do you charge for the initial call?
no. scoping conversations and the written plan that follows are free. we only invoice once you've agreed a scope and a number in writing.
the first conversation is how we find out whether we can help and what it would take. charging for it would mean charging you to be sold to. so the call, the two or three questions by email that usually come before it, and the written plan that follows are all free, and none of them commit you to anything.
what "free" covers
- reading your first message and replying, within one business day, monday to friday
- the follow-up questions, by email so you can answer when it suits
- a call, if a call is faster than email
- the written plan: scope, approach, timeline, and one fixed number
the plan is yours to keep either way. if you take it to another team, or use it to do the work in-house, that's fine, and it happens.
when the meter starts
we invoice only after you've agreed a scope and a number in writing, and that number is the whole price for that scope. we don't bill by the hour, so there's no clock running during scoping and no "discovery phase" line at the top of the quote. if the scope changes later, you hear the new number before we touch anything. more on how fixed the price is.
the one exception
sometimes the advice is the deliverable: you don't want us to build anything, you want a senior engineer's opinion and a written recommendation you can act on. that is a paid session, and a cheap one. here's how that works. scoping work we might do is free. advice you'll use without us costs a little.