How a mid-market agency used no-cost migrations to cut billable hours, improve support tiers, and win partner perks
Picture this: you’re at a conference bar and another agency owner asks what actually moved the needle last year. I told them straight — we started offering free migrations to a specific platform partner, but we didn’t give away work for nothing. We rewired how we scoped, sold, and supported clients so the "free" part shaved internal cost, increased client lifetime value, and unlocked partner benefits that outweighed the migration cost by a wide margin.
This case study is about Northbridge Digital, a 22-person agency specializing in SaaS marketing and complex website builds. Annual revenue before the program: about $2.1M. We handled roughly 120 active clients and ran an in-house support desk. The move we made was surgical: targeted, measured, and reversible.
Why the migration play mattered: lost billable hours, slow support, and missed partner incentives
We had three clear constraints that prompted the change.
- Billable hours bloat: On average we spent 18 hours per migration when clients changed platforms. That included audit, content mapping, templating, and QA. At an average billable rate of $140/hour that was $2,520 per migration in opportunity cost alone. Support tier bottle-necks: Our support SLA was graded by response time bands. Complex migrations pushed tickets out, inflating SLA breach risk and costing us premium support contracts. Neglected partner economics: We were eligible for partner credits and onboarding assistance from a major CMS platform but only if we reached a threshold of migrated sites per quarter. We were short 40 sites a quarter to qualify for the top tier.
Put together, these meant client churn on platform friction, slow ticket turnarounds, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in foregone partner credits and referral payouts.
Why we chose a targeted free migration strategy rather than discounting or outsourcing
There are obvious alternatives: raise prices, buy subcontractor capacity, or do nothing. Each had downsides. Raising prices would reduce competitiveness. Outsourcing migrations costs cash and loses control. Doing nothing meant slow erosion of margins.
We adopted a targeted "free migration" offer tied to conditions that limited our exposure but unlocked partner value. Key constraints we built in:
- Only for clients moving to Platform X (the partner) and signing at least a 12-month support contract. Migration scope limited to sites under 50 pages or under $25k in projected rebuild spend. Standardized migration template and automation scripts for common CMS content types.
That framing turned a marketing giveaway into a conversion lever that traded upfront migration fees for predictable recurring revenue and partner credits.
Implementing free migrations at scale: a practical 90-day rollout
We treated this like a product launch. The rollout followed a strict 90-day timeline with clear deliverables.
Day 0-14: Audit and automation design
- Audit existing migration work to map common tasks and time sinks. We logged 45 migration jobs from the prior 12 months and timestamped each task. Built a migration checklist and a templated content mapping file. That reduced estimate variance by 60% during internal trials. Developed two automation scripts: one for media ingestion and one for bulk URL redirects. Building these took 40 developer hours but cut repetitive work by about 65% per job.
Day 15-45: SOPs, pricing guardrails, and partner negotiation
- Created a Standard Operating Procedure that defined scope boundaries and hand-off points between sales, dev, and support. Negotiated a partner agreement with Platform X: migrate 60 sites per quarter and receive $60,000 in platform credits plus priority onboarding for our clients. The partner also offered a dedicated technical liaison for big lifts. Set a clear clause that out-of-scope items would be billed at $135/hour to prevent scope creep.
Day 46-75: Pilot cohort and support integration
- Ran a pilot of 12 clients selected for simplicity and high churn risk. Average migration time fell from 18 hours to 6.5 hours using templates and automation. Reworked our support tiers: clients who migrated under the free program automatically qualified for the "priority partner" tier — faster triage and a 2-hour initial response SLA for P1 tickets. Used partner credits to offset hosting and license fees for the pilot clients, which made the pitch much easier for prospects.
Day 76-90+: Full launch and iterative improvements
- Launched the offer publicly. Sales scripts emphasized: "We’ll move you at no extra cost if you commit to 12 months of support." That closed deals 23% faster during the first 30 days. Instituted weekly ops reviews to refine checklist items and identify recurring edge cases for automation.
Quantifiable outcomes: hours saved, revenue gained, SLA improvements in 6 months
Numbers matter more than promises. Here’s what the program delivered in the first six months after launch.
Metric Before After (6 months) Average migration hours 18 hrs 7.2 hrs Migration-related billable hours per quarter 1,080 hrs 432 hrs Support SLA initial response time (P1) 18-24 hrs 2 hrs Partner credits earned $0 $72,000 (6 months) New recurring revenue from migrated clients $0 (baseline) $210,000 annualized Net impact on bottom line (approx) - +$148,800 (first 6 months projection)Breakdown of the math: We migrated 120 sites in 6 months. With average migration hours reduced from 18 to 7.2, we saved 1,296 billable hours. At a $140 rate that’s $181,440 in avoided billable spend. Partner credits added $72,000 in platform offset which we applied to client hosting and onboarding. New support contracts brought an extra $210,000 in annual recurring revenue, and churn among migrated clients fell by 5 percentage points, which preserved roughly $65k in gross revenue.
Three counterintuitive lessons that actually matter when you offer free migrations
People assume "free" is charity or a price war. It isn’t. The mechanics matter. Here are three lessons we learned that aren’t in the vendor playbook.
1) Free needs a strict boundary - or it becomes the path of least resistance
If rankvise.com you don’t define scope rigidly, the sales team will push everything into the "free" box to win deals. Build a template-driven scope and a clear, enforceable out-of-scope billing policy. Our out-of-scope clause avoided about $42k in unbilled work over six months.
2) Automation is the only way to make "free" profitable
Hand migration is expensive and inconsistent. Spend once on scripts and checklists. Our two automation scripts cost 40 developer hours to build and removed 65% of repetitive tasks. That converted the cost into an investment with a payback in under three months.
3) Free migrations change the support equation, not just the sales equation
When you move clients into the partner ecosystem, you can renegotiate perceived value. Platform credits, prioritized partner support, and joint marketing are real benefits that let you upsell higher support tiers. We converted 38% of migrated clients into an upgraded support tier within 90 days.
How you can replicate this playbook without burning cash or trust
If you’re convinced this could work for your agency, here’s a practical checklist to adapt the approach.
Quantify your true migration cost. Track time for 20 recent migrations and itemize tasks. Use a conservative billable rate - for example, $125-$150/hour - and compute average hours and variance. Choose the right partner. Pick a platform that offers partner credits, technical onboarding, or co-marketing that scale with volume. Make sure their tech stack aligns with your automation potential. Create a migration product. Define what "free" includes: page count limits, content types, integrations covered. Build templates and scripts for the most common patterns. Align sales incentives to recurring value. Tie the free offer to a minimum support subscription or a 12-month minimum commitment. Reward sales for ARR growth, not one-off fees. Protect margins with a gating mechanism. Add a clear, upfront out-of-scope policy and estimate process. Use a hard cap on free hours per project. Measure and iterate. Track KPIs: migration hours, time to first response, partner credits, ARR from migrated clients, and churn. Run weekly ops reviews early on. Plan an exit path. Don’t lock yourself to a single partner. Negotiate escape clauses and maintain core migration automations that work outside partner tools.Contrarian viewpoints worth testing before you commit
Two valid doubts you’ll hear in the bar and should test.
- Free devalues your work. Maybe. If the migration is a commodity, clients will shop on price. You protect value by packaging migrations as a pathway to higher-value services - analytics, conversion optimization, custom integrations. Partner reliance is risky. True. Don’t let partner terms become a single point of failure. Keep your migration tooling and knowledge in-house so you can switch paths if the partner changes rules or pricing.
We ran an internal "what-if" every quarter: What if Platform X triples partner fees or changes the credits? We found the migration automation alone preserved most cost savings, so partner withdrawal would be painful but not fatal.
Final terse recommendation for agency owners wanting to try this
Don’t give everything away. Build a repeatable migration product, automate ruthlessly, and tie the free offer to predictable recurring revenue. Use partner credits and perks to amplify the margin, not to mask inefficient processes. After six months our program converted into a durable revenue driver and improved support quality - not by accident, but because we treated “free” as a strategic pricing lever with guardrails.
If you want the migration checklist and the two scripts we built as a starting point, tell me what platform you target and I’ll share the templates that saved us the most time. No fluff - just the files and the SOP we used to train the team in two afternoons.