Saffron
Designs · Automations · Apps Card II of III — Growth & Multi-Location Issued August 2026, held 30 days
Services & Rates — Growth & Multi-Location

One brand across every location.One operating system behind them.Built by us, owned by you.

Engagements on this card run $7,500 to $21,000 a month. Most multi-location operators land at $12,500. The next size up, The Dominion at $45,000 a month, is shown at the end of the row.

At this size the problem stops being visibility and starts being coherence. Five locations, four booking systems, three brand treatments and a CRM nobody trusts. Saffron Designs makes it look like one company. Saffron Automations makes it behave like one. And where the software you are renting is the thing holding you back, Saffron Apps replaces it with software you own.

Who this card is for
Multi-location groups, med spas, dental and veterinary groups, plaintiff firms, franchisees — $2M to $25M a year.
Where it starts
$7,500 a month. Managed paid media across four or more locations starts at The Foundry.
Every tier is all three
You never choose between a website and the automation behind it. Every engagement below contains both, and the software when you need it.
Seven stops, about two minutes. Or scroll — both work.
Start here

Not sure which one
you are?

Three questions. Thirty seconds. We will tell you which one you are, and you can check our working afterwards.

One house, three halls
You get all three. Always.
Saffron Designs

The front of house

Everything the customer sees before they decide.
  • Websites built to score 95+ on all four Lighthouse categories, with zero axe violations — or they are free
  • Brand Soul: colour, type, voice and personality settled before anything is drawn
  • Omnisphere, our own integrity engine, auditing every page, breakpoint and interaction, continuously
  • Social, content and paid media, judged on booked revenue rather than impressions
Saffron Automations

The engine room

Everything that happens in the ninety seconds after.
  • Agentic systems that answer, qualify, book, chase and reconcile without being asked twice
  • Sentinel — ten specialist agents hunting revenue you are already losing, and recovering it
  • Concierge — ask your business a question in Telegram and get the answer, not a dashboard login
  • Every autonomous action logged, replayable and attributable. Nothing happens you cannot explain
Saffron Apps

The foundry

What you do when the software you need does not exist.
  • Booking platforms, CRMs, portals, dispatch, inventory, marketplaces, native apps — built, not configured
  • Or the CRM you already run, rebuilt properly around your data, without replacing the platform
  • Fixed fee, fixed date, fixed scope, agreed at the Blueprint and held to
  • The repository sits in your organisation from the first commit — not at handover, from the start
Nobody buys one and not the others. Every tier below is all three.
The engagements
Monthly. Three-month minimum, then month-to-month.
Rung 03

The Atelier

The whole front of house, and eight systems behind it.
$7,500
per month
about $246 a day
Bought separately, the same lines are $10,950/mo.
You keep $3,450 a month — $41,400 a year.
Plus a website built for you outright, which is a one-time fee rather than a monthly line — so it is not in the figures above.
What is inside, from all three houses
DesignCustom build, yours outright · Care + Omnisphere · Local SEO + Google Business · 2 platforms, 20 assets · Google Ads
AutomationAI Front Desk · Concierge, daily briefing · Up to 8, one new monthly
SoftwareIntegrations maintained
  • Everything in The Workshop — the rung below, shown in the ladder strip further down — plus:
  • Up to eight automated systems, a new one commissioned every month
  • Social and content: two platforms, 16 posts and 4 videos a month
  • Google Ads managed against booked revenue, not clicks
  • 48-hour priority engineering on anything that breaks
A strong single location, or a second one opening.
Start with The Atelier
Most chosen
Rung 04

The Foundry

One operating system across every location.
$12,500
per month
about $411 a day
Bought separately, the same lines are $18,300/mo.
You keep $5,800 a month — $69,600 a year.
Plus a website built for you outright, which is a one-time fee rather than a monthly line — so it is not in the figures above.
What is inside, from all three houses
DesignCustom build, yours outright · Care + CRO cycle · Content engine, 8–12 assets/mo · 2 platforms, 20 assets · Google Ads
AutomationVoice + chat suite, all sites · Concierge, daily briefing · Up to 8, one new monthly
SoftwareIntegrations maintained
  • Everything in The Atelier, at multi-location depth, plus —
  • AI voice and chat agents across every site, CRM-integrated and booking-capable
  • Site care plus a monthly CRO cycle judged on one named revenue metric
  • SEO and content engine: 8–12 assets a month, technical and per-market
  • Quarterly leadership roadmap, with your numbers on the table
Two to twenty locations. Real revenue. Systems that no longer talk to each other.
Start with The Foundry
Rung 05

The Citadel

Front of house and engine room, both at full depth.
$21,000
per month
about $690 a day
Bought separately, the same lines are $31,300/mo.
You keep $10,300 a month — $123,600 a year.
Plus a website built for you outright, which is a one-time fee rather than a monthly line — so it is not in the figures above.
What is inside, from all three houses
DesignFlagship build and design system · Care + CRO cycle · Content engine, 8–12 assets/mo · 4–5 platforms + shoot day · Search, social, retargeting
AutomationVoice + chat suite, all sites · Concierge, daily briefing · Unlimited, prioritised
SoftwareProduct Care + roadmap
  • Everything in The Foundry — the rung below, shown in the ladder strip further down — plus:
  • Saffron becomes your autonomous division: unlimited commissions, prioritised
  • One flagship bespoke build every quarter, included rather than quoted
  • Social and video system: four to five platforms, 35+ assets, monthly shoot day
  • Paid media managed across search, social and retargeting
  • One unified report — marketing and operations on the same page, literally
A group that has outgrown vendors and does not want an in-house department.
Start with The Citadel
Rung 06

The Dominion

A dedicated fleet, on infrastructure you own.
$45,000
per month
about $1,478 a day
This rung lives on the next card. Same name, same price — these cards are windows onto one ladder, not three different price lists.
What is inside, from all three houses
DesignFlagship build and design system · Estate governance · Multi-market operations · Multi-brand, per-market · Multi-market, incrementality
AutomationVoice + chat suite, all sites · Concierge, daily briefing · Dedicated fleet, private infra
SoftwareProduct Care + roadmap
  • Everything in The Citadel, at estate scale, plus —
  • A dedicated fleet of agentic systems on private infrastructure
  • Four-hour response SLA, 24/7, with senior engineers on standing call — miss it and that day is credited
  • Estate-wide accessibility and performance governance with published scorecards
  • Multi-market content operations and multi-brand social, per-market overrides
  • Monthly executive review; audit-ready assurance on every autonomous action
Franchise networks, multi-brand groups, PE-backed rollups.
See Card III — Enterprise & Multi-Brand
How the three cards fit together

One ladder. Three windows onto it.

There is a single Saffron ladder, and every rung has exactly one name and one price everywhere it appears. This card shows the rungs that fit you. The top rung here is the entry rung of the next card — so if a colleague sends you a different Saffron rate card, you will find a continuation of this one, never a contradiction. You are looking at Card II of III — Growth & Multi-Location.

01
The Keep
$2,000
02
The Workshop
$3,900
03
The Atelier
$7,500
04
The Foundry
$12,500
05
The Citadel
$21,000
06
The Dominion
$45,000
07
The Sovereign Estate
from $85,000
Why it is worth it

Renting software is not cheaper.
It is later.

Every subscription you hold is a price somebody else controls, indexed to how many people you hire, how many sites you open and how much you take in card payments. That is a defensible thing to buy. It is not always the right thing to buy, and almost nobody does the arithmetic before signing.

16.4%
annual SaaS inflation, June 2026, against US CPI of 4.2% over the same period
Vertice SaaS Inflation Index, from $75bn of processed spend and 250,000+ contracts. CPI: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U, all items, same period
74%
of tracked SaaS tools raised their price in the first half of 2026
PricePulse SaaS Pricing Report, H1 2026, 90+ tools tracked
54%
median share of paid software licences a company actually uses
Zylo 2026 SaaS Management Index
$150 → $175
Salesforce Sales Cloud Enterprise list price per seat, before August 2023 to August 2025
Held at $150 for seven years, then +10% to $165 in August 2023 and +6% to $175 in August 2025. Both rises announced by Salesforce
Build or rent

Run the arithmetic before you run a meeting.

Put in what you pay for software today and what a build would realistically cost. This applies 10% annual software inflation, 18% of build cost a year in maintenance, and no credit for anything else. If it says keep renting, keep renting — that is the answer we would give you in the room.

Assumes software rising 10% a year, which is well under the measured 2026 rate of 16.4%; maintenance at 18% of build cost a year, held flat, which favours building and which we would index only to CPI; no saving on card processing; and no credit for the cost of migrating off your current vendor, which favours renting. Vendor list prices shown as published, or as widely reported where the vendor does not publish.
Enter your numbers
Build budget for a 3-year payback
Break-even
Five-year position
This runs in your browser. If scripting is off, the rule below gives you the same answer with a calculator: multiply your monthly software spend by twenty-five and compare it to the build cost.
The rule we disqualify people with
If twenty-five times your monthly software spend is less than what the build would realistically cost, the build takes over three years to pay back — and we will tell you to cut the scope or keep renting.

It fails more prospects than it passes, and we publish it anyway. A three-location med spa on $1,350 a month of software should not commission a $90,000 booking platform — that is 117 months of payback, and we would say so. A three-user trade business on $249 a month should not commission a $45,000 dispatch system — it never pays back. A twelve-truck contractor on $4,500 a month should commission a $90,000 field-operations platform — it pays for itself in month 27. We would rather lose the build than sell you one that never pays back.

Not “is this expensive?”
“Expensive compared to what?”

The honest reference class for this work is not another agency. It is the payroll you would otherwise run. To do in-house what The Foundry does, you would be hiring a marketing manager, a designer and an operations analyst — and you would still be buying the software.

Below is that arithmetic, done conservatively. It excludes recruiting fees, management time, ramp-up, turnover, software licences and the months where the role sits empty. Add those and the gap widens.

US private-industry benefits run 30.1% of total compensation, so the true cost of a three-person team is roughly 1.43× the salary line. Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2026 — private-industry total compensation $46.60/hour, of which benefits $14.01.
Salary line for a marketing manager, a designer and an operations analyst$265,000
× 1.43 fully loaded (BLS)$378,950
The Foundry, twelve months$150,000
Difference, year one$228,950
What you actually own

Not a licence. Not a seat.
An asset with your name on it.

The one thing a software vendor can never offer you, and most agencies quietly avoid putting in writing. Here it is in writing.

The source code Yours The repository, in your organisation, from the first commit — not at handover. On the two rungs where we waive the website build fee, leaving inside seven months settles that waived build; the code is yours either way.
The data and the schema Yours Your database, your export, any time, in a format another engineer can read.
The accounts and credentials Yours Cloud, domains, app stores, API keys. In your name, billed to you, from day one.
The documentation and runbook Yours Written so another firm could take over on a Monday. We test that by writing it that way.
Saffron's shared engine components Perpetual licence The parts we reuse across clients stay ours — licensed to you perpetually, royalty-free and transferable if you sell the business.
Leaving No charge No exit fee, no handover fee, no data-export fee. Thirty days of transition support included.
Your cost after launch is Product Care, priced against the build — not against your headcount, your locations or your card volume. We index it to CPI at renewal and to nothing else.

There is a second-order argument some finance teams care about: development costs of owned software can often be capitalised and amortised, where subscription fees cannot, which changes reported EBITDA even where the cash out is similar. The treatment depends on your reporting standard and your circumstances, and not every cost qualifies. Ask your accountant. Do not take it from us, and be wary of anyone who states it as a certainty.

The proof

You do not have to believe
that we can build things.

Every tool below was built in-house, by us, for us, before it was ever offered to a client. Three of them are free and need no sign-up, no call and no card. Open one now, in another tab, before you read another word of this document. That is the demo — working software you can use in the next ten minutes, rather than a case study about somebody else.

What we promise, in writing
95+

Or you do not pay for it

Every site we ship scores 95 or better on all four Lighthouse categories and carries zero axe violations on the pages we author. If it does not, the build is free — and on The Keep and The Workshop, where there is no build fee to waive, your first three months are free instead. We publish our worst audit run of four, not our best.

30

Days to something working

If your first automated system is not live and producing verifiable action records within thirty days, that month is refunded. One email to billing. No forms and no retention call.

0

Things you cannot take with you

Code, data, accounts, credentials and documentation are in your name from day one and exportable at any time. One figure can fall due on the way out and only one: on The Keep and The Workshop we waive the website build fee, so leaving inside seven months settles it — and that settlement buys the site outright. Nothing else, at any rung, costs anything to leave. Twenty-six engagements delivered, zero disputes.

26
engagements delivered since 2023
0
disputes across those 26
$400,000
revenue recovered for clients
8
products built in-house, three free
48 hrs
brief to working prototype
95+
Lighthouse, all four, or free
The fine detail
Open only what you need on screen. All of it is printed in full.

You do not need any of this to choose a tier. It is here because somebody on your team will want to check our working, and we would rather they could.

Every line, priced on its own15 lines you can buy separately, priced exactly as we would sell them alone

A bundle price means nothing until you can see what you are bundling. Every line below is sold on its own at the price shown. The tiers exist because the three houses compound — not because we will not sell them apart. Lines marked Published already appear openly at saffronautomations.com and are reproduced here unchanged.

Build it yourself

Tick what you actually need.

Every line is sold separately at the price shown. This works out what the same scope costs à la carte, and whether a house tier covers it for less.

Lines selected0
À la carte, per month$0
Per year$0
Tick a few lines and we will show you which tier covers them, and by how much you would be better off.
One-time builds, and everything we can makeFour steps from an idea to software you own, with fixed fees against each
01

The Prototype

$1,5002 working days

Name the thing. Two working days after the kickoff call you get a working, clickable prototype of its core flow, on real infrastructure, yours to keep whatever happens next. Miss the date and we refund it. Credited against any build commissioned within twelve months.

Refunded if we miss the date
02

The Blueprint

from $6,500two weeks

Data model, screens, integration map, build sequence and a fixed price with a fixed date. Written so another firm could build from it. Yours either way — we do not hold the plan hostage to the build.

Yours whoever builds it
03

The Build

fixed fee4–28 weeks

Fixed after the Blueprint, against the scope written in it. A weekly demo of working software rather than a status report. Nothing on the web ships until Lighthouse and axe come back clean; native apps ship against the equivalent platform accessibility audit.

Fixed price, fixed date
04

Product Care

18% of build / yrongoing

Hosting, monitoring, security patching, dependency upgrades and a support line. Indexed to CPI at renewal and to nothing else — not your headcount, your locations or your card volume.

Folds into a monthly rung up to 20× that rung's fee in build value
The part we have never seen on another rate card

Name the thing. Get it working in 48 hours.

Tell us the one flow that matters most — the booking, the intake, the quote, the dispatch. Two working days after the kickoff call we send you a link to a working, clickable prototype of it, on real infrastructure, in your brand. Not a mockup and not a slide: software you can put in front of a member of staff and watch them use.

It costs $1,500. Miss the date and we refund it. Commission a build within twelve months and it is credited in full. If you never build anything with us, you keep the prototype and the code anyway. We charge because free prototypes attract people who were never going to build — not because we need the money.

48
hours
$1,500
refunded if we miss it, credited if you build
Book the 48-hour prototype

Starter builds

LineOne-time buildFee
Designs
Signature Site
Eight to twelve pages on a custom design system.
$14,000
Designs
Flagship Site
Design system, custom motion, performance-engineered. The kind that wins things.
from$55,000
Designs
Brand System
Strategy, messaging, visual system and rollout across every location and channel.
from$32,000
Automations
Booking platform — pilot site
One location, built to prove the model before the multi-site rollout priced in the matrix below.
from$40,000
Automations
CRM build-out — on your platform
Data model, pipelines and custom automation inside the CRM you already run. Crimson blueprints it first, free.
from$20,000
Automations
Operations Overhaul
Six to fifteen workflows, integrations and dashboards across the whole operation.
from$25,000
Automations
AI Voice + Chat Suite
Multi-intent agents, CRM-integrated, booking-capable, per-location trained.
from$20,000
Automations
Systems Integration
Two to four systems, bidirectional, with reconciliation and failure handling.
from$14,000

And anything on this list

What we buildTypicalFixed fee
Multi-location booking platform
Cross-location availability, staff travel, per-site rules, group reporting.
12–16 weeks$45,000–$90,000
Field operations & dispatch
Scheduling, dispatch, quoting, invoicing and a mobile app for the crew.
12–16 weeks$45,000–$75,000
The above, plus the customer layer
Customer portal, reporting suite, accounting integration, automated comms.
16–24 weeks$75,000–$120,000
Custom CRM — mid complexity
Workflow automation, predictive scoring, bidirectional integrations.
10–14 weeks$50,000–$70,000
Inventory across locations
Barcode, multi-warehouse, lot and serial tracking, mobile counts.
16–24 weeks$70,000–$150,000
Native mobile apps, staff and customer
Two audiences, one codebase, published under your developer account.
12–20 weeks$50,000–$95,000
Two-sided marketplace
Supply, demand, matching, payouts, disputes, trust and safety.
16–28 weeks$60,000–$150,000
Payments infrastructure
Checkout, subscriptions, split payouts, reconciliation, chargeback handling.
6–12 weeks$25,000–$60,000
Systems integration
Two to four systems, bidirectional, reconciled, with failure handling.
4–10 weeks$14,000–$35,000

Bands are ours, benchmarked against published US market rates for 2025–26. The figure you get is a single number with a date on it, not a range — fixed at the Blueprint, against the scope written in it. Scope changes are re-quoted before they are built; the date moves only for changes you ask for, or for access we are waiting on. Rush delivery adds 15–30%. Anything not on this list, ask — the list is what we are asked for most often, not the limit of what we do.

The tiers side by sideEvery capability, every tier, one grid — for whoever on your team wants to compare
CapabilityThe Atelier$7,500The Foundry$12,500The Citadel$21,000The Dominion$45,000
What the customer sees — Saffron Designs
Your website
one-time build, owned outright
Custom build, yours outrightCustom build, yours outrightFlagship build and design systemFlagship build and design system
Site care & integrity
from $450/mo alone
Care + OmnisphereCare + CRO cycleCare + CRO cycleEstate governance
Search & content
from $1,500/mo alone
Local SEO + Google BusinessContent engine, 8–12 assets/moContent engine, 8–12 assets/moMulti-market operations
Social & video
from $1,600/mo alone
2 platforms, 20 assets2 platforms, 20 assets4–5 platforms + shoot dayMulti-brand, per-market
Paid media
from $1,000/mo alone
Google AdsGoogle AdsSearch, social, retargetingMulti-market, incrementality
What happens after — Saffron Automations
AI agents
from $500/mo alone
AI Front DeskVoice + chat suite, all sitesVoice + chat suite, all sitesVoice + chat suite, all sites
Business intelligence
from $1,000/mo alone
Concierge, daily briefingConcierge, daily briefingConcierge, daily briefingConcierge, daily briefing
Automation depth
from $4,000/mo alone
Up to 8, one new monthlyUp to 8, one new monthlyUnlimited, prioritisedDedicated fleet, private infra
Software you own — Saffron Apps
Custom software & integrations
from $900/mo alone
Integrations maintainedIntegrations maintainedProduct Care + roadmapProduct Care + roadmap
Service & assurance
Human response7 working hrs7 working hrs7 working hrs + named lead4 hrs, 24/7
Engineering response48 hrs, prioritised48 hrs, prioritised24 hrs, prioritised4 hrs, 24/7, credited
ReportingDaily brief + monthlyDaily + quarterly boardDaily + unified monthly + boardAll of the above + monthly executive
New automated systems included1 per month1 per monthUnlimited + 1 flagship/qtrUnlimited, prioritised + flagship/qtr
Code, data and accounts in your name
Month-to-month after 90 days

Every row is a capability, not a product line — so a higher tier always holds at least as much of every row as the tier below it. Nothing is ever taken away as you move right. The figure under each row name is what that capability costs bought on its own.

The questions that actually decide it
What actually happens in month one?
Week one: we audit what you have — X-Ray on the site, the Assay on the operation — and agree the single metric this engagement is judged on. Week two: your first automated system goes live. Weeks three and four: design work begins and the first brief lands in your phone. You will have something working before you have your first invoice.
What if it does not work?
Two promises, both narrow enough to keep. Any site we ship scores 95+ on all four Lighthouse categories with zero axe violations on the pages we author, measured at handover on the audit configuration we publish — or you do not pay for the build. And if your first automated system is not live and producing verifiable action records within 30 days, that month is refunded: one email to billing, no forms and no retention call.
Am I locked in?
Three months minimum, because nothing meaningful finishes faster than that. Month-to-month after that. The code, the data, the accounts and the credentials are in your name from day one, exportable on request at any time, with no handover charge. There is one exit figure and only one: The Keep and The Workshop carry no website build fee, so if you leave inside seven months you settle the build we waived — $6,500 less half of everything you have already paid, which reaches zero in month seven. Nothing else costs anything to leave, at any rung, ever.
Who does the work?
The people who wrote this card. Saffron is small on purpose. You will not be handed to an account manager who then relays your question to somebody else. Human response inside seven working hours, every working day.
Can I buy one house and not the others?
Yes. Every line in the tables on this card is sold separately at the prices shown, and the automation tiers are published openly at saffronautomations.com. The house tiers exist because the three houses are worth more joined than apart — not because we will not sell them apart.
What if I already pay for software that does this?
Then the first thing we do is work out whether you should keep it. Our rule is arithmetic: if twenty-five times your current monthly software spend is less than the realistic build cost, the build takes over three years to pay back, and we will tell you to cut the scope or keep renting. The interactive version of this card runs that model against your own numbers before you speak to anyone.
Do I actually own what you build?
Yes, and not at handover — from the first commit. The repository sits in your organisation, the cloud accounts are in your name and billed to you, and the documentation is written so another firm could take over on a Monday. The only exception is the shared engine components we reuse across clients: those stay ours, licensed to you perpetually, royalty-free, and transferable if you sell the business. The only figure that can ever fall due on the way out is the waived website build on The Keep and The Workshop, settled at $6,500 less half of what you have paid and free from month seven — and it buys you the site outright. Above those two rungs the build is a one-time fee you have already paid, so there is nothing left to settle.
Can I move up or down a tier?
Up, any month, prorated. Down, at the end of any quarter. Moving up mid-engagement is the normal path — most clients start one rung below where they end.
Next

Find out what is leaking before you spend anything.

Growth engagements begin with a paid two-week diagnostic — $6,500, credited in full against your first three months if you continue.

Before you book anything: the X-Ray audit and the Assay are both free, require no sign-up and no call, and will tell you more about your position in ten minutes than a discovery call will in an hour. Start there. If the numbers do not justify us, we would rather you found that out for free.