We stopped billing by the hour in 2018. It was the single best decision the studio has made, and for about four months it was also the most painful.

Why hourly quietly breaks things

When you bill by the hour, every efficiency you find costs you money. Every reusable component, every automation, every year of experience that lets you skip three dead ends — all of it reduces the invoice. You end up with an incentive structure that punishes exactly the behaviour clients hire you for.

It is also miserable for the client. They cannot budget, they cannot compare quotes, and every email they send has a meter running behind it.

What fixed price actually requires

Fixed price without fixed scope is just a slower way to lose money. The work moves to the front of the project:

1. A paid discovery phase. Small, separate, and it produces a written brief. If the client walks away after it, they still got something worth paying for.
2. A brief that says what is not included. The exclusions list is more useful than the inclusions list.
3. A change process everyone agreed to before it was needed. New request, new quote, client decides. No drama, because it was never a surprise.

The four painful months

Our first three fixed-price projects lost money. We had underestimated content migration, we had not written an exclusions list, and we said yes to “just one more page” too many times.

The fix was boring: we started tracking hours internally — not to bill them, but to learn what things actually cost. After a year we could quote a marketing site within about ten percent. That estimate is now the most valuable asset the studio owns.

Would we go back?

No. Clients sign faster, scope conversations happen at the beginning rather than the end, and the team is rewarded for getting better rather than for taking longer.