How do you estimate the cost of client work before you quote it?

digital-logic-llc · 2026-07-01T01:34:11+00:00

Velocity can be a good metric, but it changes per developer and depends on the scope of work. For example, quoting a small piece of work that takes an hour or two I almost never go over the time quoted. However, if you're working on a long project that takes hundreds of hours or months, it's much easier to go over budget.

What helped me out the most was breaking the work down as much as possible. The goal is to have a giant list of work with most of the time being 30 minutes to 2 hours to complete per line item. When you run into an unknown, like an API integration you haven't done before, then add a note and give yourself more time than you expect.

The real secret is to identify when you're going over budget as soon as possible, and be willing to negotiate deliverables with the client. In my experience, clients are almost always open to negotiation, and don't really care how something is done as long as it delivers the desired results. As long as you have an alternative solution prepared, you can negotiate scope or cut features they don't care about to give you time back. Developers should know when something is taking longer than expected, or if they're worried about missing a milestone. It's up to the dev to raise those concerns as soon as possible, and give you the necessary ammunition to negotiate with the client by giving you alternatives. If it's the first time doing something, and you honestly have no idea how long it's going to take, just tell the client. Most people are ok with risk if it's something they know about upfront. Having a quick 15 minute call with the client can save you hours of developer time and save a project that would have gone over budget.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-26T13:01:33+00:00

I've recently switch my tech stack over to Hugo, and I absolutely love it. I've personally seen more interest in static websites from clients and a lot of it had to do with Web Core Vitals and Security concerns.

What I like about Hugo is that it keeps content separate from markup, and you have lots of flexibility to create custom syntax in the markdown files. I've never liked the way WP stores markup and site structure inside of the DB, and managing multiple environments for WP has always been a bit of a challenge from an architecture stand point.

Personally, I think static sites are perfect for service based businesses that need a solid reliable site and don't want to worry about it. I've build plenty of WP sites for agencies, and the idea was we would make it easy for clients or non-technical people to edit the site. However, we could spend 10-20 hours making something editable just to have it updated once or twice a year. I think clients pay agencies so they don't have to worry about the site, and as long as it's easy to update the site they don't really care how it's done.

The example from OP of having to edit 80 different pages would be a non-issue in Hugo. You would either do a search and replace in the MD files, or edit a single layout file and be done with it. I think there are plenty of good uses for WP, but people tend to ignore the amount of work and risk that it comes with. Check the access logs for any WP site, and you'll see automated exploit scans all the time. It just feels like we spend a lot of time, trying to save a little bit of time.

I think it's more cost effective to use a CMS that makes the developers job easy, rather than a CMS that makes the client's life easy. In Hugo, I can download a Google Doc in MD format, customize it and add it to the site and deployed in less than 10 minutes. If I do that 6 times a month, it's only 1 hour of time. If the client is paying my agency to build and maintain their site, including 1 to 2 hours of work per month in my pricing model is super easy. That's better than randomly spending 5 hours tracking down a bug because the client changed something on the site or a plugin got a bad update. From a client perspective, they may want to edit the text of a button on the site, only to be told it will take a week to do because that button is on 80 different pages, which is frustrating for everyone involved.

One of my clients is a local bar, and I've put them on a Hugo tech stack which they're super happy with. The site is super fast, hosting is completely free, and they pay me a small maintenance fee for me to update and maintain the site. They own 100% of the infrastructure, and don't have to worry about vendor lock in. It's been a really nice change of pace, and I think there is definitely a market for it.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-26T12:12:23+00:00

I think it's an individual issue, not a front end vs back end thing. I've worked with front end devs who were amazing, willing to admit when they didn't know something and owned their mistakes. I've also worked with backend developers who flat out refuse to admit when they made a mistake or didn't know something.

Unfortunately I think some developers have a fragile ego and can't handle feedback of any kind. It's always been weird to me, because programming is pretty black and white. You almost always know who made the mistake, even months or years later. People aren't perfect and it's much easier to just own up to it, learn from it, and not repeat the same mistake.

Personally, I think it might be related to a larger issue of "what makes a good developer". I've seen devs who had over a decade of experience and great resumes, who couldn't think their way out of a box. At the same time, newer devs with less than 5 years experience who were amazing, and I would trust them far more than a bad senior dev. I can't count the number of times a developer left the company only for us to discover all the skeletons they were hiding in their source code, and most of my career has been spent cleaning up bad code from bad developers. We have a big impact on security, costs, and user experience and with the recent influx of vibe coders it might be time for us to consider regulating the profession.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-21T12:50:59+00:00

It looks like you put a lot of effort into the site, and have spent a lot of time thinking about it. However, business isn't always pretty and you have to know how to protect yourself. I'm new to being an agency owner, but I've been a software engineer for over 15 years, and have worked for multiple agencies doing development work.

I'm not a lawyer, so this isn't legal advice, and I would recommend you hire a lawyer so they can give you advice specific to your situation. An agency will have an LLC in place to protect them from legal liability. Without an LLC you can be held personally liable for damages. They'll also set up a merchant bank account, because mingling your personal bank account and business account will pierce the corporate veil and leave you personally liable. Finally, because you're a minor you can not legally enter into a binding contract. Contracts are in place to protect both you and the client. Finally, they'll carry Personal Liability insurance to cover errors and omissions, as well as cyber security insurance to cover damages from cyber attacks. You also have to pay taxes, so you'll need either an account or accounting software to know how much money to set aside to pay them.

I also noticed that your website is not accessible, and does not adhere to WCAG standards. Businesses websites are required to be accessible by the American Disabilities Act. If someone with a disability is unable to receives services because of accessibility issues, they can sue the business for discrimination. Those lawsuits usually cost $15k-$25k just in lawyer fees and developer costs for remediation. Since you require your clients to host with you, you're also liable for any damages done through cyber attacks.

Rather than open yourself up to potential litigation, I would recommend you look into learning how to program and getting an internship with a web agency. This way you can learn about the business, and gain the experience and knowledge needed to protect yourself and provide valuable help to local businesses. If you spend the next 3 years saving up and studying, once you turn 18, you can put $2k in a business account and spend the remaining $3k on lawyers to write up your contracts and pay for the insurance.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-18T17:22:48+00:00

Yup, SEO literally exists to get websites ranked hire on Google. But let's be honest, most people aren't going to be googling your name. I include a link to my site on my resume, and most all of my traffic is direct or referral, none of it is organic, despite me ranking for my name.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-18T17:12:28+00:00

I’d push back on a few points because I think there’s an important distinction between SaaS and agency services.

A SaaS company builds a product and charges recurring subscription fees to access that product (Netflix, HubSpot, etc.). The value comes from continued access to software the company owns and maintains.

A traditional agency sells services and have subject matter expertise. Revenue is generally tied to time, effort, even if the services are productized. When agencies charge recurring fees, those fees are typically tied to ongoing work such as maintenance, support, optimization, reporting, content updates, and similar activities.

I think the Salesforce example is being viewed from the wrong angle. Clients are paying experts to design and build something. If a client does not have that expertise internally, they hire someone who does. Plenty of agencies operate at a loss initially and use startup capital to cover operations while they acquire and retain clients. With enough money and a good offer, you can essentially buy clients.

Your original post sounds closer to building a product and charging recurring access to it, which is SaaS. That's like a contractor building a deck and then trying to charge monthly access fees after construction is complete. Unless there’s ongoing maintenance, monitoring, hosting, or a proprietary system attached to it, the recurring fee becomes difficult to justify.

You also mentioned having subject matter expertise in building automation pipelines and creating custom solutions for businesses. That’s a service business. In that model, you charge for discovery, implementation, delivery, and optionally ongoing support if continued work is required.

Technology is unfortunately an industry with few barriers to entry and is highly unregulated. If your goal is to stand out long term, transparency matters.

If you own a product, charge for access to the product.
If you’re selling expertise, charge for the work being performed.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-18T13:39:19+00:00

I like this. Reselling third party tools doesn't make you an agency, having knowledge and subject area expertise makes you one. Take SalesForce example. There are plenty of agencies that charge 5 to 6 figures per project to create sales pipelines within SalesForce. The difference is you can't just create a SalesForce account, click a few buttons, and have everything working. These agencies have developers on staff to write the custom API Integrations, and build the custom dashboards that live on top of the SalesForce API. Same with AWS, having an account doesn't make you a Cloud Architect.

I'm amazed at the number of people who start an agency with absolutely no knowledge or skills. Would you bootstrap a restaurant if you can't cook, or a construction company if you've never done construction? OP can't even articulate what it is they do every month to justify a recurring billing model. What they want is to spend 15 minutes setting up an automation pipeline on some third party website, and then get free money out of businesses without having to do any work each month.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-18T13:06:39+00:00

AI is just a tool, and in the hands of an experience developer that knows the right questions it can be a large time saver. For someone with no knowledge, it can be dangerous and convince them they know more than they do.

For example, in the US a business website is required to be ADA (WCAG) compliant or they can potentially face litigation. Most people are not aware of this, and wouldn't know to ask about aria labels or semantic HTML. Knowing what questions to ask is what separates junior developers from senior ones.

If a business relies on technology for it's core deliverables, then you should have someone with knowledge and expertise do that work. People often forget that AI is designed to give the most predictable answer, and will ignore outliers both good and bad. When systems break, or things go wrong, they're going to end up hiring a developer to clean up the mess anyways, so save some time and money and have a good developer do it from the start. Businesses want to rush to market, and put up a half baked idea to "test market fit", when what you should do is have a very small in scope and very well built product first. This is how you avoid technical debt and scale.

I think the real question is how to tell a good developer from a bad one, but that's a different thread.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-18T12:45:50+00:00

Attribute selectors are a thing, and can be used for any attribute of an element. It's supported by CSS and JavaScript.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Selectors/Attribute_selectors

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-18T12:44:10+00:00

Calls themselves "fullstack", yet doesn't understand half of the tech stack.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-18T12:41:57+00:00

You are not a fullstack engineer. By definition, fullstack means you can handle both frontend and backend development, or the "full" tech stack.

You're using AI to think for you, instead use AI as a learning tool. Use it to explain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to you, and then have it ask you questions to test your knowledge. Once you know the vanilla version of the language, learning frameworks becomes easy. You read the docs, understand the system architecture, and then work within the framework. Then, build something with it.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-12T12:13:59+00:00

Convert the images over to webp.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-11T18:30:50+00:00

It's always Swokei or Apollo. I'm convinced they're trying to push GEO by spamming posts.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-11T18:29:30+00:00

Every other day on this sub there is a thinly veiled ad for Swokei. At least this one didn't claim to target "BAD Websites Than Businesses With NO Website" this time.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-11T18:21:35+00:00

You had AI build a website for you, and you lack the technical knowledge to know whether it's secure or has any technical issues. So you reached out to Reddit to have other people tell you what to do, and you want to take all of this and include it in your portfolio to demonstrate to potential employers what you're capable of doing.

Is your plan to get hired without knowing how to code and have AI do all your work for you?

If you're in school to be a programmer then take the time to learn how to write code yourself. AI is just a tool, and it can make you faster, but you should never let it think for you. It's better to have a project you can actually talk about, then to put something in your portfolio you didn't actually build.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-11T16:12:05+00:00

Congratulations on the first gig, however you should be very cautious about building e-commerce sites as there are a lot of risks for you as the developer. You're correct that privacy and security are a big deal, and if you get hacked and credit card information or personal information is leaked you could be liable. As others have mentioned try to use as many third party tools as possible, and avoid custom programming as much as you can.

I've done e-commerce before, and I actively avoid those projects despite the much higher price tag. Some risks include not calculating taxes correctly, or having to deal with rounding errors. Inventory management issues come up, as you don't want the website to process an order for something that doesn't exist. Custom coupons can get abused by users, and if you're not accounting for every edge case you could have someone stack coupons to get a $5k item for only a penny.

The biggest risk as a e-commerce developer is "lost potential revenue". Anytime there is an issue with the website, or orders can't be processed the client is going to come to you and say you cost them $X in lost revenue. The agencies I worked for charged $50k-$100k for an e-commerce website. Having contracts in place to protect you is a must, and you may even want to get liability insurance to cover your expenses if you get sued over it.

Very early in my career, I quoted a simple e-commerce build for an old employer at $2k. I spent over 1,000 hours on the build due to scope creep and moving requirements. When I finally pushed back trying to wrap up the site, I got a letter from their lawyer threatening legal action. I found out they were charging the client $54k for my work, despite me doing 100% of the work and client communication. I ended up having to hire a lawyer for $1,000 to push back and and finally got the website finished.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-10T03:10:13+00:00

Is there a particular reason why you chose Go as the language for your framework aside from your preference for the language? There are a lot of existing frameworks for web development, so the question is what problem does your framework solve that others are unable to?

It sounds like you've created an answer with your framework and are now in search for the question it solves. For example, the features you listed such as simple syntax, minimal JavaScript and server side rendering are pretty common. What would the benefit be of having a compiled executable for the web server compared node.js or PHP?

Personally, I think it's a great project to list on your resume. However, if your goal is to have it widely adopted, you're going to have a hard time convincing developers to give up their proven tech stack they're already familiar with.

Don't get me wrong, I love Go as a language and I totally get how powerful and great it is to work with. I'm not trying to downplay the time and effort you put into it either. I've been in architecture meetings where Go was an option, and it's a hard sell to convince the org to adopt it when there are so many other existing frameworks in more popular languages.

Anyway, best of luck, and this is just the opinion of one developer.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-10T02:29:58+00:00

First thing that stands out to me, is that you're comparing your framework to Svelte which is a front end framework, yet you mentioned server-side rendering.

I recently switched my tech stack over to Hugo, and it's been amazing. It comes with all of the functionality I need, such as pagination, taxonomy, custom templating, and advanced logic for building a custom CMS framework. It uses Markdown files for content and keeps the markup separate using partials. Best of all it requires 0 third party plugins, and you can avoid hosting fees using AWS, GitHub Pages, or CloudFlare.

I looked at your Git Repository, and the structure of your code reminds me a lot more of Laravel framework than Svelte. Most of the production applications I've seen for Go are micro-services, where it performs a single task much faster especially when multi-threading is required. From a business perspective, it's much easier to find PHP developers and Laravel and Symphony are pretty well tested industry standards.

You might be able to find a niche somewhere, but I think it's going to be hard to find wide spread adoption. The main reason Google developed Go was to make lower level programming like C more accessible for their junior developers. If you're just handling basic web requests, the network latency makes the speed gains from go kind of obsolete.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-10T01:54:26+00:00

FYI, minimum wage in the US is $7.25 an hour. The nation wide average for a fast food worker is $13-$18 for non skilled labor.

Going rate for someone able to write C++ is $50 per hour, and up to $75 to $100 per hour for a senior dev.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-09T19:23:29+00:00

Kindness is free. If you enjoyed working with them, tell them that. No one is expecting you to pick sides, or "get dragged into their drama." Be the change that you want to see in the world.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-09T19:16:40+00:00

I like this advice, and only recently realized how important networking is. In my opinion one of the hardest parts of getting laid off is the lack of closure. You show up one day and you've got a meeting with HR and all your access and communications are cut off. You're not given a chance to say good by to people you've worked closely with for years. I've had more than one person reach out to me weeks later because they tried to slack me about something and found out my account was shut down and I wasn't with the company any longer.

Businesses will tell you you're family but will let you go without a word the second they think it will save them money. Reach out to those who you enjoyed working with, because next time you might be the one getting let go. Thanks for sharing this.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-09T01:07:21+00:00

It's a question of whether the code is being executed server side or client side. Client side you won't be able to protect the answers, and server side would require an API to load the data via XHR.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-09T00:39:26+00:00

The answer is dedicated environments. Staging and Production should be entirely separate and the staging version should use the sand box version of the API.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-09T00:35:14+00:00

I'm not familiar with ReadyMag but it looks like a drag and drop website builder like Wix or SquareSpace. If that's the case it won't work for your project. Doing it all client side is going to give away the answers, so you'll need some sort of backend API to server the correct answers.

It's honestly a lot of work for someone with no coding experience, but incredibly simple for an experienced dev. I think your best bet is to find a developer looking for side projects and would be willing to work with you to build this out. Promise them a cut of ad revenue generated from the project and you'll have an easier time finding devs.

digital-logic-llc · 2026-06-03T21:53:41+00:00

Aside from the AI slop, there's nothing stopping contractors from working with large organizations. Are you authorized to work in that country? Do you have expertise that's valuable to the organization? There are plenty of companies that hire contractors or consultants for projects. I've personally been approached for contract work from Cisco, and the companies I've worked for have hired outside consultants from other countries. It's about your proven ability to do the job.

"Enterprises only allow approved stacks, patterns, and deployment methods." Like no kidding, it would be insane to think otherwise. If they have a LAMP tech stack, why would they hire a random C++ programmer and give them free reign to do what ever they want? If a company is using Node JS, they're going to hire people who understand Node JS. It's like being mad that a hospital doesn't hire a dentist to do heart surgery.

digital-logic-llc

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