What's the difference between an engagement and a retainer?
Engagements are flat-fee project deliverables: Prototype Sprint, Vibe Rescue, Signature Site, Flagship Build. They produce a working artifact in 1 to 5 weeks. Retainers are ongoing monthly programs that pick up after the engagement ships: hosting, monitoring, AI search visibility, content, the AI agent, and ongoing development. Most clients enter through an engagement and onboard into Foundation, Accelerator, or Apex on the day the engagement closes.
How long until we go live?
Prototype Sprint: 5 to 7 days. Signature Site: 7 to 10 days. Flagship Build: 2 to 5 weeks depending on page count, complexity, and compliance posture. Retainers activate the day the engagement ships. Comparable traditional agency timelines run 8 to 16 weeks.
Do you work in regulated industries?
Yes. Cardinal's leadership team has years of production experience under HIPAA (mental health, anesthesia), attorney-client privilege (plaintiff-side legal technology), SEC compliance (EDGAR filing and regulatory reporting), and regulated document workflows. BAAs and DPAs available on request. Bring regulated work to us before launch, not after.
Will Cardinal's work be ADA compliant?
Yes. Every site or application we build ships with WCAG 2.1 AA baseline. Ongoing monitoring, quarterly spot-checks, and a legal-ready compliance statement are available as a retainer add-on starting at $149 per month. Cardinal does not sell standalone ADA audits.
Custom application or website, what's the difference in pricing?
Signature Site is a hand-built launch site at your domain, 7 to 10 days, $3,200 flat. Flagship Build is a full custom web or mobile application, 2 to 5 weeks, from $7,500 for a small build and from $28,000 for an enterprise or regulated build. Send a brief and we'll write back with a flat number.
How does Cardinal use AI in delivery?
AI handles code generation, content drafting, layout exploration, and parallel engineering work through our Worktree orchestration. Cardinal engineers handle strategy, design direction, brand voice, security review, regulated compliance, and QA. The result is custom-coded delivery in 2 to 5 weeks instead of 8 to 16, at gross margins traditional agencies cannot match. Pricing reflects the cost gap, not a quality gap.
What happens after handoff?
Every Cardinal engagement ships with 30 days of free fixes after handoff. After day 30, most clients onboard into one of three Cardinal retainers (Foundation, Accelerator, Apex) for hosting, monitoring, content, AI search visibility, and ongoing development. You can also take the keys and run. See /retainers for tier details.
What is Scout?
Scout is Cardinal's custom AI sales and support agent. Brand-trained on your business, grounded in retrieval-augmented generation so it doesn't hallucinate, and CRM-integrated at Accelerator tier and above. Scout qualifies leads, books appointments, handles FAQs, and routes humans when escalation is needed. Compliance-aware (HIPAA, attorney-client) at Apex tier. Every Flagship Build includes Scout.