Fixed price vs "from": why we publish our numbers

You quote your own jobs before you start them. There is no reason a website should be different, and the reasons given for why it is are usually about sales.

You would not tell a customer "it depends, let's book a session to explore your needs" for a lock change. You would ask two questions and give a number. The website industry has convinced itself it is special. It is not.

What the discovery call is really for

Some of it is legitimate: a ten-page site with booking is genuinely different work from a one-pager. But the reason the price is withheld until the call is usually that the price is set by what they think you can pay, and they need to talk to you to find out.

What "from $1,500" tends to become

• Extra pages, quoted per page after the first three.
• Content writing, "if you cannot supply the copy" — and almost nobody supplies the copy.
• A photo licence you did not know you were renting.
• Setup fees for hosting and email.
• A monthly plan attached to the discount that made the build cheap.

Ask one question of every quote you receive: "Is this the number on the invoice, or does anything get added?" Ask for the answer in writing. That request alone changes some quotes on the spot.

How to compare quotes properly

Do not compare the headline number. Compare the total for year one — the build, plus twelve months of anything ongoing, plus everything on the list above that turns out to be extra. Then ask who owns it at the end, which is where the real money is: what owning it means.

What we do

Three prices published on the pricing page. The quote you get is the number on the invoice; if we underestimated the job, that is our problem rather than your invoice. Two rounds of changes are in every package, and anything beyond that gets quoted before we touch it.