Hourly billing quietly rewards the wrong things. The slower we work, the more we make. The more problems we hit, the bigger your bill. That's a strange way to align a builder with the person paying them — so we don't do it.
Hourly punishes speed and honesty
Under an hourly meter, efficiency costs the agency money and mistakes get billed to you. You also can't budget: the number is whatever the timesheet says at the end. Nobody actually likes this — it's just the default.
What we do instead: fixed scope, fixed price
We agree exactly what we're building, exactly what it costs, and exactly when it's done — in writing, before any money changes hands. If it takes us longer than we thought, that's our problem, not your invoice. You know the number on day one.
Miss the date and we eat the overrun. That one line changes how carefully we scope.
The quirk that makes it work
Because we own the overrun, we scope carefully and honestly up front — no vague "we'll figure it out." And because the price is fixed, we're motivated to work fast and well, not to pad hours. Our incentive and yours finally point the same direction: deliver something great, on time.
And then you own it
When it's done, you own everything — the domain, the hosting, the code, the content. No lock-in, no renting your own website back from us every month. Ongoing help is a separate, cancel-anytime plan, never a leash.
"What if I want changes halfway through?"
The fair objection to fixed price is that projects drift. You see the homepage and realize you want a gallery. Your business partner wants a different tagline. Real projects breathe, and a pricing model that can't breathe with them is just a different kind of trap.
Here's how it works in practice. Small course corrections are part of the job — swapping photos, rewording a section, moving things around. That's not a change order; that's building a website. A genuinely new piece of scope — "actually, we also want online ordering" — gets its own small fixed quote before we build it, and you say yes or no with the number in hand. Nothing lands on an invoice you didn't approve first. The line between the two is written into the scope, so nobody has to argue about it later.
What a fixed price does to the first conversation
Hourly lets everyone start vague, because vagueness bills just fine. Fixed price can't afford vague, so the first conversation gets specific fast: which pages, who writes the words, where the photos come from, what "done" looks like on launch day. That written scope becomes the shared checklist both sides can point at.
Most project horror stories you hear from business owners on the Grand Strand aren't really about bad work — they're about two people who never agreed on what the work was. The pricing model forces the agreement before the money moves. That alone is worth more than the price certainty.
Why the meter survives anyway
If hourly is worse for clients, why is it still the default? Because it's safer for the agency. Every unknown, every revision, every misunderstanding is billable, so there's no pressure to scope carefully and no penalty for guessing wrong. Fixed price moves that risk onto us — which is exactly why you should prefer it. The person carrying the risk is the person motivated to manage it. Under hourly, that's you. Under fixed price, it's the builder.
What happens after launch
Every build comes with 30 days of free fixes — if something's off, we make it right, no meter running. After that, ongoing help is a monthly plan you can actually leave: Reef Shark at $1,000/mo, Mako at $2,500/mo, Great White at $5,000/mo, cancel any month. The full breakdown is on our pricing page, and the day-to-day upkeep side lives under care plans. The point isn't the specific numbers — it's that they're published. You can budget before you ever talk to us.
Questions to ask anyone quoting you
Whoever you hire — us or someone else — these five questions expose a billing model in about two minutes:
- Is the price fixed, and is the scope in writing?
- If it takes longer than expected, who pays for the overrun?
- Do I own the domain, hosting, and content when it's done?
- What does a small edit cost six months from now?
- If I leave, what do I walk away with?
Hesitation on any of these is your answer.
Where hourly honestly makes sense
To be fair to the meter: hourly is reasonable for genuinely open-ended work — research nobody can scope yet, or a rescue job on a broken site where nobody knows what they'll find until they're inside it. But a website for a diner in Surfside Beach or a remodeler in Conway is not unknowable work. It can be scoped, and work that can be scoped can be priced. Our web design engagements are exactly that — which is the whole point.
Fixed scope, fixed price, you own the result. It's a better deal for you and a cleaner way for us to work.