Design subscriptions are priced as a flat monthly fee. Nucleus plans are $5,995 a month for brand and visual design, and $7,995 a month to add website design and development. Across the market, prices vary widely, and the biggest drivers are the seniority of the team, whether development is included, and how many requests run at the same time.
What Nucleus costs
The Brand Tier is $5,995 a month. It covers ongoing identity, brand, and visual design: brand systems, marketing and campaign assets, sales and promotional materials, presentations and documents, and social and digital graphics, across unlimited brands.
The Brand & Digital Tier is $7,995 a month. It includes everything in the Brand Tier, plus website design and development, UI and design systems, landing and campaign pages, scoped redesigns, small feature builds, and front-end refinements.
Both plans run one request at a time with an average turnaround of a few business days, and both can be paused or cancelled before the next billing cycle. If it isn't working out within the first week, the first month is refunded in full.
What drives the price of a design subscription
Seniority is the first driver. A subscription staffed by people with decades of shipped work costs more than one routed to whoever's available, and it's usually the difference between work you use and work you redo.
Scope is the second. Design-only plans cost less than plans that include development, because building and maintaining a site is a different skill set and a bigger commitment.
Throughput is the third. Plans that run more requests in parallel cost more, because they're buying more of the team's time. One request at a time is the common baseline.
How to compare plans
Don't compare on price alone. Compare on who does the work, what's included and excluded, how fast requests come back, and how pausing works. A cheaper plan that needs three rounds of revisions on every request isn't cheaper.
It also helps to compare against the alternatives you'd actually use. Price out a senior hire with benefits and tools, or an agency project with its scoping and change orders, and look at what each one gives you for the same few months.
Common questions
- Are there setup fees or long-term contracts?
- Not with Nucleus. Plans are billed monthly with no long-term contract. You can pause or cancel before the next cycle begins.
- What happens to unused time in a month?
- Billing is monthly. If you pause before the next cycle starts, billing stops until you resume. Remaining days in a cycle don't carry over.
- What isn't included?
- Typical exclusions are 3D modeling, animation and GIFs, video editing and production, complex packaging, paid media buying, photography shoots, and third-party software licenses. Those can be scoped as separate projects.
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