Fixed fee, flexible scope

For our first five years we quoted day rates. It felt fair. It was not. Clients worried about every meeting, and we were quietly rewarded for being slow.

We now price every project as a fixed fee. What stays flexible is the scope, and we decide how it changes together.

The fee buys a team and a length of time

A fee pays for a named team for a set number of weeks. That is the commitment. What the team makes in those weeks is a plan, not a contract. If research shows the website matters more than the brand refresh, we move effort there without a change order.

This only works with three conversations.

1. The brief back

Before any design, we write the brief back to the client in our own words. One page. What we are making, who it is for, what success looks like and what we are deliberately not doing. Most projects that go wrong went wrong here, so we spend time on it.

2. The scope swap

Every two weeks we look at the plan together. When something new comes in, something else goes out or moves to a later phase. The question is never “can you add this?” but “what should this replace?”

3. The last two weeks

The final two weeks of every project are reserved for finishing: accessibility checks, performance, handover documents and training. They are the first thing people want to cut, and the reason our launches are calm.

What changed

Clients stopped counting hours and started asking better questions. We stopped padding estimates. Projects now finish within a week of the planned date far more often than they used to, and nobody has asked for a timesheet since.