Pricing Structure - What Does Anyone Think?

T

Tony Hardy

Guest
Hi,

Sean came across this and alerted me to it. What does anyone think of the Pragmatic Mates pricing structure? Let's just call the Euro a flat Pound to save confusion.
Is this value for money? If we all priced like this, would it make the industry richer?
http://www.pragmaticmates.com/pricing/

Let me know your thoughts :)

Tony
 
I think it's really important to have a pricing page. People don't want to have to email and wait for a response before they know if their budget is even within your quote range, it's not difficult to give some basic pricing information, even if it's just the basic starting price.
 
I'm not overly keen on pricing pages.
I like people to get in touch, and plus, I don't have a fixed price for anything. I always work to the budget the client has. So putting a pricing page up would alienate people from me.
Yes in an ideal world I would like to put my ideal prices, but at the moment I would lose money.
Also, I bet their pricing page is a load of shite, any time someone puts prices FROM, you know it's always just going to be a load higher anyway.
 
Yeah, you can't put a default price on every project, but you can quite easily give people an indication of your price ranges, even if you use it just to advertise the minimum amount that you're going to work for.
I'm more sceptical of the companies and websites that say "contact us for a quote" than those that openly tell you some ball park figures.
 
Yeah I totally understand that. But I can't really do that either, I always advise people to have a certain minimum budget for a project, but i'll happily do work for less, but they will just get what they're given and that's that.
I think any kind of pricing will put some people off...there'll never be a perfect solution to this.
 
I wouldn't be able to do that with my work as no project is the same.... even if they're say both 'model and render' the amount of work modelling and rendering a house compared with say a machine used in an industrial plant is completely different. If I was to charge rate x (somewhere in the middle of both) for both of them I'd be undercharging on one and over charging on the other which could mean I'd lose out on the cheaper job because it costs more than it should and I'd lose money on the bigger job which is not good for a business lol
 
With bespoke services then as mentioned all jobs are different so I recon it could do more harm than good adding prices. I'd even say it might give people the feeling that they are getting more of an off the shelf product rather than an original price of work made just for them. I think it somehow cheapens the service by having prices visible. If you are going through a quiet period you might prefer to do a cheap and cheerful job for someone that might have been put off by your higher 'prices start from' message.
I will quite happily continue without prices on my website and give each enquiry I get my individual attention so I can decide on a solution and cost based around that.
Its quite a subjective thing so might work for some people more than others and theres probably a lot of people out there who would like to see prices up front. Whatever works for you really...
 
richimgd said:
I will quite happily continue without prices on my website and give each enquiry I get my individual attention so I can decide on a solution and cost based around that.
individual pricing etc also gives you an opportunity to 'price yourself out of the job' if you're not really keen on it.
Not saying we'd do it but I've seen it done in other fields and even my own field of work where another person literally prices the job too high because they don't want to do the job for some reason. Some see it as being better than saying no directly to the client but I suppose thats individual opinions.
 
I think what I mean is by getting an enquiry you are opening up a dialog with a potentiol client. You can then hopefully work something out. There has been plenty of time I have priced myself out of a job, but I have also negotiated a better price for the client on some occasions.
I think having some kind of rough menu pricing is a good thing so you can know off the top of your head some numbers if someone enquires and wants some ball park costs - its just a case of if it would be a good thing making this into a 'pricing page' on your website. I certainly dont ever see 'big' design companies doing it, so at what point does it become 'acceptable' for smaller companies or individual companies to do it? Its ticky but I'd be interested in hearing from people who have added these types of pages and seeing if it improved the amount or quality of the enquiries and general flow of work.
I don't run my freelance work as a full time business so I'm probably not the best person to give advice about how to be successful in this area..!
 
When I get enquiries through asking for prices I simply say I cannot give them without a more detailed brief of the job in hand.
After that I will advise a budget for the project, if they cannot afford it I will say I can work to the budget, but there will be limitations on what will be achieved.
 
I'm not a big fan on pricing pages either, I work by the hour as I find it very hard to set a fixed price for a site that depends on one or more criteria. A lot of firms set by page number or size, and then have add on's such as e-commerce but if you have a very involved design a small site can take longer than a simple plain e-commerce site.
 
I wasn't getting at the actual idea of a pricing page, I was getting at their actual prices ;) What does anyone think of them?
 
I think the point has been somewhat missed regarding pricing. No one is suggesting that people advertise a set price for the services they provide. The point I was trying to make (albeit different to Tony's point, sorry for the hijack!!) was about transparency and ease of access to basic information. For example, one look at the afore mentioned website will tell you, the client, whether or not your wasting your time by contacting them.
As for the prices, obviously it would increase the overall value of the industry, but realistically that's not going to happen. If anything, the design industry will become less valuable over time as software such as Photoshop becomes more and more advanced and the amount of free resources continues to increase.
 
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