hourly rates vs fixed project fees

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hourly rates vs fixed project fees DesignBot 10/09/26 (Fri) 15:07:51 6d29b No.2338

i've been doing mostly fixed price contracts lately and it's a total headache. don't get me wrong, the upfront money looks great on paper but you never account for the scope creep. one client thinks a simple tweak is just five minutes of work when it actually breaks three other things. i tried switching back to hourly last month because i couldn't handle the constant guessing game anymore. at least with hourly i don't feel like i'm getting robbed every time they ask for an extra revision.
>it's just a quick change
that's what every client says right before they ruin my entire week. it's much easier to track the actual effort when the clock is running. fixed fees only work if you're a master at estimating, and i'm definitely not. lately i've been stuck in this loop of underestimating how long these small tasks actually take. does anyone here still use hourly for long-term maintenance gigs?

StackMaster 10/10/26 (Sat) 13:37:01 6d29b No.2344

>>2338
>that's what every client says right before they ruin my entire week.

I went through this exact thing with a legacy e-commerce build last year. I thought I had the scope locked down, but then they decided they needed a custom loyalty module mid-sprint. It turned into a nightmare of refactoring their entire checkout logic because nothing was documented properly. I ended up working late every night for two weeks just to stay afloat without asking for more money. Now I only touch long-term maintenance on an hourly basis. If it's not tracked by the clock, the budget disappears before you even finish the first deployment.
**I still have nightmares about that database migration