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Re:Why I bill hourly by tptacek on Monday November 08, 2010 @12:01PM (#1883067)
Stop! There is no reason why you have to assume the project risk just because you chose a more sensible metric to quote the price with.

Provide a top-line project cost number as an estimate, and then add an "additional time can be added to this project as needed at a rate of $XXX per day" clause.

The question of who assumes project risk is orthogonal to the question of how you choose to break out project cost.

Re:Why I bill hourly by hasenj on Monday November 08, 2010 @12:52PM (#1883247)
I'd rather that part of my service is to give my client a sort of guarantee on the cost, given the requirements[1]. How many hours I work? What technologies I use? What OS do I work on? What's my text editor? What version control system do I use? These are things they shouldn't have to concern themselves with -- I'm a black box.

Do you ask Apple how much it cost them to make that iPhone? No!

[1] If the requirements change, then of course, my price will change (most likely increase).