Most freelance web designers set their rates by guessing. They pick a number that feels roughly fair, stick to it out of habit, and never revisit whether hourly or project-based billing actually suits the work they do. That guesswork shows up later as underpriced projects, awkward scope conversations, or invoices that don’t reflect the hours actually spent.
The choice between hourly and project-based pricing isn’t just an admin detail — it changes how you negotiate, how clients perceive your work, and how much you earn for the same skill. In my experience, most freelancers settle on one model early and never question it, even when a project clearly calls for the other. This matters most once you’re taking on the kind of work covered in the step-by-step guide to building a WordPress website, where a client’s scope can range from a five-page brochure site to a full build with e-commerce.
Quick Answer
Use hourly pricing for open-ended work where the scope isn’t fully defined yet — ongoing maintenance, exploratory design, or client relationships still finding their shape. Use project-based pricing once you can clearly define deliverables, such as building a fixed set of pages or launching a defined website. Many freelancers end up using both: project rates for new-build work, hourly rates for maintenance and revisions afterwards.
Why This Matters
Hourly billing protects you when a project’s scope keeps shifting — every extra hour is paid for. But it also caps your earning potential: work faster and you earn less for the same result, which punishes the exact efficiency clients are paying you for.
Project-based pricing flips that. Quote a fixed fee, deliver efficiently, and the extra margin is yours. The risk moves the other way — if you underestimate the work, you absorb the loss. Getting this decision right, project by project, is one of the clearest ways to protect your income as a freelancer.
Step-by-Step Instructions
1. Work Out Your Baseline Hourly Rate
Even if you plan to quote most work by the project, you need a baseline hourly rate first — it’s the number every project quote is built from. Add up your target annual income, business costs, and taxes, then divide by the hours you can realistically bill in a year (not the hours you work — admin, marketing, and unpaid pitching all eat into that). Most freelancers find their realistic billable hours land at 60–70% of total working hours.
2. Decide Which Projects Suit Hourly Billing
Hourly billing works best when the scope is genuinely unclear at the outset — a client says “make it better” without specifics, or you’re troubleshooting a site with an unknown cause. It’s also the right default for ongoing maintenance retainers, where the work varies month to month and a fixed fee would either overcharge or underpay depending on what comes up.
3. Decide Which Projects Suit Project-Based Pricing
Project-based pricing works when you can list the deliverables in advance: a set number of pages, a specific set of features, a defined launch date. Clients also tend to prefer it — a fixed number is easier to budget against than an open-ended hourly estimate, and it removes the awkwardness of a client watching the clock.
4. Convert Your Hourly Rate Into a Project Quote
Estimate the hours the project will realistically take, multiply by your hourly rate, then adjust. If you’re confident the project is well-defined and you can deliver efficiently, you can quote slightly above the hourly-equivalent total — you’re being paid for the certainty and speed you bring, not just the hours. If the scope has any ambiguity left, quote closer to a worst-case hour estimate rather than your best guess.
5. Build In a Buffer for Revisions and Scope Changes
Whichever model you use, decide upfront how revisions are handled. For project-based work, specify a set number of revision rounds in the contract and bill additional rounds hourly. This single habit prevents more pricing disputes than any rate calculation — it’s usually scope creep, not the base rate, that turns a profitable project into an unprofitable one.
Practical Tips
- Revisit your hourly rate at least once a year — most freelancers under-charge simply because they never update the number they started with.
- Track your actual hours on project-based work for the first few months of using this model. It’s the only way to know if your estimates are realistic.
- Compare your rates against what other freelancers charge occasionally rather than pricing in isolation — Freelancers Union’s resources page links to a rate transparency database freelancers use to benchmark against peers.
- Quote project-based work in writing, including what counts as a change request versus what’s included — this is what your contract should formalise.
Common Mistakes
- Quoting a project fee without estimating hours first. A gut-feel number is rarely close to what the work actually takes.
- Never raising rates. Costs and experience both increase over time; a rate frozen for years is a pay cut in real terms.
- Mixing models within one project. Switching from project to hourly mid-way without agreeing it with the client first damages trust, even if the extra work is legitimate.
- Leaving revisions undefined. Without a stated limit, “a few tweaks” can quietly become several unpaid hours.
When to Use This vs Alternatives
Beyond hourly and project-based pricing, some freelancers move to value-based pricing — charging based on the outcome a project delivers for the client rather than the time it takes. This works well once you have a track record and can point to measurable results, but it’s harder to justify early on without that evidence. For most freelancers still building a client base, a mix of project-based pricing for defined builds and hourly billing for retainers and one-off fixes covers the vast majority of situations, and it’s a foundation you can layer value-based pricing onto later once your case studies support it.
Conclusion
Pick the pricing model that matches how well-defined the work is, not habit — project-based for clear deliverables, hourly for open-ended work, and always with revisions scoped in writing before you start. If your rates and your invoicing process aren’t already aligned with whichever model you choose, that’s the next thing worth fixing.
Etienne Basson works with website systems, SEO-driven site architecture, and technical implementation. He writes practical guides on building, structuring, and optimizing websites for long-term growth.