No hourly rates: why we don’t sell time

Hourly billing rewards the agency for taking longer and leaves you holding the risk. Here’s how fixed pricing works, what it covers, and what changes it.

Ask most agencies what a project costs and you’ll get a day rate and an estimate.

The rate is real. The estimate is a guess. And when the guess is wrong, you pay for it.

We don’t sell hours. Here’s why, and what you get instead.

Hourly pricing has the incentives backwards

Under an hourly model, the agency earns more when the work takes longer. Nobody plans it that way. But every slow week, extra round of revisions and avoidable meeting is billable, and nothing in the deal rewards finishing early.

The risk sits with you. If the estimate was optimistic, the invoice grows. If the scope was vague, every “quick change” is another line on it. You can’t budget for a number nobody knows yet.

A fixed price flips that. The number is agreed before work starts. If the project takes longer than we planned, that’s our problem, not your invoice. We only earn more by working well.

What a fixed price actually contains

A fixed price only works if both sides know exactly what it covers. So every proposal we send has the same six parts: the scope, including what isn’t included; a timeline with milestones; the people who will do the work; one price, paid at milestones; who owns what, which is always you; and the rule for what changes the price.

That last one matters most. Scope does move. When it does, we say so in writing, with the cost, before spending a single hour on it. You decide. Nothing appears on an invoice that you didn’t agree to first.

Hours are for us, not for you

We still track time. It’s how we plan, staff and price the next project well. But it’s a tool for running our business, not a meter for running up yours.

Whoever you hire, ask five questions of their proposal before you sign. What’s the total? What’s included? What changes it? Who does the work? Who owns the result? If they can’t answer all five, they’re selling hours, whatever the proposal says.

You’re buying an outcome, not our time. The price should say so.