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For me, estimations shouldn't be a cost.
When you ask for an estimation of different painters to paint your living room, they also don't charge you anything.
Sure you spend time, but that is time you need to actually convince the client to work with you.
still 10+ hours to estimate something where you already have all the requirements, the sketches and everything. -
@AnxiousADHDGuy Sure, but they still have to spend time for it. Many professions need to spend time without knowing if they will get the project or not.
Example, we were looking for a new voip infrastructure. Got invited by a few companies. They spend like half a day to present their product, give us a drink and all that. And in the end, we didn't picked them.
So is it waste of time ? Not really, they missed an opportunity to get a new client.
Same goes for you. You have to argument about why you think it will take 400 hours. Explain that maybe those who offer 200h also have 10 devs working on it. More expensive.
You could also make a quote stating all the requirements they provide, but any additional ones are billed as extra.
And over time, you will get better at estimating projects too. Nobody knows (no matter how big or small) how much time you need for making something new. -
It's a bit of a rough area.
I'm a freelancer too, and I only provide one estimation for free.
If requirements are not clear out thorough enough, I'll reply with the missing info they need to provide, and charge any subsequent time spent.
Consultations are *always* billed.
A requirement analysis and a consultation are both, IMHO, knowledge transfers, and I don't want potential clients getting know how from me for free to then go with another option. -
@CoreFusionX True, but at that point, you are billing the consultation. Like going to a accountant for advice or something.
But the estimation should be free.
Or be clear that the first one is a rough estimate and if he wants a more in depth one, it will cost a small fee. But at that point, chances are higher that the client will stay to finish the job. -
i handle it depending on the customer.
I have customers that really understand software development and we make a seperate order requirements engeneering, ehich covers everything.
other customers only look at price. we agreed that I put one day of "buffer" on each order to compensate for clarifications and such.
the larger the project, the larger the buffer. also I only sell hour-based estimates to very small customers (<5k/year). rest is getting estimates in days.
estimation is never for free.
if you cannot get your customer to pay for that, adjust your rate accordingly so that it contains a percentage for estimation and such. thats another way to compensate the effort. -
I do estimations in two steps.
First estimation: hey company/client. On initial discovery, I estimate that the LoE (level of effort in man hours) will be in the range of 200-500 hours.
I can provide a granular estimate but that will take
-knowledge transfer between us
-clarifications of questions regarding requirements
- some other things that are already mentioned in proposal document.
For this, we both will have to invest time and effort.
( then I outline my investment in hours and their investment in hours and dollars because they will have to spend a few hours in meetings and pay to get a better estimate ).
As part of better estimates I break down things feature by feature in a table with each row having the feature name, min hours, max hours, isOptional and one column for comments to go back and forth and discuss.
I charge for the real estimation upfront as opposed to charging for the work after delivery (or regular intervals and partial deliver for longer things).
when your code is a mess but everything work out in the end
When you keep getting +1s on a rant you posted a month ago.
Go big or go home.
When freelancing, do you charge for estimations?
Situation is that I'm a sole android developer (4 years experience) and each time I encounter some agency or a client I feel like I'm between a rock and hard place.
Some of the clients come with ready with list of requirements and ready backend/design sketch and they want me to give them a rough estimate.
It's as if they expect me to take only 2-3 hours for estimation and that's it. But actually this was the second time where I had to spend around 10 hours investigating everything so I would be able to give a half decent estimation at least.
This particular client's project turned out to be a mess and I had to spend 10+ hours to estimate only 70% of his project. I asked him if he would be able to pay under a reduced tarrif and the client was shocked, started doubting my competence level and so on.
In the end I gave him a rough 400 hours estimate and he started complaining that others estimated only 200 hours for his project. So in the end I just wasted my time.
Now it's my bad that I voluntarely invested too much time in this estimate without notifying client prior that I might ask to pay for estimation, next time I will try to do this ahead of time.
It feels like only big agencies who have free resources have a competetive edge against sole freelancers, it really sucks wasting so much time to estimate half baked requirements and assets. Also most of these clients and agencies are purely lazy and most of the time they don't even plan signing, all they need is someone to estimate their work for them.
I'm thinking of starting to charge for estimations and communications in a form of consultations. Is that a good idea?
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