A design retainer that works like your team, without the six-month hire
StanVision is a design retainer for B2B SaaS: an embedded design team working across product, brand, and Webflow on an ongoing basis. You get a partner that already knows your product, not a new vendor to re-brief every quarter. Our average partnership runs past three years, and Tolstoy kept the same team for seven, from its first product to a platform serving 5,000+ brands.
B2B SaaS teams who kept us on, year after year
You don't have a project. You have a roadmap that keeps moving
Most design help is sold in projects: a fixed scope, a start, an end, a handoff, goodbye. That works for a one-time build. It does not work when design is a standing part of how you ship. This is rarely a budget problem. It's a structure problem.
Project work makes you re-explain your product to someone new every few months, and the steady stream of smaller design needs has nowhere to go in between.
The hiring math doesn't add up
A senior product designer takes months to find and longer to ramp. A full in-house team is a large, fixed bet to place before you've proven you need all of it.
Every project starts from zero
A new agency or freelancer spends the first weeks learning your product, your users, and your codebase. You pay for that ramp-up every single time, and the work only gets good once it's nearly over.
The small stuff piles up
The dashboard tweak, the new feature screen, the launch landing page, the deck for the board. None is big enough to scope as a project. All of it sits in a queue with no one to own it.
The brand drifts while the product moves
Features ship, the marketing site lags, the design system rots, and the product, the site, and the pitch deck slowly start to look like three different companies.
What a design retainer with StanVision covers
A design retainer is an ongoing engagement where a dedicated design team works as part of yours, on a set cadence, instead of project by project.
With us that means one embedded team covering product UI/UX, brand, and Webflow, plugged into your tools and your sprints. You set the priorities each cycle, and we design against them. It runs one of two ways: a set number of hours every month, or a pack of hours you top up when it runs out. Because the same team stays on, the product context compounds instead of resetting. If what you need is the site kept healthy rather than a design team on your roadmap, that's Webflow maintenance.
Product UI/UX that keeps pace
Your roadmap doesn't pause between releases, so neither does the team designing for it. New flows, feature screens, and fixes move with your sprints.
Marketing site work in Webflow
New pages, launches, and A/B tests built in Webflow by the same team that knows your funnel, so you stop queuing a separate vendor for every update.
Brand consistency as you scale
We hold the visual system steady while the product, the messaging, and the headcount all change around it.
Design system upkeep
The people who built your design system keep it current. A maintained system is why shipping stays fast instead of slowing down as the product grows.
Conversion and landing pages
The team that understands your sign-up flow builds the pages that fix it, informed by your funnel rather than a generic template. Testing and optimization run through our conversion rate optimization work.
Fast turnaround on small requests
The one-off edits that stall when nobody owns them get handled in days, not parked until the next project.
Prototyping and motion
Interactive prototypes and motion for launches, sales decks, and fundraising, on call when you need them.
Engineering-ready handoff
Specs, tokens, and assets your developers can build straight from, so design and engineering stop trading rework.
Embedded design strategy
A partner who already understands your product weighs in on what to design and why, not only on how it looks.
Design retainer, Webflow maintenance, or a project?
Three ways to work with us, built for three different needs. Most teams start with a project, and the ones whose roadmap keeps moving end up on a retainer. Here's how to tell which one you need.
| Design retainer | Webflow maintenance | Project | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it's for | Design as a standing part of how you ship | Keeping a live Webflow site fast, accurate, and current | One bounded build: a redesign, a migration, a launch |
| Who's on it | Product, brand, and Webflow designers who know your product | The team that keeps your site healthy | A team assembled for the scope |
| Scope | Flexes every cycle with your roadmap | Requests, fixes, and upkeep as they come | Fixed up front |
| How it runs | Monthly hours or an hours pack | Monthly hours or an hours pack | Fixed scope and timeline |
| Best when | You re-brief a new vendor every quarter | The site launched and changes keep waiting | You have one defined thing to build |
How a design retainer with us actually runs
A retainer only works if the team is genuinely embedded, not waiting at arm's length for tickets. Here is how we set that up.
Results our clients reached
Real business milestones the teams we partnered with hit during the engagement. The work is ours; the wins are theirs.
$200M+
Raised at a $1B valuation. All three rounds closed after our redesign went live.
$175M
Raised while scaling its global payment infrastructure.
$13M
Raised while building its AI planning platform.
$73M
Combined value of the SMSBump and NitroPack exits.
Average partnership
3+ years
Average length of a client partnership. People stay when the work keeps shipping.
7 years
Across strategy, branding, and product, 2018 to 2025.
AI portfolio
15+ companies
AI companies designed for, from first launch to scale.
Enterprise portfolio
10+ clients
Enterprise clients, the kind with procurement departments.
24%
Higher conversion rate after the website relaunch.
Products launched
10+
Software products designed and taken to market with our clients.
The proof a retainer works is how long clients keep it
The strongest evidence for an ongoing partnership isn't a single launch. It's the clients who stayed. Tolstoy worked with the same StanVision team for seven years, across the website, the Webflow build, and the Shop app, as it grew from an early video tool into a platform for 5,000+ brands. Rillet's site has grown past fifty pages with us still on it.
The cases below show what compounds when the team designing for you never has to relearn your product.
39%
more users publish in their first session
54%
growth in daily active users after the redesign
44%
higher CTR after the messaging rework
58%
more sessions in the first two months after launch
2x
total traffic two years on, with almost no paid spend
2.3x
organic search traffic since the relaunch
$1B
valuation, two years after Rillet started working with us
$195M
raised across three rounds while we ran the site
+83%
Google clicks year over year, Q3 2026 vs Q3 2025
4.6x
more inbound form submissions
7x
higher visit-to-lead rate
200+
pages migrated off Craft CMS
A retainer, a hire, or a freelancer: which fits
A design retainer isn't always the right call. If you have a single, well-defined build, a project engagement is the cleaner fit.
Here's an honest read of the trade-offs when design is an ongoing need.
| StanVision | In-house hire | Freelancer | Typical project agency | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product context | Compounds; the team stays on | Deep over time, once ramped | Varies; often single-project | Resets each new project |
| Skill range | Product, brand, Webflow, motion in one team | Usually one or two specialties per hire | Narrow, one person | Broad, but only while engaged |
| Speed to start | Days to weeks | Months to hire and onboard | Fast | Weeks, then re-ramps each time |
| Flexibility | Scale up before a launch, down after | Fixed cost regardless of load | Flexible, but capacity-capped | Fixed per scope of work |
| Continuity | Same team, ongoing | High, if they stay | Low, no guarantee | Low between projects |
| Best for | Ongoing, multi-discipline design needs | A permanent, full-time core role | A defined, short task | One large, bounded build |
Industries
we go deep in
We specialize where design and growth decisions carry the most weight.
Awards
25 awards from Awwwards, CSS Design Awards, and Behance. And since 2023 Stan sits on the Awwwards jury, which is rarer than winning.
1x SOTD + 1x DEV + 13x HM
1x Jury member
Awwwards: 15 awards in total. 1 Site of the Day (SOTD), 1 Developer Award (DEV) and 13 Honorable Mentions (HM). Stan Kirilov is an Awwwards jury member.
2 SOTD + 4 SK
1x ex. Jury member
CSS Design Awards: 6 awards in total. 2 Sites of the Day (SOTD) and 4 Special Kudos (SK). Stan Kirilov is a former CSS Design Awards jury member.
4x Featured in Web design
Behance: StanVision projects featured 4 times in the Behance Web Design gallery.
Frequently asked questions
Questions teams ask before starting a design retainer.
What is a design retainer?
A design retainer is an ongoing engagement where a dedicated design team works for you on a set cadence, instead of being hired project by project. You reserve a team's capacity each cycle and direct it against your current priorities. It suits companies with continuous design needs, where the cost of re-briefing a new vendor each time outweighs the cost of keeping a team on.
How does a design retainer work?
You agree a scope and rhythm up front, weekly priorities or sprint cycles, and the team embeds in your tools and works against those priorities as they shift. Unlike a fixed project, the scope flexes cycle to cycle, so you can push harder before a launch and ease off afterward without renegotiating the whole engagement.
What's included in a design retainer with StanVision?
One embedded team covering product UI/UX, brand, Webflow design and build, design system upkeep, landing pages, prototyping, and motion. You're not buying a single deliverable; you're reserving a team that handles whatever the roadmap needs that cycle, large work and small.
Design retainer vs hiring in-house: which is better?
An in-house hire gives you a permanent, full-time person with deep context over time, but takes months to recruit and covers one or two specialties. A retainer gives you a multi-discipline team in days, scales with your workload, and stays consistent, but it's a partnership, not a payroll line. The right answer depends on whether your need is a single permanent role or ongoing range across product and brand.
When do you need a design retainer instead of a project?
Choose a project when the work is bounded and one-time: a redesign, a migration, a single launch. Choose a retainer when design is a standing part of how you ship and the smaller, continuous needs keep piling up between projects. If you're re-briefing a new vendor every quarter, that's the signal.
How long do StanVision partnerships usually last?
Our average partnership runs past three years, and several have run far longer: Tolstoy for seven years, emerchantpay for more than seven. The model is built to keep, not to churn through.
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