Services
What this studio does, and what it costs
ShepherdUX is a design and build studio of five across two continents: brand identity, websites and apps written in code, hand-drawn illustrated sites, search and answer-engine work, editorial programmes, press releases, ads and custom internal tools. Every rung is published below, from USD 350 for a single illustrated post to USD 30,000 for the largest illustrated world; a mark starts at USD 1,800 and a platform site at USD 2,000. The same studio takes a project from the brief to the launch, so the calendar is the real limit rather than the price.
- What it is
- Design, build and growth from one studio, end to end
- Who it is for
- Museums, foundations, hotels, authors, architects and small businesses selling worldwide
- Where it starts
- USD 350 for a post, 1,800 for a mark, 2,000 for a platform site
- Turnaround
- A written reply usually inside a day, a quote after one short call
What this is
This studio draws, designs, writes and builds the same project end to end. Five people do that: design, search and content with Ali, the build with Nauman, data and databases with Moiz, marketing with Faizan, and the brief and the relationship with Saif in Florida. That is the whole proposition, and it is also the constraint: the work is not handed down to a pool, and there is no account layer standing between you and the people doing it.
The site you are reading is the sample. It was drawn and built here, it is measured with scripts kept in the same repository, and the journal is written to the same rules the editorial programmes follow. Where a number appears on this page it comes from an export or a measurement, and the source is named at the bottom.
Who it is for
The work suits organisations with something particular to say and a reason to look unlike their competitors: museums and galleries, foundations and charities, hotels and wineries, authors and musicians, architects and developers, heritage brands, societies and trusts, and small businesses that sell across borders.
Buyers are usually in the Gulf, Europe, the United Kingdom or North America, and the studio works in English, in writing, across time zones. That is a deliberate shape rather than an apology: the whole process is written down, which is what makes a nine-hour gap survivable.
What it costs
Every rung below is a real price, published so you can rank this studio against others before you write. Prices exclude any VAT, sales tax or withholding your own country applies to imported services. There is no hourly rate on this page or any other, because an hourly rate makes working quickly a penalty.
Brand and identity
| Rung | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Mark and system | from USD 1,800 (about AED 6,600) | A drawn mark, one typeface pairing, a palette, a two-page use guide, files in every format, the rights assigned to you. |
| Full identity | from USD 4,500, typically to 9,000 (about AED 16,500) | The mark, an illustrated system of patterns and motifs, full guidelines, and the templates the work is actually used in. |
| Heritage and luxury | from USD 9,000 (about AED 33,100) | Custom lettering, an illustration suite, bilingual Arabic and Latin lockups where the work needs them, print specifications. |
Websites
| Rung | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Platform site | from USD 2,000 (about AED 7,300) | Wix or Squarespace, customised with drawn assets, the SEO basics done properly, and training so you can run it. |
| The page | from USD 2,500 (about AED 9,200) | One illustrated landing page, a copy edit, analytics and consent, launch. |
| Five rooms | from USD 4,800, typically to 8,000 (about AED 17,600) | A five-page bespoke site in Astro or WordPress, drawn header art, on-page SEO, Search Console handed over. |
| Shop | from USD 6,500, or 7,500 on Shopify (about AED 23,900) | A custom theme, up to fifty products loaded, payments and shipping configured, the first month watched. |
| Illustrated world | from USD 12,000, typically to 30,000 (about AED 44,100) | An art-directed, side-scrolling or set-piece site drawn for you. This site is the sample. |
| Care plan | USD 150 a month (about AED 600) | Hosting management, nightly backups, updates, an uptime monitor, and two hours of changes. |
Search and answer engines
| Rung | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Audit | USD 900, one-off (about AED 3,300) | A technical crawl, an index and Search Console review, a content gap, and a visibility check across the AI engines. Credited against the first month if you go on. |
| Starter retainer | USD 1,200 a month (about AED 4,400) | Technical fixes, two posts, citation and listing work, a monthly Search Console read. Three months minimum, waived after a Speedline. |
| Growth retainer | USD 2,400 a month (about AED 8,800) | Four illustrated posts, link and mention work, content shaped for the answer engines, a quarterly call. |
| Authority retainer | USD 4,500 a month (about AED 16,500) | Eight posts, digital PR, a structured data programme, conversion work, a monthly call. |
The Speedline, a three-month SEO package at one fixed fee
| Rung | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Small site | USD 6,000, one fee (about AED 22,000) | Up to fifty indexable pages. Every fault on the agreed fault list fixed by week six, three money pages rewritten, two new pages, six illustrated posts, the business profiles brought complete, and the day-ninety report. |
| Service site | USD 9,000, one fee (about AED 33,100) | Up to 250 indexable pages and three locations. The fixes, five rewrites, three new pages, eight posts, the business profiles brought complete, and the day-ninety report. |
| Shop or catalogue | USD 12,600, one fee (about AED 46,300) | Up to 1,500 indexable pages. Faceted-navigation crawl control, six collection rewrites, twenty product rewrites, three buying guides, eight posts, Merchant Center feed diagnostics, and the day-ninety report. |
Editorial
| Rung | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| One illustrated post | USD 350 (about AED 1,300) | 1,200 to 1,800 words, one drawn illustration, schema, and tracking so you can see what it did. |
| Four posts a month | USD 1,300 a month (about AED 4,800) | A running programme with the illustrations, the internal linking and the measurement. |
| Eight posts a month | USD 2,400 a month (about AED 8,800) | The same, at pace, with a long-form piece each quarter. |
| Long-form guide | from USD 900 (about AED 3,300) | Three thousand words or more, illustrated, built to be the page that answers the question. |
Press releases
| Rung | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| One release | USD 500 (about AED 1,800) | The angle found on one call, the release written to newswire standard with a drawn header, the distribution chosen for the story, and every placement checked and reported within three working days. |
| Launch release | USD 950 (about AED 3,500) | One release, plus personal pitches to up to twenty-five journalists who cover the subject, two countries, the drawing with two of your images and your video, a follow-up, and a thirty-day report. |
| A release a month, six months | USD 3,000 for six (about AED 11,000) | A release a month for six months from an agreed calendar, a newsroom page on your own site, and a report each quarter. |
| A release a month, twelve months | USD 5,400 for twelve (about AED 19,800) | Twelve releases across the year from one calendar, the newsroom page kept up to date, and a report each quarter. |
Interface and product
| Rung | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Design subscription | USD 3,200 a month (about AED 11,800) | One request at a time, back in 48 to 72 hours, pause whenever you like. |
Custom tools
| Rung | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery sprint | USD 1,500, fixed (about AED 5,500) | One week: a process map, a data model, a clickable prototype, and a fixed quote for the build. |
| CRM or internal tool | from USD 9,000 (about AED 33,100) | The build, the integrations the work actually needs, and the handover. |
Ads
| Rung | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | USD 750 (about AED 2,800) | Account structure, tracking, consent-aware conversion events, the first creatives. |
| Management | USD 600 a month, or 12 percent of spend (about AED 2,200) | Whichever is greater, stepping to 10 percent above USD 10,000 a month of spend, with the numbers shown as they are. |
USD is the anchor on every page, quote and invoice. The figure in parentheses is the same price in dirhams at the pegged rate of 3.6725 to the dollar, rounded to the nearest hundred and given as one local equivalent rather than a currency list, correct as of 5 September 2026. Invoices are in USD by default, with EUR or GBP available on request for clients in the EU and the UK.
How it runs
- You write the brief in a sentence. The brief card takes it. What is needed is the thing you want and roughly when.
- The reply comes in writing, usually inside a day, with what the work looks like, which rung it sits on and what would change that.
- One call, thirty minutes, to hear the parts that do not survive being typed.
- A written quote, fixed, with the scope named and the exclusions named. You keep it whether or not you go ahead.
- The work, in the open. You see it as it is drawn and built rather than at a reveal, because a reveal is where projects go wrong quietly.
- Handover. The files, the rights, the Search Console, the passwords, and a written account of how it is put together.
What it has proved
These are exports from client Search Console properties, handed over on 28 August 2026. They show what the sites did after launch, which is not the same as proving the build itself.
- Orlux Rides. From 302 impressions in August 2025 at an average position of 75, to 998,307 impressions and 4,464 clicks cumulatively at an average position of 12.5 by 26 August 2026.
- ClearQuest Water. From 15 impressions a day in late May 2026 to 507 a day in August 2026, with the local guides sitting between positions 5 and 12.
- La Soie. An average position of 6.75 across the run, with weekly impressions up from 147 to 1,650 between 25 May and 23 August 2026.
There are no testimonials on this site and no star rating in its markup, because it has neither. What it has is three exports, each with a named client.
Who it is not for
If you need a team of six starting Monday, an agency with an account manager, or work priced by the hour against a timesheet, this is the wrong studio, and it is better said now than three weeks in.
The same goes for work that has to be cheap above all else. The lowest rungs exist so that a small budget gets something honest rather than something pretending, but they are floors and not bargains, and nothing is priced below what the time actually costs.
Questions people ask before they write
Why are the prices on the page at all?
Because you are going to rank the studios you approach before you talk to any of them, and a studio that will not say costs you a meeting to find out. Ninety-four percent of buyers rank vendors before making contact, and the first one contacted wins about half the time. Publishing the ladder means the people who write already know roughly what they are buying.
Is that the price, or the starting price?
Most rungs are floors, and where one has a typical top it is printed too. The Speedline and the press releases are fixed fees for exactly what the rung names. What moves a floor is scope: pages, languages, how much drawing, whether there is a shop, how much of the content already exists. The brief card is the fastest way to a real figure, and a written quote follows one short call.
Who actually does the work?
Five people, and you will know which one. Ali takes design, search and content and writes the journal. Nauman builds, Moiz handles data and databases, Faizan runs marketing, and Saif in Florida handles the brief and the relationship. Nothing is handed to a pool, which is why the calendar is the real constraint rather than the price list. If a project needs more than this studio holds, you will be told rather than stretched into.
Can I buy one layer without the others?
Yes. Brand without a build, a build without search, search on a site somebody else made. The layers are sold separately on purpose. They do work better together, mostly because the person doing the search work sat in on the drawing and knows what the pages are for.
Why USD when the studio is in Pakistan?
Because it is the language of the Gulf pegs and of every marketplace this work is bought through, and a price that moves with a currency nobody quotes in is a price that has to be renegotiated. Invoices are in USD by default, with EUR or GBP on request for clients in the EU and the UK.
What is deliberately not on this list?
Anything priced by the hour, because an hourly rate makes working quickly a penalty and buys you a timesheet instead of an outcome. Also anything carrying a star rating or a testimonial wall: this site has neither, and the proof below is three exports instead.
Sources
- Client Search Console exports for Orlux Rides, ClearQuest Water and La Soie, handed over 28 August 2026 (Chart.csv, Queries.csv and Pages.csv in each batch).
- Pricing benchmarks and buyer behaviour, ShepherdUX research note 18, September 2026, drawing on published agency and freelance rate surveys.
- United Arab Emirates dirham pegged at 3.6725 to the United States dollar, Central Bank of the UAE, rate as of 5 September 2026.
Leave a note, or write the brief.
Two lines and a way to reply is enough for a note. A brief asks five short questions and gets a written plan with a price back.