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3 options · 6 dimensions · one honest table

Buy, subscribe,
or commission?

Three different shapes of work, three very different prices, three very different timelines. The right answer for your situation is mostly a function of how much you want to own, how much you want to maintain, and how fast you need it — the table below makes that decision honest.

See the table → Or see the three lanes Help me decide

A product of Morton Technology Consulting LLC. No competitor logos, no checkmark theatre — just an internal funnel comparison.

Templates
$15–$199one-time · 14 live
Subscriptions
$79–$199/mo · 5 live
Sprints
$4,997–$24,9977–21 days

The decision row

· 6 dimensions · honest both ways

The differences are big — and they're the differences that matter.

Each row below is a dimension where the three options diverge sharply. Read down the column that matches your situation; the right answer usually shows up by the third row.

Dimension

Buy a template

$15–$199 · one-time

Subscribe to a SaaS

$79–$199/mo · cancel anytime

Commission a sprint

$4,997–$24,997 · 7–21 days

Cost
Buy a template $15–$199 one-time, no recurring fee. You buy hosting separately (Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, S3 — all $0–$5/mo for a static site).
Subscribe to a SaaS $79–$199/mo, all-in. Hosting, updates, and support included. Cancel from your billing portal at any time.
Commission a sprint $4,997–$24,997 total — 50% deposit to start, 50% on delivery. Refunded in full if the deadline slips.
Time to value
Buy a template Same day. Stripe checkout delivers the ZIP instantly. You're deployed in an hour if you've shipped a static site before, a weekend if you haven't.
Subscribe to a SaaS Same week. Provisioned shortly after Stripe checkout; if any provisioning step needs an operator, you'll hear from support within the business day.
Commission a sprint 7–21 days, written into the contract. Daily updates throughout. Staging URL live by mid-sprint so you can click around the work.
Customisation
Buy a template Total. Source HTML/Tailwind, no build step, edit any line you want. The ceiling is whatever you can do with a code editor.
Subscribe to a SaaS Configuration only. The product is what's hosted — you change settings, add data, rename labels. You don't change the underlying code.
Commission a sprint Total. Built to your spec from the discovery call onwards. Source code transfers to your GitHub on delivery; the next change is yours to make.
Ongoing maintenance
Buy a template Yours forever. Bug fixes, security patches, content updates — all on you (or on whoever you hand the source to).
Subscribe to a SaaS Ours. Hosting, patches, dependency upgrades, uptime — all included in the monthly fee. You focus on using the product.
Commission a sprint Yours after handoff. A 30-day defect window is included; longer-term maintenance is a follow-up sprint or your in-house team.
Ownership
Buy a template You own the source. Commercial license, unlimited projects, including client work. Resale of the template itself excluded.
Subscribe to a SaaS You rent the application; you own your data. Cancel anytime; data export is part of the offboarding flow.
Commission a sprint You own everything. Source, GitHub repo, infrastructure credentials, customer database — all transferred at sprint completion.
Ideal for
Buy a template Anyone shipping a marketing site, portfolio, or one-off landing — especially if you (or someone on the team) is comfortable in HTML/CSS.
Subscribe to a SaaS Owner-operators in one of the 5 verticals we cover (medical, automotive, real estate, barbershop, government risk) who want a working tool by next week.
Commission a sprint Teams that need something built that doesn't exist off the shelf, want to own the source, and are willing to lock a date in exchange for a fixed price.
Browse templates →
See subscriptions →
See sprints →

Edge cases

Three questions that tend to break the tie.

Can I start with a template and grow into a sprint later?
Yes — that's a common path. Buy the template, ship the marketing site this weekend, then commission a sprint when you need a custom application that the template can't cover. The $15–$199 spent on the template doesn't disappear; you keep that asset.
If a subscription covers my workflow, why would I ever commission a sprint?
You wouldn't. The subscription is the right answer if one of the 5 hosted products fits. Sprints exist for the teams whose workflow doesn't fit any of the 5 — usually because the requirements are bespoke, regulated, or tied to internal systems we don't pre-package.
What's the cheapest way to test how Morton Digital writes?
The $49 Website Revenue Audit — that's the lowest-friction way to see the analyst voice and the level of specificity you'd get on a sprint deliverable. No commitment past the audit itself.

Ready

The catalog has every option, with prices.

14 templates, 5 subscriptions, 4 sprints, and a $49 audit — all listed with the price and the delivery model next to them. No mystery, no quote-on-request.

Browse the catalog → Or read the three-lane summary