Pricing and Tech Stack Question
Hi guys, as title says, pricing, tech stack question--
UK Campground business client asks for a booking system with invoicing feature (possibly payment as well).
Talking backend, is there an option that will not need building from the ground up , e.g. as sanity is for cms (instead of manually setting up db and api)
If even sanity is possible, how difficult will it be to integrate a payment system for this? And what payment gateway can I use.
Now for the pricing, considering the features, and the actual bookings probably being just an aversge of 5/day, how much do you think I can charge the client, and also the monthly recurring.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
8 Replies
Stripe is almost always the answer to "how to monies online", so start there.
As for the pricing, it depends on what you're doing. If all you're doing is setting up a CMS for them then it won't be as much as if you're making an entire backend for them. How much is your time worth? How many hours do you expect it to take? Find out that number and double it. Or even triple it. Keep in mind that on an average "work day" you're only doing about half of it as billable hours, but you still need to be paid for the non-billable hours you do. Communication with the client, accounting, advertising, etc. It all takes time so you should be paid for your time.
For the monthly cost, how much does it cost for your host? How much is your time worth? How many pre-paid hours are you offering each month? Baseline should be 3x to 4x the monthly hosting cost + about 80% or so of the cost of the pre-paid hours (it's cheaper than normal since it's pre-paid and they won't always use them all).
Be sure to have a contract that specifically outlines what they can expect from you and what you can expect from them. Never hand over a finished product until you're paid in full. And you should have between 25% and 50% down up front—non-refundable.
This was a detailed answer, appreciate it.
But can I even use sanity itself as a "backend solution"? Is it appropriate for these types of projects?
Re:
on an average "work day" you're only doing about half of it as billable hours, but you still need to be paid for the non-billable hours you doIs this a standard? First time I heard of it. Re: monthly prepaid hours. Im actually planning to have only the hosting, sanity(if ever), etc be invluded for recurring. Should they request for more features/changes, only then will they be charged.
I'm not familiar with Sanity so I don't know, you'll have to look at their docs.
As for the billable hours thing, if you're doing freelance work then you're wearing a lot of hats. You're the dev. You're the accountant. You're the secretary. You're the PR department. Etc. You do everything—unless you hire someone to do those other things. Because of that you need to increase what your normal hourly pay is to account for all the time you're not making websites/app/etc but still are working.
This is why a lot of freelancers don't charge per hour but instead charge a flat fee for the entire project. Which is another reason to have a solid contract. If you're charging a fixed amount, you need to be absolutely sure that both you and your client know what the deliverables are and what the timeline is. Otherwise you'll see your US$5k project ballooning to something that you would charge US$15k for as they add more and more scope to the project!
whatever pricing you decide to do, add taxes on top
DO NOT FORGET THE TAXES!!!!
Beck had a great answer, but I just wanted to chime in with trying to price around how much value you bring to the client too. Can you find out how much a booking costs? Times that by 5, and then by 365 for each day of the year. You can explain to your client how much value this website will bring to them which might help you negotiate a higher price
https://www.freshbooks.com/fbstaticprod-uploads/public-website-assets/other/Breaking-the-Time-Barrier.pdf
You can thank Hope of Glory for that lol
I still remember when you linked that to me a few years ago, I feel old 😂
@vince @Hope Of Glory post in #resources when‽
Hey everyone! Sorry for the late response.
Thank you all so much for each of your inputs, I learnt alot from them. Glad I asked as I wouldnt have known, at least easily, those things. I'll make sure to consider them.
Also, Ill definitely read that book @vince
oops i gotta do this eventually lol it was in resources way back when i think lol