Contribute Fridays: Do you charge hourly or project rates or both?
Since it’s Friday and Fridays are awesome, let’s make a tradition. Every Friday I’m going to open up the blog post for all of us to answer a set question with your favorite answer. Ready? Let’s go!
Do you charge hourly or project rates or both? Do you require a deposit?
I do both. On smaller projects I tend to charge hourly, because it’s easier (and cheaper for the client). Larger projects, like a full website code, I charge by the project. I require my clients to pay 50% up front to avoid walk-aways and scammers. 
What are yours?
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
I charge by the hour for everything. When it comes to projects I charge “project hours.” Meaning if I feel the project should take 20 hours, I charge for the 20 hours. If it takes less than 20 I make a little extra money per hour, but if it takes more than 20 (without feature bloat or scope creep) I make a little less money per hour.
Also the rate per project hour changes based on the number of people I am bringing into the project and the job types needed to complete it. An example of this would be designing a business card over developing a website. The rate per hour will be different because of the number of people involved in each is different.
The rate is also elevated on the estimated amount of client interaction. Larger projects require me to spend more time talking to the client with emails and meetings and I consider my time to be valuable.
Aside from this, I also have an hourly rate for things that are not really production related. Things like project consultation and web strategy get an hourly rate. These are easier to quote because generally a meeting is for a set number of hours and will generally not exceed the time slot.
Hi Amber,
Your assessment is correct. Hourly and project rates are the way to go depending on the project at hand.
Thanks,
Jesse
My projects are normally a flat rate for work done inside the scope. Anything outside the scope is an hourly rate. There is some give, but I try to not be a push over.
because I continue to attempt to work under a small contract, there are discounts based on the hours needed each month, anything outside of that is defaulted to the base rate.
Oh, I’m not a web developer like Anthony, I’m a Systems Consultant & Administrator. I do both installs and maintenance of server hardware.
I charge per day, as it is rare for a client to need any less, if it is a big job I figure out how many days it would take to complete that project and make sure that for those days my only focus is to that one project.
As regards to deposit my policy is 50% deposit for new clients.
I also wanted to say that you have a beautiful website Amber, keep up the good work !
I’m pretty new to the freelance business so I find it quite interesting to read about how others are charging for their work.
So far I’ve been charging a flat project rate for pretty much all the work I’m doing. I have found though that I have often severely underestimated the total costs but I always stick to my original quote and see it as a learning curve for the next project. I also charge a fee up front before I start any work which is usually 1/4 of the total cost then the rest is due on completion. However, I think I may change this a little to something like a 1/4 of the total cost up front then another1/4 for reaching an agreed milestone then the rest due on completion.
On a similar note, I’d be interested in finding out how people go about scoping out the price for a new project? I often underestimate the time associated with completing certain tasks. Often this is because I know the client sees it as a trivial task so I quote based on that rather than based on the time it really takes. In the early stages of starting my business this is probably OK but I know I really need to get much sharper at quoting costs. I plan to try and consider the “hour approach” when quoting project work, basically meaning that I think about the rough number of hours it will take me for each task (e.g the contact form will take 3 hours) rather than just quoting a price that seems to cover the project as a whole. I know this seems obvious but its actually much harder than it seems. I’m sure other people have got there own methods which I’d love to hear about?
I tend to charge by the project for everything but small, odd jobs. I’ve only gone over my project price once – I’ve found the best way to avoid this is to always track your time and then base your price on that
I do both. For smaller projects (especially for non-profit organizations) I have a fixed project rate. For larger projects I charge per day (8 hours per day). And all clients need to pay 30% up front
All clients also need to pay a yearly price for domain names, hosting & service which differs from the type of website they have (I work with standard sizes to make it easier for them and me as well: XS S M L XL and Flexible) Larger websites need more space and a higher SLA so more costs for them.
So that’s how I roll
Both. All depends on the clients comfort or needs, not necessarily what’s best for me.