Design, build, handover

A website usually passes through more than one company. One draws it, another builds it, and a third keeps it running. Each handover is a translation, and something is lost in every one.

What the seam actually costs

The design arrives as a file, and the people building it were not in the room when it was decided. So they read intent out of pixels. What happens to a card when the text is twice as long. What the spacing does at 900 pixels wide. Whether that shadow was a decision or a default.

Some of it gets asked. Most of it gets guessed, and the guesses ship.

An estimate that survives contact with the code

The second cost is the number. A design priced by people who will not build it is a guess about somebody else's work, and it moves the moment the build starts.

When the same people draw it and build it, the estimate is made by the person who will have to live with it. That is the only reason we can fix a price on an agreed scope and keep it, and absorb the hours ourselves when we misjudge.

The part that is missing from most pitches

At the end you get the repository, the design files, the domain and every account, transferred on final payment. No licence back to us, and nothing held to keep you dependent on us to run what you paid for.

This is rarely offered because dependency is a business model. A site you cannot move is cheaper on the invoice and more expensive for the rest of its life.

One number, one date

Three steps, one supplier, and one figure with a delivery date written beside it before anything starts.

The full list is on our pricing page.