No Contract Digital Marketing Services, Month to Month
Ziwi runs no contract digital marketing services: month to month on every plan, no minimum term, and you own the website, the ad accounts and the data from day one. Stop whenever you want and we hand it all over. Every price is printed on the pricing page first.
This question comes up on sales calls far more often than it shows up in search data. "Marketing agency no contract" and "month to month marketing agency" both register 0 monthly searches in our September 2026 keyword pull, yet page one for each is agency blog posts and forum threads from owners asking whether anybody actually works this way (SERP checked 3 September 2026). So here is the whole answer in writing: what month to month means at Ziwi, what the one condition in the pricing is, what happens if you leave, and what to read in anyone else's agreement before you sign it.
What does a no-contract marketing agency actually mean?
It means you can stop next month. Every Ziwi plan is month to month with no annual term, no minimum spend commitment and no auto-renewing agreement, and you own the website, the domain, the ad accounts and the data from day one. There is exactly one condition anywhere in the pricing, it sits on the free website build, and it is printed on the offer page rather than buried in an agreement.
| Term | How it works at Ziwi | What to read carefully anywhere else |
|---|---|---|
| Contract length | Month to month on every plan. No annual term, no minimum spend, no notice period to run out | Auto-renewing 6 or 12 month terms, and how many days of notice you must give to stop the renewal |
| Who owns the website | You do, from day one, files and all, including the sites we build at no charge | Sites licensed or leased to you that stop working the month you stop paying |
| Who owns the ad accounts | You do. Accounts are opened in your name, you are the owner, we are a user on them | Agency-owned accounts. Leaving costs you the spend history, the conversion data and the audiences |
| Who owns the data | You do. Analytics, call records, lead history, reporting, all of it | Whether the agreement promises you an export, in what format, and by when |
| How the fee is set | Flat published prices. Ads management is $297 a month with ad spend up to $1,500, and never a percentage of your spend | Percentage-of-ad-spend pricing, which pays the agency more the more you spend, worked or not |
| Leads | We do not sell or resell leads. Yours are yours | Whether the same lead is being sold to two of your competitors on the same street |
| Leaving | A managed move-out: the site handed over, accounts and access transferred, data exported | Whether anybody will actually do the handover, and what they charge for it |
Every price named above is published on the pricing page and current as of September 2026: hosting at $99 a month, Ziwi Care at $299 a month per location, local SEO from $297 a month per location, ads management from $297 a month, reviews and reputation at $197 a month per location.
Is the 12-month plan behind the free website a contract?
No. It is a condition on a discount, and the exit terms are printed.
The free website offer waives the full $1,000 build fee when you start an ongoing plan and keep it 12 months. Cancel earlier and you repay only the part of that $1,000 build fee that has not been earned down yet, prorated by the months remaining, and never more than the original $1,000. You own the site either way.
The difference from a term contract matters. A 12-month contract obliges you to keep paying the monthly fee for every remaining month, so walking away in month three can cost you nine months of retainer.
This obliges you to repay part of a build fee you never paid in the first place, and the amount shrinks every month you stay until it reaches zero at month twelve. The full terms are on the free website offer page, and the plan it attaches to is hosting at $99 a month or Ziwi Care at $299 a month per location.
What actually happens if you leave?
You tell us, the plan ends, and we run a managed move-out so nothing you paid for stops working. It is a short, boring list, which is the point.
- 01
You cancel. There is no renewal date to catch and no notice window to miss. The plan stops at the end of the month you cancel.
- 02
The website goes with you. You already own it. We hand over the files and hosting access, or move it to whichever host you choose.
- 03
The accounts stay yours. Google Ads, Meta, Google Business Profile, analytics and call tracking were opened in your name. We remove our access and you keep everything inside them.
- 04
The data comes with you. Lead records, call history and reporting exported in a format you can open and use.
- 05
Nothing gets switched off. No pages disabled, no tracking pulled out, no scramble to rebuild what you were already paying for.
Why do most agencies use 12-month contracts?
Two honest reasons and one bad one. The honest ones: the first month of an engagement costs the agency the most, because that is when the site gets built, the accounts get structured and somebody learns your business, and local search genuinely takes months to compound, so a term protects that investment and sets a realistic expectation. The bad one: a contract keeps a client who would otherwise have left in month two.
Ziwi's answer to the first two is to make month one cheap for you instead of expensive: the site is live in 3 days from kickoff, the build fee can be $0 with a plan, and the price is printed so there is no quote call to sit through. The answer to the third is that we would rather find out fast.
If the work is not producing, a contract only delays the conversation.
Want the terms in writing first?
What should you check in any marketing agency contract?
Eight clauses account for nearly every unpleasant surprise. Read these before the pricing, because a good price on bad terms is not a good deal.
- The ownership clause. Search the document for "license" and "work made for hire". If the site, the landing pages or the creative are licensed to you rather than owned by you, they leave when you do.
- The auto-renewal. Find the renewal date and the notice window. A 12-month term with a 60-day notice window means your real decision date is month ten, not month twelve.
- How the fee is calculated. A percentage of ad spend pays the agency more every time your budget goes up, whether or not it worked. A flat fee does not move.
- Who owns the ad accounts. Ask to be the owner on Google and Meta, with the agency as a user. This is the single most expensive thing to get wrong, because account history does not transfer.
- Who holds the domain and DNS. The registrar login should be in your name. A domain sitting in an agency's account is the hardest asset to recover and the easiest to lose.
- Setup and exit fees. Look for onboarding fees, offboarding fees, migration fees, and anything described as non-refundable.
- Lead resale. Ask in writing whether leads generated for you are ever sold, shared or resold to another business in your market.
- What happens to the reporting. If the dashboard belongs to the agency, your history goes with it. Ask what you get on the way out and in what format.
Does month to month mean the work is short term?
No. It means the renewal is a monthly decision instead of an annual one. Local search still takes months to compound, ads still need a few weeks of data before the numbers mean anything, and we say that plainly on the local SEO service page rather than promising week-one results. What changes with month-to-month terms is who carries the risk while that plays out: the agency does, because it has to be worth renewing every 30 days.
It also changes how we work. When a client can leave at the end of any month, the monthly report has to show what was spent and what it brought in, in plain numbers, or the next invoice does not get paid.
Reporting is not a courtesy under these terms, it is the whole basis of the relationship.
How do you check all of this before you commit?
Read the prices and the terms before you speak to a human, which is the reason they are published.
Every plan and every price sits on the Ziwi pricing page, and what each one includes is written out across the services pages: ads management from $297 a month, local SEO from $297 a month per location, hosting from $99, reviews at $197, all of it month to month. If you want to ask the awkward questions out loud, book a discovery call and ask them.