---
title: Should We Move From Project-Based Billing to a Monthly Recurring Revenue Model?
description: Thinking of moving from project billing to a monthly retainer? Recurring revenue has real benefits, but it only lasts if the customer’s need recurs too.
image: https://www.advancementquest.com/hubfs/Pricing%20-%20reinforcement%20recurring%20Wedding%20Cakes%20hubspot.png
---
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Second Look
# Should We Move From Project-Based Billing to a Monthly Recurring Revenue Model?
Advancement Quest Team
October 22, 2026
A small web design agency builds websites for £6,000 each. Some months bring three new projects. Some bring none. The work is good and the clients are happy, but the revenue arrives in lumps, and every lump has to be won from scratch. So the owner starts looking at monthly website plans: a fixed £250 a month per client, covering the build, the hosting, the updates and the small changes, for as long as the client stays.
The appeal is obvious. The question is whether it fits the work.
### What Recurring Revenue Gives, and What It Asks in Return
The advantages are real. Cash flow becomes predictable, because income no longer depends on winning the next project. Capacity and hiring can be planned against revenue the business can actually see coming. Each pound earned takes less selling, since clients don't have to be won again for every piece of work. Ongoing contact deepens relationships and makes new needs easier to spot early. And a business with repeating revenue tends to be valued more highly by buyers and investors than one living project to project.
The obligations are just as real. A monthly fee creates a monthly promise, so capacity has to be held for clients whether they use it or not. The amount of work a client expects can gradually increase while the monthly fee remains the same. Clients reassess the fee every time they pay it, so cancellations become a constant possibility rather than a one-off risk at the end of a project. The switch itself can squeeze cash, because project fees often arrive upfront or in large stages, while monthly fees spread the same money over a year or more. And the value has to stay visible, month after month, to a client who is paying whether or not anything noticeable happened.
Both lists are worth taking seriously. Whether the advantages outweigh the obligations depends on how often the customer actually needs the work.
### Recurring Revenue Needs a Recurring Need
A customer's need has a shape over time, and that shape decides whether monthly billing will hold.
Some needs genuinely recur. Bookkeeping, maintenance, security monitoring, ongoing marketing: the work comes round every month whether anyone asks for it or not. Here, monthly billing simply matches the bill to the work, and the advantages above tend to win.
Some needs are episodic. A website build, an office fit-out, a brand identity: the work happens intensively, then stops, and may not be needed again for years. Forcing that onto a monthly fee creates months in which the client pays and nothing happens, and those months are where cancellations begin.
Many needs are mixed: an intensive project, followed by a lighter but genuine ongoing requirement. For these, a project fee followed by a smaller monthly plan often fits better than either model on its own.
#### ⚡ Recurring billing only lasts if the customer's need recurs too.
### The Quiet Month
In May 2013, Adobe announced it would stop selling its Creative Suite software outright and move entirely to Creative Cloud subscriptions. Until then, customers had paid between $1,300 and $2,600 for a perpetual licence. Around 50,000 people signed a petition demanding the company reverse course. Revenue fell 8% in 2013 and stayed roughly flat the following year.
The backlash came disproportionately from customers whose need didn't recur, people who bought the software once and upgraded every few years. At $50 a month, a subscription overtook the price of the standard suite after about 26 months. For a designer who upgraded every two years anyway, little changed. For one who upgraded every five, the subscription meant paying every month for software they had previously owned outright.
Adobe made the model work by giving subscribers something every month: continuous updates, new features and cloud services that a one-off licence never included. By 2016, revenue had reached nearly $5.9 billion, up from $4 billion in 2013, with around 80% coming from subscriptions and other recurring sources.
The web agency faces the same test on a smaller scale. In month fourteen, long after the site has launched, what does the client's £250 actually buy? If the answer is security updates, backups, performance monitoring, regular content changes and a monthly report showing what was done, the fee has a recurring job. If the answer is hosting worth £20 and a promise to help if something comes up, the client will notice, and the plan will be cancelled the month they do.
#### ⚡ Before switching to monthly billing, check what the client receives in a quiet month.
### 🚀 **What to do next**
If this feels familiar, start here:
👉 Run the [Second Look Decision Diagnostic](https://sldiag.advancementquest.com/second-look/decision-diagnostic/?entry=second-look/) to see what’s missing before you decide
👉See [related business decision](https://www.advancementquest.com/second-look/situations/stuck-between-options/decisions/raise-prices-vs-protect-volume)
👉 📖 Read more on [Second Look blog](https://www.advancementquest.com/blog/tag/second-look)
You can continue with making the decision afterwwards.
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## Keep reading
### [ Second Look Should I Turn Down Work That's Outside Our Core Offer?](https://www.advancementquest.com/blog/should-i-turn-down-work-thats-outside-our-core-offer)
### [ Second Look Are We Offering Too Many Services? Should We Cut Back and Become Known for One Thing?](https://www.advancementquest.com/blog/are-we-offering-too-many-services-should-we-cut-back-and-become-known-for-one-thing)
---
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