Hourly billing rewards slow work and punishes experience. Here is the model we use instead, and what it costs us when we get an estimate wrong.
Every agency has the same conversation at the start of a project: how much, and how long.
The honest answer is that nobody knows on day one. The dishonest answer is an hourly rate, which quietly moves all of that risk onto the client and rewards whoever works slowest.
We scope in weeks. A week is a unit a client can picture, and it forces us to be specific about what lands inside it.
When we get it wrong — and we do, maybe one project in six — we eat the difference. That is the deal. It is also the strongest possible incentive for us to run a real discovery phase instead of guessing.