Fixed-Price Web Development
A fixed price on a written scope: deliverables, milestones, acceptance criteria — and change requests priced as what they are, not as surprises.
Fixed price works when the scope does: deliverables enumerable, edges visible, acceptance criteria writable. Then it is the cleanest commercial instrument in the trade — you know the number, the developer knows the target, and nobody invoices feelings. The entire discipline lives in the scoping: the fixed price is only as honest as the document under it.
The method is boring on purpose: the brief becomes a written scope — deliverables, assumptions, dependencies, acceptance criteria — milestones gate the payments, and the price sits at the bottom of the scope you can read. What the scope does not contain is out, and entering it is a change request: priced honestly, decided by you, never a source of ambush in either direction.
For work that resists scoping — audits, rescues, explorations — fixed price becomes a betting instrument and hourly is the honest model. Most long engagements end up hybrid: fixed for the defined phases, hourly for the fog. That split, when it applies to your project, is in the quote.
Quarterly, and only when the numbers move
Get the rate report before you negotiate.
Updated rate bands across the major stacks and regions, plus what changed and why. No other email.
Questions
Asked about hiring fixed price.
When the scope is fiction: unknown codebases, undecided requirements, "we will know it when we see it". A fixed price on an unknowable scope is a bet where the developer prices the risk premium into you or underprices it into failure. The honest move is hourly through the fog and fixed price the moment it clears — hybrids are standard.
In writing, priced before work starts: what the change costs in money and timeline, decided by you, appended to the scope. The failure pattern fixed-price is famous for — surprise invoices, silent scope shrinkage — is a process failure, and the process here makes both impossible by construction.
The developer eats the estimate; you own the scope. If the work takes longer than scoped at the agreed price, that is the fixed in fixed-price working as intended. What moves the price is only the scope moving — and only with your signature on the change. This symmetry is the whole contract.
Not sure this model fits?
Describe the work in the brief — the reply recommends the commercial model with the reasoning shown, not the one with the best margin.
Other engagement models
Freelance
One contract with the person who does the work — no agency layer, no marketplace fees, no account manager translating your brief into a different brief.
Dedicated
One developer, dedicated blocks of their week, embedded in your workflow — your standups, your board, your release cadence.
Team
A small senior team when the work wants one — assembled from a vetted network, contracted once, accountable through a single lead.
Hourly
Hourly billing with the rates published before you ask — banded by stack and region, tracked honestly, reconciled against visible work.
Monthly
A predictable monthly retainer for ongoing work: reserved capacity, an agreed plan, reporting that reconciles to it — and terms you can leave.