# Fixed-Price Software Project | Defined Scope, Defined Deadline | Alher Tech > Defined scope, defined deadline, fixed bid. Paid discovery first (€3-5K), then a contractual proposal you can take to procurement. Risk on us: we hit the date or we eat the overrun. - Canonical page: https://alhertech.com/en/engagement-models/fixed-price-project/ - Site: Alher Tech (custom software, AI agents and SEO engineering, https://alhertech.com/) - Contact: https://alhertech.com/en/contact/ --- A defined scope, a defined deadline and a fixed bid. We do paid discovery first (€3,000-€5,000) so the bid is honest, not a guess. Once signed, the risk is ours: we hit the date and the budget or we eat the overrun. ## What Fixed Price Delivers - **Paid Discovery Before the Bid**: Fixed price exists for one specific kind of project: scope is well-understood, the unknowns are small enough to be manageable, and you need a contractual commitment to a number and a date. Typical examples: a website rebuild, a migration to a new framework, a known third-party integration, a regulated implementation with a fixed spec. Procurement teams love this model because it fits their templates. We say yes to fixed price about 30% of the time we are asked. The other 70% are projects where the unknowns are too large to bid honestly without forcing us to either pad the price 50% or lie. We tell you which group your project is in during discovery. - **Risk Sits With Us, Not You**: Once signed, the bid is the bid. If we underestimated by 200 hours, that is our problem. We do not show up in month 3 with a change order saying 'turns out it was harder'. That is the entire point of the model. - **Procurement-Friendly**: Fixed price fits the templates that corporate procurement teams understand: defined scope, defined milestones, defined acceptance criteria, defined penalties. We can answer 80-page RFPs and adapt our standard contract to most large-company purchasing requirements without dragging the lawyers in for months. - **Pick This If Scope Is Clear**: Fixed price is the right call when the scope is well-understood and won't change. If the roadmap is genuinely uncertain or you expect to iterate continuously based on user feedback, outsourcing on a monthly retainer is more honest. If you only need extra senior hands on your existing team, staff augmentation fits better. - **Milestone-Based Payments**: 20% on signature, 30-40% on a defined mid-project milestone, balance on user acceptance. You never pay the last invoice on a fixed-price project before you have signed off on what we shipped. Penalty clauses for late delivery are standard and we accept them. - **Honest 'No' If Scope Isn't Clear**: We turn down roughly 70% of fixed-price asks. Common reasons: a moving spec, a hard third-party dependency we cannot evaluate up front, a team-size requirement that would force us to bid optimistically. When we say no, we propose the structure that actually fits, usually outsourcing or staff augmentation. ## How We Build Your Fixed Price - **Pre-Discovery Call (Free, 60 min)**: You walk us through what you want built, the deadline and any procurement constraints. We tell you on the call whether this looks like a fixed-price project or whether we will recommend a different model. We don't waste your discovery budget on a project that should not be fixed price. - **Paid Discovery (€3,000-€5,000, 1-2 weeks)**: A senior architect and a senior product person produce: a written functional spec, an architecture diagram, an integrations list, a risk register and a milestone plan. The deliverable is yours regardless of whether you sign the build phase with us. If you take it to a competitor for a second bid, that is fine. - **Fixed-Price Proposal**: Within 5 business days of discovery wrap-up: a fixed bid, a fixed delivery date, milestone payment schedule, acceptance criteria per milestone, late-delivery penalties (if you require them) and assumptions/exclusions. Everything that isn't in the spec is out of scope and explicitly listed. - **Build Phase With Hard Milestones**: Two-week sprints with a demo at every sprint, weekly written status, a mid-project milestone with formal sign-off, and a UAT phase before final acceptance. We freeze scope at signature: anything new goes to a written change order. - **Acceptance and Handover**: On final acceptance: source code in your repo (it has been there from day one), runbooks, ADRs, deployment scripts, documentation. Optional 30-90 day post-launch support contract, but the fixed price itself ends at acceptance. ## High-performance stack used by global leaders React/Next.js/Angular on the frontend and Java 21 + Spring Boot + PostgreSQL 14 on the backend: the same stack that BBVA, ING, and Netflix use for their security and performance. ## Fixed Price: FAQ ### How is fixed price different from outsourcing? Fixed price is one defined project: known scope, known deadline, known bid. The contract ends when we ship. Outsourcing is open-ended: we run the product function on a monthly retainer for 12+ months with continuous iteration. Fixed price is the right model when scope is stable; outsourcing is the right model when scope will evolve. Fixed price ports cleanly to procurement templates; outsourcing rarely does. ### What's the typical contract length? Fixed-price projects we accept run 6 weeks to 6 months from signature to acceptance. We have done a few longer ones (up to 9 months) but past that the assumptions baked into the bid usually start drifting and the model loses its honesty. Anything beyond 9 months we steer toward outsourcing. ### How does pricing work? Two parts. (1) A paid discovery (€3,000-€5,000, 1-2 weeks) that produces the spec and the architecture. (2) A fixed bid for the build, typically €25,000 to €350,000 depending on scope. Build payments are milestone-based: 20% at signature, 30-40% at the mid-project milestone, balance at acceptance. We can issue invoices in EUR, USD or GBP and adapt to your procurement-payment terms (30/60/90 net) within reason. ### What is the minimum project size? Around €25,000 in build cost. Below that the discovery overhead and the milestone administration eat too much of the budget. For small projects we usually recommend a couple of weeks of staff augmentation instead. ### How fast can we start? 1 week to start discovery after signing the discovery agreement. Build phase starts the week after discovery wraps. End-to-end, from first call to engineers building, is 4-5 weeks. Procurement-heavy clients usually add 2-3 weeks for legal review of the build contract. ### How do you handle scope changes? Anything that isn't in the discovery spec is out of scope. We freeze scope at signature precisely so the bid can be honest. If you need a change mid-build, we issue a written change order with its own scope, price and impact on the timeline. You sign or you don't, and the original bid stands either way. We don't sneak changes into the running invoice. ### What happens if you miss the deadline? If the slip is on us, we eat it: we keep working at no extra charge until acceptance, and we accept written late-delivery penalties (typically 0.5-1% of contract value per week of delay, capped at 10%) if you require them in your procurement template. If the slip is caused by your side (feedback delays, scope changes, missing access to your systems), we issue a written notice the day it happens and the date moves accordingly. We don't ambush you with delays at the last minute; weekly status reports are explicit about schedule risk. ### How detailed is the spec from discovery? Detailed enough to bid on without padding. Typical discovery output is a 30-60 page document covering: user roles and journeys, functional requirements at the screen level, non-functional requirements (performance, security, accessibility), data model, integration list with each third party, architecture diagram, infrastructure plan, milestone breakdown, risk register and explicit assumptions/exclusions. Both sides sign it before the build contract. ### Can we keep working with you after acceptance? Yes, and many clients do. The most common transition is from a fixed-price build into a smaller monthly retainer (outsourcing) or a couple of staff-augmentation seats for ongoing iteration. We negotiate that contract during the last weeks of the build, so there's no gap between acceptance and ongoing work. ### Do you work with clients globally? Yes. We work fully remote with clients across Spain, Europe, the US and LATAM. Time zones, video calls and live demos at every milestone.