Scope Creep Examples — Web design
Ongoing support requests after the engagement has ended
The site shipped and the contract closed. Two months later, small design-tweak requests start arriving by email as if the engagement never ended.
The site launched, the final invoice was paid, and the contract's deliverables are complete. Two months later, an email arrives: "quick one, can you swap this image and update the footer text?" It's a small ask, and it's also the third one this month — each individually reasonable, collectively a pattern of ongoing design support that was never part of the (now-closed) agreement and isn't being tracked or billed anywhere.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Hosting and maintenance clause→ — Defines whether any post-launch support is included at all, and if not, sets up the retainer or per-request arrangement that should exist instead.
Suggested change-order wording
Suggested change-order wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
Happy to make these updates — since the project wrapped and the original scope is complete, ongoing tweaks like this fall outside our agreement. We offer a small monthly maintenance retainer for exactly this kind of request if that'd be useful going forward, or I can quote this one as a one-off at [rate]. Which would you prefer?
How this usually resolves
This is one of the more common paths into a maintenance retainer — once a client is shown that these "quick ones" are recurring and have been informally free, most opt into a small monthly plan rather than negotiating each request individually.
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