Why our rate card is public

The price is not a secret weapon. A buyer should know the commercial shape before spending a meeting discovering it.

By Zero Drift

A transparent rate card stands open across a London studio table while a small locked sales case sits aside and a buyer chair faces the terms.

A price is part of the product decision

If you are buying a technical review, a product build or named leadership, the first question is whether the commitment belongs in the budget at all. Hiding the number until a sales call wastes both sides’ time. Our rate card makes the ten service prices and three commercial routes visible before a conversation.

A public price does not mean every job is identical. An Architecture Review has a defined two-week shape and a written report; a feature-complete product build has to be priced from its specification because the difficult workflows, data, integrations and operating responsibilities are the job. A published “from” price is a starting boundary, not a promise that every conceivable application costs the same.

The fixed route works when the outcome and acceptance evidence can be agreed. We quote the whole defined job, take 50% at start and 50% on delivery, and make a change explicit if the underlying requirement changes. That is different from claiming the scope is fixed while quietly reducing what gets delivered. The day-rate/retainer route is appropriate when the leadership question is ongoing. We name the decision authority and monthly capacity so “fractional CTO” is not an expensive title with no operating cadence.

Revenue share is a different bargain. A domain founder with real distribution may prefer to keep the business and product ownership while we earn from revenue the utility actually receives. That arrangement needs more written care, not less: which costs sit with whom, what counts as revenue, what happens after a cap, and what the founder can take away if the supplier changes. The qualification model is public too.

The useful test for a buyer is simple: after reading the page, can you tell what decision you need to make, what evidence you will receive and which commercial risk each side carries? If not, the pricing explanation is doing theatre instead of work. Bring us a defined problem and we will say whether it is ready to quote.