Web design development subscription based service

If a company invested time in creating a custom site for you, surely they’d expect to be compensated by the time of launch? Usually a proportion of it gets paid up front.

You might need a maintenance and support arrangement, so it’s common to have an inital development fee plus an annual or quarterly fee for support.

A subscription fee for a custom-built website would be unusual. That’s more what you’d expect to sign up to an existing third party service.

But this really isn’t a WordPress question! And there can be so many factors, and you need to make the decision that suits you and your project, and your relationship with the company.