''' For clients, digital agency pricing can be a black box. You need a new website, a branding refresh, or an SEO strategy, but understanding the cost feels like a negotiation shrouded in mystery. It doesn’t have to be.
Our pricing philosophy is simple: clarity and fairness. We do not have a secret rate card we consult. We build a price based on the specific value we will create for your business. Let’s pull back the curtain on how professional agencies develop a project price.
What Are the Common Pricing Models?
Most agency pricing falls into a few categories. You will encounter fixed-fee, time and materials, and retainers. Each has a place, but one is superior for delivering a high-quality product without surprise invoices.
Time and Materials: This is a simple hourly rate. You pay for the time spent on your project. It offers flexibility, which can be useful for small, undefined tasks. However, it puts all the risk on you, the client. If the project scope expands or inefficiencies arise, your costs balloon. It creates an incentive for the agency to work more hours, not necessarily better hours. We rarely use it.
Fixed-Fee: This is our preferred model for most projects. After a thorough discovery phase, we provide a single, fixed price for the entire project scope. A new eCommerce site for your Tacoma brewery or a branding project for your Bellevue law firm costs exactly what we agreed it would. This model puts the risk on us to be efficient and accurate. It forces us to be excellent project managers, which is exactly what you should expect from a senior-level team.
Retainer: A retainer is a fixed monthly fee for a recurring block of work. It’s ideal for ongoing services like SEO, content marketing, or website maintenance. A retainer turns an agency from a simple vendor into a strategic partner. We can plan work for your Puget Sound business months in advance, align with your goals, and dedicate resources to your success. It’s a commitment from both sides.
Why Not Post a Price List?
A price list is for commodities. Custom web design is a service. A simple brochure website for a new Ballard coffee shop is a very different project from a complex web application for a financial services firm in downtown Seattle. The latter requires far more strategy, security, and integration work.
Our process begins with discovery. We learn your business, your customers, and your goals. We audit your competitors. We analyze the market. Only then can we define a project scope that will actually solve your problems. That detailed scope is what allows us to set a firm, fair price.
We believe good strategy is the foundation of good pricing. We spend the time to understand your unique business before we write a single line of code or design a single pixel.
How DoodleWeb Prices Projects
We build custom proposals for every client. For new website or branding projects, this almost always follows a Fixed-Fee model.
- Paid Discovery: We start with a small, paid discovery project. This produces a detailed strategy, project roadmap, and technical requirements. It is a valuable asset in itself. At the end of discovery, you have a concrete plan you can use to get bids from any agency, though we hope you will continue with us.
- Fixed-Fee Proposal: Using the discovery document, we provide a fixed-fee proposal for the entire design and development project. You know the full cost before we begin.
- Optional Retainer: For clients who need ongoing support, SEO, or content marketing, we propose a monthly retainer for post-launch services.
This approach removes financial uncertainty for you and allows our team to focus on what they do best: creating high-performing websites and digital experiences.
If you want to see what this process looks like for your business, the first step is a conversation. We can help you clarify your goals and determine the right path forward.
Find out how we can help. Request a free website audit report. '''
Seattle, WA
A full-service digital agency working in WordPress, Drupal, Shopify, Webflow, React, and React Native. We partner with universities, governments, and growing brands to ship sites and products that hold up after launch.
