welcome to the
Roost
Hatching the idea is the fun part. Roost does the rest.
I build small business hubs by hand. Each one is called a Coop. They replace the patchwork of subscriptions you're juggling now with one warm place, owned by you, shaped to fit how you actually work.
Or start with the intake, no call required.
What's a Coop?
The small, warm hub I build for your business. Custom, owned, and shaped to fit how you actually work.
The Flock
Meet the businesses already nesting in Roost. Real Coops, in the wild.
Feathers
The capabilities you can add to your Coop. Start small, grow as you go.
The Hen House
About Roost and the maker behind it.
Get a Coop
Tell me about your business and what you're juggling.
Pecking Order
How Roost works, what to expect, and what it costs.
how big is your Coop?
Sizes
every new Coop hatches with a few bonus Feathers on the house
A focused start. A single Coop with one purpose, perfect for a side project, a brand kit, or a digital sign that needs to look right on day one.
A small family of Feathers under one roof. The right shape for a growing business with a handful of moving pieces and a tone of voice to maintain.
A full custom build. Multiple Feathers, multiple workflows, the works. For media brands, nonprofits, and businesses that need the whole flock.
for agencies and studios
The Rookery
A larger structure for marketing agencies, brand studios, and consultancies juggling many clients at once. Stop the wild rooster chase across Google Drive, Canva, Dropbox, and Slack.
- one dashboard, every client
- shared template library
- centralized asset bank
- white-label, optional
curious what yours could look like?
Try a 5-minute build demo
Answer a few quick questions and watch a Coop hatch in real time, branded around your business. No commitment, no email required.
the small, warm hub
What's a Coop?
A Coop is a private hub I build for your business. It replaces the patchwork of tools you're using now with one warm place that holds everything.
Some Coops are content calendars. Some are digital menu displays for restaurant TVs. Some are client analytics dashboards. Some are all of the above. I build to fit, then I tend it.
What every Coop has in common is below. The look, the data, and the features inside are yours.
Your colors, fonts, logo, and tone. Nothing on the page screams Roost. The Roost brand lives on your invoice, not in your hub.
The Coop file is yours forever. No annual lock-in, no enterprise contracts, no surprise price hikes. You decide how hands-on you want to be.
No login required. Just a private URL. Works in any browser on a phone, tablet, or computer.
Optional monthly care keeps the Coop tended for you. Bug fixes, feature additions, and the small upkeep that keeps things running smoothly. Stop or start anytime.
who's already nesting
The Flock
These are the businesses currently roosting. Each Coop is shaped to fit how they work.
Market Case study coming
Brownsville Market
A digital menu display system across three TVs in a Crozet café. Daily specials, promo rotators, and a printable monthly menu, all updated from one form.
Guide Visit the site →
Charlottesville Guide
A content planning and client management hub that replaced Sprout Social. Calendar, newsletters, client analytics, brand kit, and blog audits, all in one cream-and-burgundy place.
Cuke
A personal productivity Coop for tracking school assignments. Cucumber growth lifecycle, pickle effort rewards, and sections for Priority, Homework, Tests, and Looking Ahead. Proof that Coops aren't just for businesses.
Beach Bar Step inside →
Teaguer's Beach Bar
A sample Coop built by hand to show what's possible. A coastal craft cocktail bar on Chincoteague Island with reservations, team scheduling, catering, inventory, and a full press kit. Tour it like a model home.
here
Your Coop here
Coops built this year are part of the small inaugural batch. Founding Flock members get founder pricing and a permanent place in the Roost brand story.
things you can add to your Coop
Feathers
A Feather is a capability I can add to your Coop. Some Coops have one. Some have a dozen. You start with what you need, and we add Feathers as your business grows.
Brand & Content
for everything you publish
Colors, fonts, hashtags, CTAs, and form links in one place. The single source of truth for your team.
Multi-type entries with a status workflow (Idea, Planned, Draft, Scheduled, Posted). Filter by client, type, or priority.
A searchable record of every newsletter you've sent, with previews and highlights.
Centralized link library to your Canva assets, logos, and templates. No more hunting through Drive.
Clients & Operations
for the people you serve
Active and archived clients, with notes, sub-types, and tagging. The opposite of a HubSpot contract.
Manual or imported numbers, with auto-calculated engagement rates and period-over-period comparisons.
For nonprofits and event-driven work. Outreach status, contribution amounts, follow-ups.
Recurring and one-off events with status tracking. Built for the way community events actually run.
Display & Storefront
for what your customers see
TV menus, promo rotators, and daily specials, updated from one form and pushed to multiple screens.
Day-of-week rotation, with built-in pricing and tax calculators that handle your local tax rate.
Lightweight intake forms for catering, bookings, or RSVPs, designed for the way your customers actually fill them out.
Team & Inside
for everything inside your walls
New hire welcome, first-90-days checklist, role-specific intro materials, and contracts in one searchable place.
Manager training, SOPs, video walkthroughs, and role-specific learning paths. A living library, not a static handbook.
SOPs, FAQs, decisions, and the team's shared institutional memory. Searchable, current, not scattered across Slack threads.
One-on-one templates, review frameworks, and decision logs. The structure managers need without the HR-software bloat.
Birthdays, work anniversaries, and life events (new babies, weddings, graduations). Gentle reminders so nothing gets forgotten.
Outreach Toolkit
for everything beyond your walls
Logos, founder bios, product photos, boilerplate, and ready-to-send media inquiries. PR work without the PR retainer.
Pre-written, customizable email sequences for new customers, members, donors, or subscribers. Edit, brand, send.
Win-back campaigns, anniversary emails, and loyalty touches that keep good customers feeling seen, not pestered.
Seasonal, quarterly, monthly, and weekly templates so you never have to start a promotional email from scratch.
Pre-written copy in your voice for common situations. Apologies, announcements, thank-yous. Drop in, adjust, send.
Care & Maintenance
for the long haul
A weekly scrape of your blog to flag outdated content for your review. Stops link rot before it starts.
A built-in way for your team to report bugs and request features without leaving the Coop.
First-time-user walkthroughs that your team can revisit anytime. Great for onboarding new hires.
about Roost and the maker
The Hen House
I'm Lynsie Steele. I've spent twenty years in brand strategy, marketing, copywriting, and the kind of nonprofit and small-business work that taught me what tools actually do (and don't do) for the people using them.
Roost started as a favor. A friend at a Crozet café needed a digital menu system for the TVs in her shop, and the options were either enterprise tools that cost more than her ovens or DIY hacks that broke every Tuesday. So I built her one. Then Charlottesville Guide needed a content hub to replace Sprout Social at $399 a month, and the same thing happened.
It turns out a lot of small businesses are in the same spot. Paying for software designed for companies a hundred times their size, getting features they don't need, missing the ones they do, locked into recurring fees that creep up every year.
I build each Coop by hand, shape it to fit how you actually work, and tend it as your business grows. No enterprise sales calls. No quarterly business reviews. No upsells you didn't ask for. Just your tools, in one warm place, made for you.
I work with women-led businesses, nonprofits, and creatives across Charlottesville and beyond. If that sounds like you, let's talk.
warmly, Lynsie
tell me what you're juggling
Get a Coop
The first conversation is always free. Tell me about your business, what tools you're using now, and what's not working. We'll figure out what shape your hub should take.
Or start with the intake, no call required.
Or email me directly at lynsie@roost-studio.com
where flocks gather
The Rookery
A larger structure for marketing agencies, brand studios, and consultancies juggling many clients at once. One Rookery, every client, every file where it belongs.
Your team is chasing files across Google Drive, Canva, Dropbox, Slack, Notion, Asana, and seven email inboxes. Brand kits are outdated. Content calendars live in three places. Your senior account folks spend half their time hunting for things that should be obvious.
The Rookery brings the whole operation home.
What's inside a Rookery
six structural pieces, working together
The agency's home view. Every client as a tile on your dashboard. One click, you're inside their Coop. No more hunting through tabs.
Each client gets a full Coop with their own brand colors, content calendar, asset library, and workflows. Client login optional, agency-only if you prefer.
Press kits, retention sequences, welcome flows, and promotional cadences live at the Rookery level. Clone into any client Coop in seconds.
Stock photos, design templates, brand-voice snippets your agency owns. One source of truth, deployable everywhere. No more hunting through Google Drive.
Your own house: SOPs, onboarding for new hires, milestones, manager toolkits. The agency itself runs on a Coop too.
Your branding to clients, not Roost's. The Rookery becomes your platform. Available as an add-on for agencies that want full ownership of the client-facing experience.
Stop the wild rooster chase.
One Rookery, all your clients, every file where it belongs.
how it actually works
Pecking Order
Building a Coop is fast, friendly, and free of corporate theater. Here's the order things happen in.
curious before you read on?
Try a 5-minute build demo
Answer a few quick questions and watch a Coop hatch in real time, branded around your business. No commitment, no email required.
We talk
A free discovery call. No prep needed, no pitch. Just a real conversation about what you're juggling and whether a Coop would actually help.
You complete the intake
A focused 20-minute survey that captures everything I need to build your Coop. What you dread doing, what you wish existed, what your business actually needs. Your answers shape the architecture. You can take it before our call, after our call, or skip the call entirely and start here.
I build
In days, not weeks. Most Coops are ready to walk through in under a week. The work is fast because the discovery did the thinking.
You move in
A short onboarding session to show you around. Tutorials are baked into the Coop, so future team members can self-onboard whenever they're ready.
I tend (optional)
Monthly care plans available if you want me to keep things humming. Bug fixes, feature additions, small upkeep. Stop or start anytime, no contracts. See the Care tiers.
What you won't get from Roost
- Drip campaigns asking how things are going
- Notification spam pulling you back to the app
- Quarterly business reviews
- Upsells you didn't ask for
- Surprise price hikes, ever
the money talks
Pricing & Care
Two costs to know: the one-time build, and the optional monthly care that keeps things humming. Here's all of it, no surprises.
the one-time build
Sizes
Every Coop is custom-built by hand. These are the three sizes most businesses fit into. Founding Flock pricing locks in for the first 10 clients, for life.
a focused start
The Egg
$1,500 one-time build
Founding Flock: $1,200 for life
- One Coop with one purpose, perfect for a single workflow
- Up to 3 Feathers
- Custom brand kit applied throughout
- 5-day delivery from kickoff
- Optional Basic Care from $150/month
Ideal for: side projects, brand kits, digital signage, single-purpose hubs.
a small family
The Nest
$5,000 one-time build
Founding Flock: $4,000 for life
- A handful of Feathers under one roof, the right shape for most growing businesses
- Up to 8 Feathers
- Brand kit, content calendar, asset library, internal wiki
- 5 to 7-day delivery from kickoff
- Optional Standard Care from $400/month
Ideal for: growing businesses replacing a real SaaS stack.
the whole flock
The Brood
$12,000 one-time build
Founding Flock: $9,600 for life
- A full custom build with multiple workflows and team access
- Unlimited Feathers
- Multi-user access, advanced data layers, custom integrations
- 10 to 14-day delivery from kickoff
- Optional Premium Care from $850/month
Ideal for: media brands, nonprofits, businesses with deeper needs.
a permanent rate, not a launch promo
The Founding Flock locks in 20% off, for life
The first 10 Roost clients pay the Founding Flock rate on both build and care, forever. As long as your care plan stays continuous, your rate never changes. After spot 10, prices reset to standard. Reach out if you want to know which spot is open.
the math, plainly
What you'd spend on tools in a year covers your Coop and your first year of care
- Sprout Social: ~$249/month
- HubSpot Starter: ~$50/month
- Mailchimp: ~$20/month
- Canva Pro: ~$15/month
- Notion Team: ~$16/user/month
≈ $350/month, or $4,200/year
- One-time build: $1,500
- 12 months of Basic Care: $1,800
- You own it forever, no subscriptions
≈ $3,300 total, then $150/month after
Cancel the SaaS that doesn't fit and your Coop pays for itself in roughly nine months. After year one, you keep saving.
tending the Coop
Care Plans
Your Coop is yours to own forever, even if we never talk again. But most clients keep me on a monthly care plan so the small things stay handled, the broken bits get fixed, and the Coop keeps growing with the business.
light tending
Basic Care
$150 per month
- 1 hour of work per month, rolls over up to 2 hours max
- Bug fixes, small CSS or copy tweaks
- 48-hour response time, business days
- 1 monthly check-in email from me
Overage at $150 per hour.
steady tending
Standard Care
$400 per month
- 3 hours of work per month, rolls over up to 4 hours max
- Bug fixes, copy updates, new content
- Quarterly review call, 30 minutes
- 24-hour response time, business days
- One small feature addition per quarter
Overage at $135 per hour.
close tending
Premium Care
$850 per month
- 8 hours of work per month, rolls over up to 10 hours max
- Everything in Standard plus content uploads
- Monthly strategy call
- 12-hour response time, business hours
- One new Feather per quarter included
Overage at $120 per hour.
drawing the line
What counts as care vs. a new project
Care covers the steady work of keeping your Coop healthy. Bigger changes get quoted as projects so we both stay clear-eyed about scope. No surprises, no hidden hours.
care work
Included in your monthly plan
- Fixing what's broken
- Updating existing content (copy, images, prices, schedules)
- Small tweaks (color adjustments, button copy, layout micro-changes)
- Bug fixes
- Adding entries to existing Feathers (new clients, new events)
project work
Quoted separately
- New Feathers
- Significant restructuring of an existing Feather
- Migrating data from a new source
- Branding changes (new colors, fonts, voice)
- Anything over your tier's monthly hours
need a hand?
Send a care request
For current care-plan clients. Submit a request and I'll see it with the right urgency. Email still works too, but this routes faster and helps me prioritize.
Got your request.
I'll respond within the window your care tier allows. If it's urgent and you don't hear from me within an hour during business hours, follow up by email at lynsie@roost-studio.com.
no lock-in, no guilt trips
You can end this any time
Cancel any month with 30 days notice. I'll export your Coop in full, walk you through self-hosting, and you'll never owe me anything beyond your final month. Your Coop is yours, period. Care is something we choose together each month, not something you're locked into.