An honest comparison of fixed-scope milestones vs hourly time-and-materials contracts. Learn why milestone billing aligns agency incentives with rapid delivery and zero scope creep.
01The Fundamental Conflict of Hourly Billing
Traditional software agencies often bill by the hour. Under this model, an agency makes more revenue when engineers write slower, encounter bugs, or drag out sprint timelines. This misalignment creates tension between founders and contractors.
At PLANEX, we operate on a 100% fixed-price milestone model. If a feature takes extra developer hours to reach perfection, we absorb that cost. Our financial incentive is identical to yours: build high-quality software with maximum velocity.
Architectural Takeaways:
- Zero surprise invoices or runaway hourly timecards.
- Payments tied directly to verified staging deployments.
- Clear contractual scope locked during Phase 01 Discovery.
02The 3-Milestone Approval Gate Structure
We divide projects into three clear milestones: 30% kickoff and architecture spec, 35% working staging demo, and 35% production launch and 100% IP handover. Next-phase billing only occurs when you formally approve the working build.
Architectural Takeaways:
- You test live code on your own devices before releasing funds.
- 24-hour transparent Change Order turnaround for new scope requests.
- Complete source code and repository ownership assigned at handover.
#Agile Strategy#Fixed Price#SaaS MVPs#Milestone Contracts
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