I shifted from mostly fixed price to mostly hourly based billing over the past year, and increased the rates. It’s very easy to start a project with hourly bill

I shifted from mostly fixed price to mostly hourly based billing over the past year, and increased the rates. It’s very easy to start a project with hourly billing, adjust the scope and expand as you go. It’s very difficult to do that with a fixed priced project. But the biggest issue against fixed price is that companies are quite bad at pricing R&D activities (which is why they’re usually running late and require office heroics to complete). When you try to put a realistic price on such an activity you may give your customer a sticker shock. I still do fixed price at places but only when the work stands alone and it’s something I’ve done many times in the past. Working hourly, if you spread the work across multiple clients and provide good value for each, creates a structure where you cost each of them slightly less than a full time employee. My experience is that this is quite sustainable for everyone.