How I work
How I work.
£150 per hour plus VAT where applicable. Two hours minimum for new clients. Billed monthly in arrears. No retainer, no minimum term, no lock-in. Here is the rest of it.
You own everything I build.
You own everything I build. The code, the accounts, the credentials, the vendor relationships. From day one, not at the end. I get access. I do not hold the keys.
If I set up a server, the account is in your name and your contract is with your host. When the work is done you get a handover pack: setup documentation, dependencies, environment, rollback instructions, tested backups, and a runbook a competent stranger could follow.
The test I apply to everything I build is this. If I were unreachable for a fortnight, could somebody else keep it running, or move it? If the answer is no, I have built the wrong thing.
Lock-in is every agency's business model. Being easy to leave is mine.
No more than 2 active client projects at once.
£150 an hour, and nothing else to work out.
It is published so you never have to ask, and it is the same number whether you rang me this morning or ten years ago. No retainer, no minimum term, no lock-in, no packages, no fixed prices, no prepaid blocks, no discounts, and nothing extra for urgent or out of hours.
Two hours minimum for new clients. Thirty-minute increments once we have worked together. Billed monthly in arrears, fourteen days.
The estimate is the cap, and it binds me, not you.
I'll tell you roughly what a job looks like and roughly what it will cost, on the call, before you have spent anything. Then if I say eight hours, I stop at eight and ask before hour nine. You never get an invoice you have not already seen coming, and unused hours are never charged.
Anything big gets authorised a stage at a time. A stage ends where the next real decision begins: here is what the stage costs, here is what you will have at the end of it, here is the decision you will be making when we get there. Then we do it again. You are never more than one stage into something you have stopped believing in.
I don't bill you for the hours the machine works overnight.
If a build runs for fourteen hours while I am asleep, that is fourteen hours you do not pay for. You pay for the hour that set it up and the hour that checked it. I also do not bill for the first call, my own learning, my own admin, or rework of something I got wrong.
What the first two hours produce.
A written note. What I found. What is still unknown, and what it would take to know it. What I would do next, and roughly how many hours. What I would not do, and why.
It is not a package. There is no price on it, no name for it and nothing to buy. It is what two billed hours produce. You can take it and hire anyone you like with it.
The warranty, and its edges.
If I have told you something works, and that exact thing does not work, I'll fix it free for thirty days after handover. That covers the behaviour we agreed, written down at the start in your language. It does not cover new requirements, changes of mind, things nobody specified, or anything caused by a change somebody else made.
What I don't do.
- Brochure websites. There are faster and cheaper people who will do a better job at that price, and I'll point you at one.
- IT support, helpdesk, devices, office IT, phones.
- A pair of hands. Working through a backlog somebody else has already specified.
- A fixed price for something nobody has investigated yet.
- WooCommerce conversion work and ecommerce experimentation. That is my other business, StrategyFive, and I'll send you there.
- Anything that needs a contractual SLA from me, or me being awake at 2am.
That last one gets misread, so, plainly: revenue-critical work is fine, and often it is the best work. What I can't sell you is my availability at 2am. What you need is cover at 2am, and that is buyable from people whose entire business is being awake. I'll help you set it up. It just is not mine to sell.
Since you're going to ask.
Of course I use it. Anyone who tells you they do not is lying or slow. The architecture is mine, the decisions are mine, the testing is mine, and if it breaks, that is mine too. There is a clause in the engagement agreement covering it: which tools, what data goes near them, what never does, and how long it is kept. Your confidential and personal data never goes into a consumer account or an unapproved tool. If your company has a policy on this, I would rather find out at that stage than mid-build.
Tell me what doesn't fit.
Thirty minutes, free. I'll ask what it is costing you now, what your alternatives are, and what has to be true at the end for this to have been worth doing. Then I'll tell you whether it is the kind of problem I take, and roughly how many hours I would need before I could tell you anything useful. If it is not for me, I'll tell you who to ring instead.
Or email me: hello@eliotwebb.co.uk