Fixed price vs hourly: what each one protects
We quote a fixed price, and always after scoping rather than before it. A single-page landing site is EUR 600 to 900, a business website of four to seven pages is EUR 1.500 to 3.500, and a site with a login, dashboard, API, CRM or payments is EUR 3.500 to 7.500. Hourly is the other honest arrangement, and on some work it is the cheaper one for you, so it is worth knowing what each model protects and who carries the risk inside it.
The case for hourly, first
Hourly is the simpler and fairer deal when the work is small or genuinely open-ended. You pay for what gets used and nothing more. There is no estimate to pad, and a change of mind costs what it costs instead of triggering a negotiation about whether it was in the original brief.
- You already have a site and what you want is a queue of small changes.
- You do not know what you want yet, and you would rather explore than commit to a definition.
- The work is truly unpredictable, such as connecting to a system nobody has documentation for.
- Someone on your side can direct the work day to day and judge when to stop.
If that is you, the honest answer is that you do not need a project priced at all. Care is EUR 100 to 300 a month for updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes, which is not a redesign and not new features. A retainer, or paying for the changes themselves, will serve you better than a quote, and we will say so on the call rather than after it.
What each model protects
Fixed price protects your budget, and your scope. The number does not move because the work turned out harder, and you can plan around it. The larger effect is less obvious: a fixed price forces the work to be written down before anyone opens an editor, because neither side can agree a number for something undefined.
Hourly protects the person building. Nobody has to absorb a bad estimate, and nobody has to argue that a request is out of scope in order to be paid for it. The cost is that it removes the pressure to define the work, which is fine on a maintenance queue and expensive on a build.
Who carries the risk
| Question | Fixed price | Hourly |
|---|---|---|
| Who pays when the estimate is wrong | The studio | You |
| What you know before work starts | The total, and what finished means | The rate, and not much else |
| What a change mid-build costs | A written line and a revised number | Whatever it takes to do |
| What the arrangement rewards | Defining the work | Continuing the work |
| Where the padding sits | In the quote, because unknowns get priced in | In the final invoice, where you see it last |
| Best fit | A defined build with a launch in mind | Ongoing changes with no end state |
Neither column is dishonest. They hand the same risk to different people, and the question is who is better placed to carry it. On a build with an outcome you can describe, that is us.
Why we scope before we quote
A number given before scoping is a guess, and a guess gets priced for the worst version of the project you might turn out to be. You pay for that padding whether or not your project deserved it. Scoping is how it comes back out of the price.
Scoping produces four things: the page list, what each page has to do, where the form or the booking goes, and a written list of what is out of scope. From those, the step is obvious and the quote is a number rather than a hedge.
It also catches the expensive misunderstanding while it is still cheap. Checkout, fees and paid bookings put a new build at step 04, EUR 3.500 to 7.500 over 6 to 12 weeks; added to an existing site, payments are an add-on at EUR 600 to 1.500, and the quote confirms the scope. A brief that quietly contains the words "and customers can pay" is a different project, and that is better learned before a deposit than after one.
How it runs, and how long
- Scoping. A written scope, including what is left out.
- Fixed quote. Step 01 EUR 600 to 900, step 02 EUR 900 to 1.500, step 03 EUR 1.500 to 3.500, step 04 EUR 3.500 to 7.500, step 05 from EUR 7.500 after discovery. The full ladder sits on packages.
- Build. 1 to 2 weeks at step 01, 2 to 3 weeks at step 02, 3 to 6 weeks at step 03, 6 to 12 weeks at step 04. What we build with is on our Next.js page, and how we work is on design and engineering.
- Review. This is the part that waits on you. A fixed price works best when feedback arrives together rather than in pieces, and a build that stalls waiting for approval stalls at your end, not ours.
- Launch and handover. The code, the repository and the database are yours. Hosting we can take on, agreed per project.
Work that continues is priced apart from the build, per month: Care at EUR 100 to 300; SEO growth at EUR 500 to 800 for technical and on-page work, service and location pages, internal links and authority, and reporting; and SEO + GEO at EUR 750 to 1.200+. SEO foundation is separate again, a one-off of EUR 450 to 750 covering Search Console, analytics, indexation, technical hygiene, titles, internal links and a 3 to 6 month plan.
When to spend less
- If your list is three text changes and a new photo, do not buy a project. Ask for the changes and pay for the changes.
- If you cannot describe the site yet, write down what it has to do before you ask anyone for a quote.
- If you are weighing step 03 at EUR 1.500 to 3.500 against step 02 at EUR 900 to 1.500 because seven pages sounds more serious than three, take step 02. Pages you cannot maintain age badly.
- If the real problem is that this month needs customers rather than a website, then do not hire us yet. Fix the pipeline first and let the site follow the money.
Questions we get asked
What happens if the scope changes mid-build?
You get a written line describing the change and a revised number before we build it, never a surprise at the end. Anything that changes the shape of the project gets priced before it starts.
When do I get a fixed price?
After scoping. For step 01 through step 04 the scope is written down and the quote is fixed to it. Step 05 is different: a custom platform with auth, billing, admin and deployment starts from EUR 7.500 and the quote follows discovery, because nobody can price that responsibly from a first meeting.
What if the build takes you less time than you expected?
You still pay the fixed price, and we still absorb it when the opposite happens. That is the trade in both directions, and it is why a number can be promised at all. If it feels uncomfortable, preferring hourly is a legitimate position and we would rather hear it than talk you out of it.
Can you give me a price without scoping?
We can give you the range, which is what the ladder is for, and we will tell you which step your description sounds like. What we will not do is turn a range into a quote over a first message, because a quote is a promise about a defined thing and at that point the thing is not defined.
Is hourly ever the right call with you?
Not for a build. For maintenance and small ongoing work a flat monthly plan fits better than hourly: Care at EUR 100 to 300 a month covers updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes. For a build with an outcome you can describe, the answer stays no, because the fixed price is what forces both sides to agree what finished means before the money is spent.
Send us what you are trying to build and we will tell you which step it is and what scoping it would take. Start here.
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JP Studio designs and builds websites, storefronts and product interfaces.