Why do marketing agencies require long contracts?
Hiring & Budget — answered straight, by an operator who builds these systems rather than an agency selling them.
Partly legitimate — SEO takes months, and a month-to-month client who quits in week six was never going to see results. Partly not: long terms protect agency revenue against underperformance and make churn someone else's problem.
The longer version
A fair structure exists. A defined ramp-up period covering the front-loaded work, then month-to-month once the build is delivered. If a company will only sell twelve months up front with no deliverable milestones, the term is protecting them, not you.
Whatever the term, insist on ownership and portability. If you own the domain, the site, the content, and the data, a contract ending is an inconvenience. If you do not, it is a demolition.
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