| At my job, they hired a contractor to do a wordpress site on a fixed-bid contract. The contractor stopped answering our calls and now I'm stuck maintaining the POS. As a small freelancer, fixed-bid is a nightmare. If the client doesn't have a good spec, you'll be haggling whether it's done or not. You show the client your version, then the client realizes what they really wanted all along (which doesn't match what they originally told you), and now they're refusing to pay until you make the changes. Having spent a couple of weeks on the project, when the client asks for more work, the incentive is for you to do it so you can get paid for the work you already did. As a small freelancer, it doesn't pay to spend the legal fees to write and enforce a contract. If you help the client write a spec before starting the project, then they'll just shop it on one of those elance sites and then they won't need to hire you at all. So I've seen fixed-bid be a nightmare, both for the employer side (maintaining someone else's garbage) and from the client side (you'll do the work, and then spend most of your time arguing if it's done or not so you can get paid). Fixed-bid pricing encourages shoddy work. You do just enough to get paid and no more. It's a race to the bottom. |