I’m a tailored WordPress developer with 13+ years of experience. Offering bespoke design + custom WordPress development solutions from scratch.
I’ve finally started my own agency and I’m trying to think what’s the best way to price my projects and whether it’s common to ask for an upfront for X amount of hours.
I currently offer hourly based pricing where I analyze a project depending on how much work it’s going to be. I then propose an X amount of hours.
What I am really hoping to know is whether it’s common practice especially for agency owners to ask for the upfront for the entire amount of hours that you’ve proposed. Then once you’re close to hitting the limit, you ask for more.
Or whether you should ask only for a portion of upfront, or simply bill most of your clients weekly for the hours spent (how I work at the moment)
Any help would be appreciated
Yes to a kick-off payment. I normally use 25%. And then you should aim for an invoice part way through and then a final payment on completion. Cash flow has potential to be a problem so multiple payments safeguards against that.
Edit: the kick-off is 25% of the core build. If there are options to be explored or add-ons then it doesn’t include those.
Edit 2: I’m in the UK. And if I also do full design prototype I class that as a separate project.
50% up front
50% when site is complete but before it goes live
I do 50% / 50%
Give a project rate based on the total number of anticipated hours, including admin work and anticipated number of meetings (some clients can be more challenging to work with).
Then require 50% upfront before any work begins, and 50% upon completion. Client does not get login access to any work (website, hosting, GA4, anything that was part of the scope.) until the final payment is received. You never want to put yourself in a position where you are chasing payments. If a client doesn’t agree to these terms, don’t waste your time, you will eventually get burned.
Get approval, in writing not verbal, that the project is ‘complete’ when they send the final payment, and only then give access. Make sure it’s clear to them that any and all testing needs to be done and feedback given before this point. Also make it clear that the moment they are given access to any related accounts, you are no longer liable for the website because you can’t control what they do (unless you sell a maintenance package, in which case putting out any fires they create can draw from that).
Often the final stage will require a migration from staging domain, or updating DNS records, so you can give 48hrs for any technical issues to be identified that may result from this process. But this 48hrs is only for technical issues that arise at that time, not “oh can we actually change this image and make this blue a bit darker?”
Up front is a must, I would say. It keep both party engage in the project.
I normally do 30% then 70%.
I have been providing services on WordPress in Turkey for about ten years.
I make 2 tier pricing.
1. Company sites (non-woocommerce)
2. E-commerce sites (woocommerce)
I provide optimization, 1-year hosting and backup service for free in all works.
While delivering the project, I also make Google Analytics and Search Console records and deliver it ready.
50% advance payment
Rest of payment before I publish the site.
I never start jobs that do not pay in advance. Never publish the sites that do not pay rest of the payment.
In tier 1 jobs, that is, I make X pricing on corporate web sites.
I make 2X pricing in Woocommerce jobs (Product upload is not included)
If a foreign language is required, X/2 additional price is added for each foreign language (Pro add-on fee and translation are belongs to customer)
Pricing is hard. After a lot of resistance I finally wrote this out so potential clients of ours would understand it a little more.
https://www.covertnine.com/pricing-web-design-services/
I would try to structure your pricing as flatfee plus a service contract afterwards. Obviously base your fees on the effort it will take, but you should be able to put projects into price buckers, especially with 13 years under your belt.
Am operations manager, not owner, US-based doing work mostly for SMBs. We do 100% for smaller sites, ‘brochure’ work and such, that have relatively quick turnarounds. Larger projects can be broken up into defined milestones and are usually 50/50 or 40/40/20. As another commenter noted, assets and passwords don’t get turned over until final payment (unless specifically discussed, sometimes logos, for example).
We also don’t necessarily define ‘hours’ in a project scope, we define deliverables and timelines. The only time we really talk about hours is in the ongoing maintenance/change packages where we sell, say, and hour or two per month of miscellaneous site work and clock tasks against that.
Everything we do is project pricing. I see how many hours it’ll take, throw a buffer and create a project price.
Docusign contract and 50% of total cost to get started. If a project is over $10k, we don’t mind a three payment option if it’s easier on the client. Then when the site is launched and live, we collect the 50% balance.
We also offer hosting and 99% of our web dev clients host with us. It’s why I’m not worried about collecting payment after launch — it’s our servers.