Uxitt vs a UX agency:
do you need a retainer?
Most Shopify stores considering an agency engagement are looking for the same thing: find what is broken, fix it, and see the conversion rate move. You do not need a six-month retainer for that.
What we offer
- Fixed price from £370 — you know the cost before you start
- Findings delivered in 5-10 days, not 6-16 weeks
- No retainer, no long-term contract, no lock-in
- Figma redesigns included — ready to hand to any developer
- Same team audits, designs, and builds — no handoffs
- Async — no weekly check-ins or status meetings
- Shopify specialists on every project
Typical UX agency
- Retainers typically start at £3,000-£10,000/month
- Discovery phase alone can take 4-8 weeks before real work starts
- Minimum engagement usually 3-6 months
- Deliverables often locked behind the agency relationship
- Multiple handoffs: strategist, designer, developer, account manager
- Weekly calls, updates, review cycles — your time, not just theirs
- Generalist teams rarely Shopify-specialist
No retainer. No meetings. Findings in 5-10 days.
What you are actually paying for
The discovery phase costs a lot and delivers very little.
Most agency engagements begin with a discovery phase: workshops, stakeholder interviews, analytics reviews, and research synthesis. This typically takes 4-8 weeks and consumes a significant portion of the project budget — often £5,000-£15,000 before a single design decision has been made. For many Shopify stores, the problems are not mysterious. They are well-documented UX failure patterns that show up in the same form across thousands of stores. A specialist who has reviewed hundreds of Shopify stores can identify them in days, not months.
Retainers charge for time. Uxitt charges for outcomes.
Agencies bill for hours or charge a monthly retainer. That means you pay whether progress is being made or not. A retainer covering strategy, design, and development at a reputable agency typically starts at £3,000-£8,000 per month, with minimum terms of 3-6 months. That is £9,000-£48,000 before you know whether the work moved your conversion rate. Uxitt charges a fixed price for a defined deliverable. You know exactly what you are getting and what it costs before you spend a penny.
Handoffs are where context disappears.
In a typical agency engagement, a strategist produces the audit, a designer interprets it into wireframes, a developer interprets those into code, and an account manager manages the relationship between all three. Every handoff is an opportunity for something to be lost. The nuance behind a recommendation gets stripped out. A specific design decision gets reinterpreted. By the time work goes live, it may not reflect the original insight. Uxitt runs the audit, produces the Figma files, and — through Limely — builds what it designed. One team, one set of shared context, from audit to production.
Agencies are the right call — at the right scale.
This is not an argument against agencies in general. For a brand doing £10M+ in annual revenue running a major platform migration, a full-service agency engagement makes complete sense. The discovery phase is worth running. The multi-month retainer is justified by the scope. But most Shopify stores asking this question are not at that scale. They have a conversion rate problem, they want to understand it, and they want it fixed. For those stores, a productized UX audit is faster, cheaper, and produces a more actionable output than an agency engagement would.
What each option actually costs
Uxitt Focused Audit
From £370
5 days
One key page. Figma redesigns included.
Uxitt Full Audit
From £1,499
10 days
All key pages. Figma redesigns included.
Agency engagement
£9,000-£48,000+
3-6 months
Discovery, strategy, design, dev. Minimum term applies.
Find your conversion leaks.
A focused expert review of your store with Figma redesigns and a Loom walkthrough. Pick one page or get the full picture.