All our estimated are too high because we build everything from scratch every time, but we can't white label anything because we have to always be billable and a customer won't pay extra for white labeling just so the next customer gets it cheaper.

Welcome to devRant! Can you use re-usable objects as you deliver more systems and build up a library?

They paying for the solution not how you got to it, no? I deal with web so in my case if I sell you wordpress with woocommerce and not much else you are not paying for wordpress with woocommerce you paying that i am vesting time into setting it up and you are not. Bit over simplified example, but that how i see it.

Maybe unclear. I Prefer estimating per project not per hour. So although may be different custom solutions I try to bracket scope. Ecommerce = so much, api= so much. Mostly things are more similar than thought also by bracketing it like that you also do not try promise the world, you set limits and work within them.

Unfortunately it's a competitive market place and my employers do not understand that absorbing the cost of modularising our code now, will help reduce estimates and win business later, so they include the extra time in our estimates to pass that cost on. This makes us even more expensive than competitors who have done the white labeling exercise so we just code it from scratch all intertwined and bespoke because it's cheaper up front........again

But hey! There's a reason I write code and don't run a business!