Why we ship websites at $899, not $499 and not $2,499

Partners ask us about this constantly. "Why $899? Why not $499 to close more deals? Why not $2,499 like a real agency?"

We didn't pick $899 by feel. We ran it. Here's what we learned at each price.

$499 — race-to-bottom positioning

The cheapest price we tested. Conversion rate from preview-sent to closed: 24%. Highest in our test. So why don't we do it?

Three reasons:

The wrong customers buy at $499. They're shopping by price. They negotiate everything, churn within six months, and grind your support team. Lifetime value barely covers the cost of supporting them.
It can't fund the model. After Oanie's 50% split, the partner takes home $249.50. Minus payment processing, minus phone time, minus follow-up — you're working for $40/hr at best. Doesn't scale.
It signals disposability. A $499 website is something you replace in two years. A $899 site, weirdly, feels like a commitment. Customers treat it better, send fewer cancellation requests, and recommend it more.

$2,499 — premium-agency positioning

The most expensive we tested. Conversion rate: 3%. Brutal.

The customers who do buy at $2,499 are wonderful. They're patient, low-touch, refer friends, and renew hosting indefinitely. The problem is volume. To match $899 revenue at 3% conversion, you'd need to triple your dial-out volume. That's a different business. It requires bigger pipelines, fancier presentations, decision-maker access, and a longer sales cycle (45 days vs. 9). Possible — but not the model we sell to first-quarter partners.

$1,499 — the middle

We ran this one for two months. Conversion: 9.5%. Not bad, not great.

The deal-breaker was a soft one: at $1,499, customers expect a kickoff call, brand discovery, three revision rounds, and a launch ceremony. At $899, they expect a finished site by Friday and don't want to think about it. The cost of delivering $1,499 quality is much higher than $1,499 minus $899. The margin compressed enough that net per-hour was worse than the cheaper tier.

$899 — what won

Conversion rate: 14%. Margin per partner closer: best of the four. Customer profile: small-business owners who are too busy to do this themselves, who buy on "this looks great and you're solving my problem," and who renew hosting because canceling is annoying.

The $899 customer also accepts the product as finished, not collaborative. That's the unlock. You ship a site that's already 95% of what they want, they tweak the copy on three pages, you bill them, done in 5 days. No 6-week Slack channel. No revisions on the logo. No "can we get the hero a little more — you know — modern?"

What this means for your pricing

Don't undercut $899. We tested it. It doesn't work — not for you, not for us.

Don't try to charge $2,499 unless you're already running a different business with a different sales motion.

$899 is the price where local SMBs say yes without flinching, where partners earn a defensible hourly rate, and where the product you ship matches the expectation.

There's a reason every successful Oanie partner is at $899 ± $100. The few who tried $1,299 are now back at $899. The math is the math.