Andrew here, week 5.
Bear charges $205 an hour. Domaine, $165. Vaan, $150. The boutique Shopify shop you're quietly comparing us to bills somewhere between $150 and $225.
We charge an effective $31 to $50.
A brand operator read that last week and asked the only question that matters. Not "how do I start." He asked, "where's the catch." When a number lands three to five times below everyone else, a scarred operator doesn't feel lucky. He feels the trap, because the last time something looked too good he got burned for it in front of his CEO.
Fair reflex. So here is why the number is low, and why the reason is not the one you're bracing for.
Most agencies never make you do this math, because they never show you the number until you're on a call with a closer. We put ours on the page.
You are not buying a developer's hours. You are buying a pod: an account manager, a lead developer, a junior developer, a quality inspector, a data analyst, a strategy lead, a CRO specialist, and a tracking expert, for one flat monthly number. The lead developer and the strategist sit in every pod and never appear as a line item. For roughly what one offshore developer costs you in a year with nothing else attached, you get all eight.
The reason we can price it there is boring, and it is the actual moat. The roles are interchangeable, so you never pay for a specialist sitting idle. AI now writes the first draft of the code, so the developer hours stretch further. And we keep clients for 43 months on average, so we are not pricing for a one-year smash-and-grab like a shop that already knows you'll leave.
The low number does cost us something. It pulls in tire-kickers who assume cheap means junior, and we spend the first call talking them back out of it. We decided that's a better problem to have than hiding our price behind a form.
A rate you have to book a call to hear is a rate built to be negotiated up. A published rate is a bet that the math survives daylight. Ours does. The real catch is that most agencies could not afford to show you theirs.
Reply CATCH and I'll send you the full rate card. Every role, every number, no call required. Hunt for the catch yourself.
— Andrew
P.S. If your current agency won't put their effective hourly rate in writing, that silence is the answer to the question you were actually asking.