Value-Based Pricing, Not Time-Based.
You should not need a timesheet to understand an invoice. With value-based pricing the guide price is shaped around one outcome — scope, deliverables and a quality bar, confirmed in writing after a free 15-minute scoping call. Guide prices on this site become a staged, written quote before work starts.
Guide pricing on this page. Final scope, price and staging are in your written proposal after scoping — typically 40/30/30 once confirmed. If scope changes mid-project, we quote the delta separately, in writing, before proceeding.
Time-based billing charges for activity. Value-based charges for the result that matters to your business — more enquiries, hours back each week, fewer re-entries, a checkout that actually converts. That difference changes incentives, speed and the quality of decisions you can make before you commit.
Same work. Two ways to pay for it. One way protects you.
Both models can build the same website. Only one puts budget risk, urgency and the incentive to be efficient on the right side of the table — yours.
| Question you should be able to answer before you pay | Value-based (how we price) | Time-based (hourly) |
|---|---|---|
| What am I paying for? | The outcome — defined scope, deliverables, quality bar. You know what “done” looks like. | Activity — hours logged. “Done” is when the meter stops. |
| What is the price? | Guide price on page → confirmed quote after scoping call, in writing. Typically staged 40/30/30 once confirmed — no meter. | An open-ended hourly estimate. The final number depends on how many hours it takes. |
| What if it takes longer? | We flag it before shipping. Small variance within scope we absorb where reasonable; scope gaps or quality risks are quoted as a delta — you decide. | On you — more hours, higher invoice. Or a lowered spec to stay near the estimate. |
| What if you deliver faster? | You win. Seniority and better tooling give you the same confirmed outcome sooner. | You pay less — but the provider is penalised for being efficient, which discourages speed. |
| Who benefits from efficiency? | Both sides. We invest in automation and reuse because it helps us and you. | Trade-off — efficiency reduces revenue, so there is little incentive to improve. |
| What stops small requests ballooning? | Change is quoted separately, only with your OK. Tiny tweaks are often within care time. | “While you’re in there…” quietly adds hours you only see on the invoice. |
| How do I compare two proposals? | Scope vs scope, price vs price. You can put them side by side. | Rate vs rate — but rates hide very different speeds, quality and risk. |
Guide pricing on this page — final scope and price confirmed in your written proposal after scoping. Extra work beyond confirmed scope is NZ$100–$150/hr depending on task & complexity, or a quoted stage, always pre-approved. Care plans are monthly via Stripe and cancel before the next cycle.
One price for one outcome
- Scoped after a free 15-min call; quote in writing
- Guide NZD price → confirmed staged quote
- Variance flagged early; speed benefits you
- Change quoted separately — you decide
Pay for hours, not the result
- Estimate, not a price — final depends on hours
- Slower delivery can mean a larger invoice
- Efficiency can reduce provider revenue
- Scope comparison is harder
Seven reasons customers prefer paying for value.
We price this way because it removes the exact anxieties that make buying digital work feel like a gamble. Strongest reason first — the rest reinforce it.
Clearer budgeting — guide price, then a confirmed quote
Guide prices on this site give you a realistic range to plan around; the number you approve is the staged, written quote after scoping. No watchful tally of hours, no Friday invoice surprise, no “we’re at 80% of estimate and 60% through spec” conversation. Finance can plan from the guide, then sign once the scope is confirmed.
Typically staged 40% to start, 30% at build review, 30% at launch once confirmed. Care is monthly and cancels before next cycle.Risk is made visible before it moves
Scope and quality are defined after scoping and written into the proposal — so mis-estimation risk is visible and handled explicitly. Small variance within the agreed slice we absorb where reasonable; anything that changes scope or quality gets a quoted delta before we proceed, so your budget does not move silently.
Speed is rewarded, not penalised
Under hourly billing, the better we get, the less we invoice. That softly punishes efficiency. Under value-based pricing, the same senior engineer who finishes in half the time delivers you the same outcome for the same price — only sooner. Experience becomes the product, not the cost.
Incentives finally point the same way
We profit when the build is clean, reused, automated and fast to deliver — which is exactly what you want. We invest in templates, staging pipelines and AI-assisted workflows because they pay both of us back. Hourly reverses that: the incentive is to log, not to simplify.
Scope means something — and so does “done”
Value-based forces a written spec: pages, integrations, states, edge cases, performance. “Done” has a checklist you can hold us to. Hourly leaves “done” elastic — which is why two quotes at the same hourly rate can hide a 2× difference in scope.
You can compare, and you can say no
Scoped guide prices plus a written proposal sit side by side. You can see where one includes staging, training and tested backups and the other does not — and price that gap yourself. You can also take the written scope to any vendor, including us not winning. Hourly proposals hide that comparison behind a single rate number.
Focus stays on return, not on activity
When the price is anchored to the outcome — “save 8 hours a week”, “lift checkout conversion by 1.5%” — the conversation stays on return. The ROI calculator exists for this reason: choose the smallest tier that earns its keep, and leave the rest alone until it does. Hourly anchors to cost, so return never gets discussed until after you have spent.
In one sentence: value-based guide pricing lets you cost a described result before you commit; hourly lets you rent capacity at an unknown final cost. For a bounded build — website, store, app, automation — a scoped, quoted price gives you the clearer decision, and we flag variance before shipping.
It is not that hourly people are dishonest. It is that the meter changes behaviour.
Even with honest teams, the model itself creates soft, recurring costs you pay without seeing a line item for them.
It taxes thoroughness
Checking edge cases, testing a restore, polishing a checkout — the work that prevents future cost — silently adds hours you are billed for. The incentive is to do “enough”, not “right”, because “right” costs you more on the invoice that day.
Estimates drift — and you carry the drift
A 60-hour estimate billed at NZ$100–$150/hr is not a NZ$6,000–$9,000 price. It is a NZ$6,000–$9,000 guess. Underruns are lucky; overruns are yours. The band between the two is often 20–40% — the exact budget nerve you were trying to calm.
Small requests compound invisibly
“Could you also…?” adds 2–3 hours each time. Individually trivial, collectively material — and only fully visible after the fact. Value-based forces the tiny change to get a tiny price, in writing, before you approve it.
Urgency gets penalised
When help is priced by the hour, asking quickly costs quickly. Customers hesitate, problems linger, and cheap avoidance becomes expensive delay. A scoped, quoted package and inclusive care time let you ask the small question while it is still small.
Hourly is not always wrong — open-ended contracting, emergency rescue, or pure staff augmentation suits hourly because the work is unbounded. For a bounded build with a finish line, the build should have a scoped, confirmed price after discovery. We use hourly only where time itself is the deliverable — and then as the exception, still quoted before you approve.
Same three promises on every build.
If a rule does not survive this list, it is not our rule.
Scoped and quoted — before we start
Guide price on this page; confirmed scope, deliverables, quality bar and NZD total (GST excl.) in a written proposal after scoping. Typically staged 40/30/30 once confirmed. Change is quoted separately, only with your sign-off. If scope is smaller than the tier, we price it smaller.
- Written spec so the number means something
- No meter — thinking time is not a billable surprise
Hosting at cost. No cut of sales.
Domain and hosting are billed at cost — no markup, no trailing commission. E-commerce transaction fees stay at the provider’s rates. What we quote is the cost of the work.
- Stripe billing, daily backups, restore tests
- Staged deploys + heartbeat monitoring on stores
Start narrow, expand when it earns
Every tier is a slice that pays for itself. We sequence do / don’t / later and only enlarge the scope when the return justifies it — which you can check on the ROI calculator before you pick.
- Clear included vs billable line on care
- Extra work NZ$100–$150/hr depending on task & complexity, or quoted stage, always pre-approved
Every worry has a written answer before you commit.
If any of these is still your objection to a scoped, quoted price, good — it means the question is specific enough to answer in writing.
“What if the scope changes?”
Then the change gets a price, not the original job a new invoice. You see the delta, its rationale and its impact — before we do it. If the right answer is “do less”, that is what we recommend. Smaller scope, smaller price.
“What if you finish quickly — did I overpay?”
You paid for the described result, not for our elapsed time. If we finish in half the time because the pipeline is cleaner this quarter, that saving flows to you as earlier go-live and freed internal time. You bought the outcome; speed was part of the value.
“What if you go over — do you cut corners?”
No. Scope and quality are part of the confirmed proposal. If we underestimated within that scope, we flag it before shipping — we do not quietly trim. If a quality risk emerges — say, a plugin migration that needs more assurance — we quote the delta and you decide, no surprise line on the invoice.
“What about tiny tweaks after launch?”
That is what care plans are for: bounded time for copy, images, swapping a section, fixing a hiccup — included, rolling one cycle. New pages, gateways or checkout logic are quoted separately. The line is clear before you ask, so you can ask without hesitation.
“How do I know the spec is right?”
Free 15-minute scoping call first. If you want the written verdict, a Discovery Audit from NZ$210 hands you a ranked 30/90-day roadmap + costed options you keep and can take anywhere — even if you do not build with us.
“Can I still compare you to an hourly quote?”
Send it over. We will map deliverables line by line — what is inside the confirmed quote that the hourly estimate leaves as “TBD”, whether hosting is at cost, whether staging and training are included — and give you the questions worth asking before you sign, whichever route you take.
The return decides the price, not the hours.
“We re-enter the same fact twice — costing a day a week.”
- Estimate 40–60 hrs × NZ$100–$150/hr = NZ$4,000–$9,000 “plus discovery”
- Final depends on edge cases found in build
- Supplier incentive: bill every refinement
- Connect Two — NZ$5,000 guide: one 2-way sync, logging + alerting
- Saves ~8 hrs/week; at NZ$75/hr ≈ NZ$2,400/mo back
- Payback in ~2 months; change quoted only if you enlarge scope
Measured in hours back, not hours spent. See Systems Integration →
“We get the visits. The checkout loses them.”
- Estimate 80 hrs × NZ$180/hr = NZ$14,400 before revisions
- Thorough testing adds hours — you hesitate to ask for it
- Gateway fees and hosting economics unclear until invoice
- E-commerce Standard — NZ$21,000 guide: store + gateway + fulfilment sync
- Typically staged 40/30/30 once confirmed; hosting at cost; fees stay at provider’s rates
- Try the ROI calculator: +1.5% conversion on 10k visits can dwarf the build cost
Anchored to revenue, not résumé hours. See E-Commerce →
Want the maths on your numbers?
The calculator on the pricing page uses the same NZD tiers (GST excl.) + a 60% realisation on saved-time levers (honest by design). Plug in your hours, enquiries or conversion and see which tier earns its keep.
Quick answers before you decide
What exactly is value-based pricing?
It means the guide price reflects the business value of the outcome — scope agreed after scoping, then one confirmed number in a written proposal with typical staging. Time-based means the price is hours × rate; the final number only emerges at the end. For a bounded build, value is the right anchor.
If you deliver quickly, why shouldn’t I pay less?
Because you bought a result, not our elapsed time. A two-hour change that prevents a day a week of re-entry creates more value than a ten-hour change that saves nothing — and should cost accordingly. Speed is part of what you receive, not a discount trigger.
What if the scope really does need to grow?
We quote the increment — scope, price, timeline, impact — before doing it. You approve or defer. The original scope and price do not absorb it quietly. See How billing works for staged billing and extra-time rates.
Do you ever bill by time?
Only where time itself is the product — typically contracting / staff augmentation scoped after a conversation (engagement models), or small extras beyond care quoted at NZ$100–$150/hr depending on task and complexity. Even then, the amount is agreed before you approve.
Can I take the written scope elsewhere?
Yes. Every proposal and Discovery Audit hands you a written next step you can take to any vendor. If the right answer is not AXOmega, that is what we will say. A price you can check beats a quote you have to chase.
Buy the result, not the hours that produced it. If the smallest tier does not earn its keep — by enquiries, by hours back, by margin recovered — we will tell you to wait. If it does, a scoped, confirmed quote is the next step.
Want the outcome costed, not the hours?
Describe what you're trying to achieve — a site that converts, a workflow that stops re-entry, a store that syncs to your stack — and we'll give you a plain-English scope, a confirmed price to achieve it, and the smallest first slice that earns its keep.
Working with clients worldwide — everything over the internet.