Most of this trade quotes on request and hopes you do not ask twice. Here are the actual numbers, in the order people usually meet them.
The first conversation is free, always. Working out what is actually wrong is not: the diagnosis is the job rather than the sales process, and it is often the most valuable part.
The first job is £150, once. A good part of it is me learning how your setup is put together, and you never pay for that twice.
After that, time is £80 an hour to the nearest quarter hour. No call-out fee, no minimum. If a job takes twenty minutes, twenty minutes is what it costs.
Nobody moves through all of these. Most people arrive at one of the middle two and stop wherever the problem stops.
Free
Half an hour on the phone, or a coffee in town. You describe what is going on, I tell you whether I can help and which of the below fits. If the answer is an accountant or your IT provider, that still costs nothing.
A good fit for everyone: this is where it starts. Nothing to agree to.
£150
A minimum charge, the first time you have me do something. It covers getting to know your setup, working out what is actually wrong and dealing with it. Most first jobs land inside the two hours or so that buys; if yours is bigger, I tell you before carrying on and the extra is quoted at £80 an hour. If your first piece of work is a once-over or a website, that already does the getting-to-know and this is not charged on top.
A good fit whether you know exactly what you want doing or only what is annoying you.
£80/hr
Small jobs are time on the clock, billed to the nearest quarter hour, with no minimum and nothing for picking up the phone. A ten-minute job is a ten-minute job. Anything with real shape gets a fixed price first.
A good fit for the second, fifth and twentieth thing, which is where most of this actually happens.
£750
A day going through your whole setup: the website, the tools, the subscriptions, the way work actually moves. You get it written down in plain English, with the two or three things worth doing first and roughly what each would cost. You own the document.
A good fit when you suspect several things are wrong and do not know which to pull on first.
£300 / £600
For problems where finding the cause is most of the job. Pretending those can be quoted produces a number that is padded or wrong. So you buy a block of time, I tell you what I found, and you decide whether to buy another. Usually you do not need to.
A good fit for a proper investigation, a migration, or an afternoon of small things.
Quoted
A website, an automation, a system joined to another system. All of it is a fixed price agreed before anything starts. You are never exposed to the hourly number, only the total, and the total is a ceiling: if it goes quicker, you pay less.
A good fit once you know what you want built. The number comes before the work, never after.
Nothing here is compulsory and you can move between these whenever you like. None of it has a notice period, except hosting.
No monthly fee. Questions stay free, and when something needs doing it is £80 an hour, same as above. Come back whenever you like.
Someone who already knows how your setup fits together, so you are not explaining it from scratch every time. Renewals flagged before they auto-charge, contracts read properly, a clear recommendation with the alternatives beside it. I watch the joins across everything you run, most of which I did not build, and anything that takes minutes I just deal with.
A good fit if you would rather not be the one noticing. Real jobs are still quoted as usual, and they tend to be smaller ones when somebody has been watching.
Separate from the above, and entirely your choice: take it with you, or leave it with me.
Everything documented and handed across: code, domain, hosting, logins. Host it with anyone, have anyone work on it, come back whenever you like. This option existing is the point.
I host it, keep it updated and fix what breaks, usually before you have noticed. The one thing with a notice period: 30 days, in writing, because I pay for the hosting until someone tells me not to. Then you take everything with you.
For a site with moving parts: a shop, bookings, systems joined behind the scenes. The backups and the connections get actively watched, because those are the pieces that fail silently.
Every job is fixed price, agreed before anything starts. You will never open an invoice with a number you have not already said yes to.
If a job runs quicker than I expected, you pay the lower number. The estimate protects you, not me.
Permanently, however many, whether or not you are a client. Nobody should be working out whether a problem is worth a phone call.
Quoted individually, but always before the work rather than after it.
No. Half an hour, phone or coffee, and it costs nothing whether or not anything comes of it. The line is drawn at diagnosis: working out whether I can help is a sales conversation and I pay for that myself; working out what is actually wrong with your setup is the job. The call is free, the investigation is not.
Because it costs me less to deliver. Small jobs each carry scoping, quoting and switching between things. A booked day carries none of that, so £600 works out at £75 an hour. A genuine difference in cost, not a discount for committing.
Usually, yes, unless I have already built or worked on enough of your setup to know it. Watching whether your systems still talk to each other means knowing what they are, and writing that down is genuinely a day: the same day the once-over already is. You keep the document either way.
No. It is charged once, when you are new to me, and never again. Most of it is me learning how your setup is put together, which I cannot reasonably charge you for twice. After that you are on £80 an hour, with no minimum.
The first time, it is £150 whatever the repair turns out to be, because most of that job is working out which ten minutes. Once I know your setup, a ten-minute job is billed as ten minutes. And if what you have is a question rather than a job, it is free, permanently.
No. A credit against later work would make the review a way of selling you something, which is exactly what it is not: it is a day of work with a report you own and can act on however you like, including without me.
Because "it depends" is usually a way of finding out what you will tolerate before naming a figure, and it wastes the time of anyone for whom this was never going to be affordable. Everything fixed and knowable is on this page; the things that genuinely vary are quoted before the work, never after.
In steps rather than one lump. Larger work is split into stages with a price against each, so you are never far ahead of what has been delivered, and you can stop at the end of any stage. Monthly support stops the day you tell me in writing. Hosting takes 30 days, because I am paying for it until somebody says otherwise.
Tell me roughly what is going on and I will tell you which of these it is, or that it is not mine to fix. Either way it costs nothing to find out.