Why We Killed Hourly Billing (And Our Clients Love It)
Hourly billing punishes efficiency and hides risk. Here's how fixed-price scoping with weekly shipped increments actually works in practice.
Hourly billing creates a perverse incentive: the slower an agency works, the more it earns. Devio Agency works exclusively on fixed-price scopes because aligned incentives produce better products — and calmer clients.
The mechanics: after a free consultation we run a short discovery sprint, then deliver a scope document with a fixed price and timeline. Change requests are priced explicitly as additions, never absorbed as silent scope creep that degrades quality.
The trust mechanism is weekly shipped increments. Every Friday, clients see new working software on a live preview URL. There's no 'trust us, it's 80% done' — progress is observable, and problems surface in week two instead of week ten.
Two years in: project margins are healthier, disputes are near zero, and 70% of revenue is repeat clients or referrals. Fixed pricing isn't a constraint — it's the product.