Flat-rate web design means one agreed number for an agreed scope, fixed in writing before any work starts — no hourly meter, no monthly queue. With us that is $1,900 for a landing page, $2,900 for a multi-page business site, $5,000 for a custom build, decided after a 5-minute brief. The model's whole value is that the estimation risk moves from you to the studio; its whole requirement is that the scope is written down honestly.
Three ways to buy design work, and each is right for a different shape of project. Here is what each one actually charges for, and where each one fails.
The three models
| Model | What you pay for | Where it fails | Right when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Time spent, billed as it happens | The final number is unknown until the work ends, and every question costs | Open-ended work where nobody can define "done" up front |
| Flat rate (fixed quote) | One agreed number for an agreed scope, before work starts | Scope has to be defined honestly — vague scope means an unusable quote | A defined project: a site, a rebuild, a landing page |
| Monthly subscription | A recurring fee for a queue of design work | You stop paying, the queue stops; nothing is finished on a schedule you control | A constant stream of small design tasks with no end date |
What a fixed quote really buys
Not a discount — certainty, and a shift in who carries the risk. On hourly, an unexpectedly hard week is your invoice; on a flat rate it is our margin. That single difference changes the incentives on both sides: we have every reason to work efficiently, and you can approve a number against a budget instead of a range against hope.
It also forces a useful conversation early. A fixed price cannot be quoted against "a website" — it needs a page list, a feature list and a decision about who writes the content. Projects that drift usually drifted at that moment, months before anyone noticed.
The honest limits
- It needs a defined finish. Open-ended work — a design partner on call, an evolving product with no scope — is a poor fit, and hourly or a retainer is the more honest arrangement.
- Changes are re-quoted, not absorbed. New pages or features get their own small written quote before they are built. Anything else would mean either surprise invoices for you or a second project absorbed silently by us.
- A vague brief produces a padded number. Quoted blind, any studio prices the uncertainty in. Ten minutes of specifics usually costs less than the padding it removes.
- There is a ceiling. We do not take projects above $12,000 — beyond that a project needs a team and a different structure, and pretending otherwise would be selling.
What our flat rate includes
Published rather than described, because "included" is where fixed quotes are usually quietly hollowed out. Every project covers: design made for your business rather than a template, hand-coded pages, mobile layouts, a working contact form, basic on-page SEO, launch on your domain, 30 days of post-launch fixes, and the project code and design files — yours on final payment. Not included: the writing and photography, which you supply or we price separately before starting; and services kept in your own name, such as the domain.
Billing runs by milestones — typically 50% to begin and 50% at launch, 40/30/30 on larger projects — against the written quote, never against hours. After launch the only optional cost is a care plan from $95/month, with no minimum term; the arithmetic of that is in how much website maintenance costs.
Flat rate versus "unlimited design" subscriptions
A monthly subscription for a queue of design tasks is a genuinely different product, and it suits businesses with a constant stream of small work and no fixed end date. What it does not do is finish a website on a date you control: the queue moves at the queue's pace, and it stops when the payments do. A site is a project with an end, which is why we price it as one. The same distinction, applied to platforms rather than studios, is in one-time pricing for a business website.
How to compare two flat quotes
Two fixed numbers are only comparable when the scopes are. Line them up on: how many pages, who writes the copy, who owns the code at the end, what happens to changes mid-project, and what the first year costs after launch. A cheaper quote that leaves out the content, or keeps the code, is not cheaper — it is a different purchase. The full checklist for judging any quote is in how to choose a web designer, and the market ranges to sanity-check the number against are in how much a small business website costs.
Want your own number? The 5-minute brief comes back the same business day with a fixed price, a scope and a date — or with an honest "this should be hourly", if that is what the project is.