AI processing at scale: $200–$2,000+/month
- Enterprise monitoring (SLA, full observability): $100–$500+/month
- Enterprise authentication (SSO, HIPAA): $250–$1,000+/month
- Dedicated or custom infrastructure: custom pricing
Client Education
Why Modern Businesses Rely on These Platforms
Why doesn't one company build everything?
Specialist platforms exist because email delivery, AI processing, security authentication, and data storage are each deeply complex disciplines. The companies that build these are world-class at their specific function. Using them means your business benefits from thousands of engineers' worth of infrastructure that would cost millions to replicate internally.
Why do some of these charge monthly?
Hosting, email delivery, AI processing, and security require continuous infrastructure — servers running 24/7, teams maintaining reliability, constant security patches, and compliance updates. Monthly fees fund that reliability. The alternative is owning and running your own servers, which costs dramatically more and requires a full-time engineering team just to manage them.
Why start on free tiers?
Free tiers exist because platform providers want growing businesses to adopt their tools early and upgrade as they need more. This is genuinely aligned with your interests — you invest in infrastructure costs only when your business has the revenue to justify it. We architect systems to maximise what you get from free tiers without hitting their limitations.
Why does scaling cost more?
Delivering 100,000 emails costs more infrastructure than delivering 100. Storing 10 million customer records requires more than 10,000. The costs scale proportionally with your business activity — and they're always a small fraction of the revenue that activity generates. When scaling costs increase, it means revenue has increased more.
Why do AI features have usage costs?
Processing intelligence — understanding language, generating responses, analysing data — requires significant computing power. These costs scale with usage: 100 AI conversations a day costs far less than 10,000. We design AI systems with hard cost controls and usage alerts so spend never escalates unexpectedly.
Our Cost Optimisation Commitment
We Actively Work to Keep Your Platform Costs Low
Our interest is aligned with yours: unnecessary platform spend is waste that should be eliminated. Every month, we audit what you're paying for and why.
Start on Free Tiers
We architect every system to maximise free tier usage so you launch lean and upgrade only when growth demands it — and only in areas where growth demands it.
Right-Size Your Setup
We never over-engineer for hypothetical future scale. You get what your current stage needs — not the enterprise setup you might need in three years.
Quarterly Cost Audits
We review your platform subscriptions every quarter, identify redundancy and zombie subscriptions, and recommend changes that save money immediately.
Avoid Vendor Lock-in
We choose platforms that allow clean migration. If a provider raises prices significantly or reduces quality, we evaluate alternatives and move if it makes financial sense.
Usage Monitoring & Alerts
We set up spending alerts before any platform has usage-based billing. No cost surprise ever happens without you receiving advance warning — days before, not after.
Growth Path Planning
Before your business hits any limit, we plan the upgrade path — budget included — so transitions are smooth, expected, and timed to when revenue supports them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are external platform costs included in ROISynth's fee?
No — they are completely separate. ROISynth's fee covers our expertise, strategy, design, engineering, marketing, and time. External platform costs (hosting, email delivery, AI usage, etc.) are charged directly by those providers to you. We help you choose cost-efficient setups and manage those relationships, but we never mark them up.
How do I know what platform costs to expect?
We assess your requirements during the strategy call and give you a clear projection of expected external costs before any work begins — broken down by category, with current market pricing. There are no surprises. You see every cost before you commit.
Can we start on free tiers and upgrade later?
Almost always yes — with one important exception. We architect systems to maximise free tier usage at launch. However, live production databases must be on paid plans to avoid the automatic-pause issue on free tiers. Everything else — hosting, content management, email (up to 10,000 subscribers), login systems — can often launch free and upgrade only when growth demands it.
Who pays the external platform bills — us or ROISynth?
You pay them directly. You own all platform accounts, subscriptions, and relationships. We set everything up under your name and email from day one. You always have full ownership and control — nothing is locked to us.
What happens if an external platform increases their pricing?
We monitor this and notify you in advance. If a significant price increase occurs, we evaluate alternatives, model the migration cost, and move you if it makes financial sense — always with your approval first. We never lock you into a platform that isn't working for you.
Are AI costs predictable?
Yes, with proper controls. AI costs are usage-based — they scale with how much your AI features are used. We design systems with hard spending limits and usage alerts so costs never run unexpectedly high. For most businesses at launch, AI costs are under $20/month. Costs only grow when usage volume genuinely grows.
What's the minimum realistic platform cost to get started?
For most businesses, $10–$35/month: a production database ($25/month), a form submission handler ($10/month), and everything else free. Some businesses launch with $0 in external costs if their form volume is low enough for a free tier to cover it. We design your setup to be as lean as possible at launch.
Do you help us reduce platform costs as we scale?
Yes — this is part of our ongoing work. We audit platform usage quarterly, identify redundancy and waste, and recommend alternatives when a better option exists. Many businesses overpay for plans they outgrew — or pay for features they never use. We fix that.
Ready to Get a Clear Quote?
Book a Free Strategy Call — We'll Cost Everything Upfront
On the call, we assess your requirements, design the right setup for your stage, and give you a clear breakdown of both our service fee and expected platform costs — before you commit to anything.
Stop Leaving Revenue
on the Table.
Book a free 30-minute strategy call. We'll audit your current setup, identify your biggest growth opportunities, and show you exactly how we'd help — no pressure, no pitch deck.
No contracts · No pitch decks · Just a real conversation · 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇦🇪 🇨🇦 🇸🇦