From the team
Starter vs Full Service Website Plans: What's Right for Your Costa Rican Business?
September 20265 min read
Two plans, one obvious question: which one actually fits your business right now? Here's how to tell.
A vet clinic owner in Heredia asked us something last month that we hear constantly: "I just need something that works, why does everyone charge so differently for what looks like the same thing?" It's a fair question. A $249 site delivered in two days can look identical on the surface to one that costs ten times as much, and most business owners have no way to tell what they're actually paying for until something breaks. We keep it to two plans on purpose, so the choice is simple instead of a guessing game.
First, what "Starter" actually gets you
The Starter plan is a clean, fast site that gets your business online and looking like it's actually run by someone. It's $2,000 a year (about $167 a month), and it covers the build, the hosting, the domain, business email if you want it, and a basic SEO report, no separate invoices for any of it. This is the right call if you mostly need a real front door: hours, services, photos, a way to reach you, something you can point customers to instead of just a Google Business listing and a Facebook page that hasn't posted since March. It's also the right call if you're brand new and just need to exist online first, before you start worrying about ranking for anything.
And what "Full Service" adds on top
Full Service is $300 a month ($3,600 a year), and the difference isn't the website itself, it's everything that keeps happening after launch. Ongoing SEO work, so you show up when someone nearby actually searches for what you do, not just when they search your business name. A blog post added on a regular schedule, so the site keeps giving Google fresh reasons to rank it instead of going quiet the day it launches. If you've ever been quoted $600 or $3,500 a month for "local pack visibility" from an agency that wouldn't show you a single real number, this is the plain-language version: one flat price, one specialist, the work actually gets done.
The real question isn't price, it's how busy you are
We get asked "which one should I pick" a lot, and the honest answer depends less on budget and more on whether you have time to hand-drive attention to your business right now. If you're a solo practitioner or a new shop and referrals are still doing most of the work for you, Starter keeps things simple and keeps the number small. If word of mouth has plateaued, if your competitor down the street seems to show up everywhere and you don't, or if you know your site hasn't changed in years and customers have noticed even though you've been too busy to, that's usually the moment Full Service pays for the difference. You're not buying more website. You're buying the part of the job that keeps happening after the launch, the part that never gets done when it's sitting on your own to-do list.
You can start on either one and move later
Nobody expects you to guess right the first time. Plenty of businesses start on Starter to get a real site up fast, then move to Full Service once they're ready to actually compete for search traffic instead of just existing online. Because it's the same specialist handling your account either way, moving up doesn't mean starting over with someone new, explaining your business from scratch, or handing off your domain to a stranger. It just means the same person adds SEO and blog writing to what's already live.
No call centers, no chatbots, just one specialist
Whichever plan fits, you're not getting routed through a support queue when something needs fixing. You reach out on WhatsApp or by email, and the person who answers already knows your account, because they're the one running it. That's true of both plans. The difference between Starter and Full Service is how much of the ongoing work that specialist is doing behind the scenes, not who you're talking to.
Not sure which plan fits your business?
Tell us about your business on WhatsApp and we'll tell you straight which plan actually makes sense, no upsell.