The site exists, but it is slow, falls apart on a phone or complains about its certificate. First I look at what is wrong with it, and only then name the price of the repair.
The named price is the audit and the estimate, not the repair.
What the repair itself costs I do not know until I have opened the site, and I do not pretend otherwise. I name the price of the work after the audit, as one fixed sum, and until you agree I touch neither files, nor database, nor settings. A price named without looking always grows along the way, and you find out in the middle of the work, when withdrawing is already expensive.
The audit may end with the conclusion that repairing costs more than rebuilding. That is a normal outcome, not money wasted: the report and the estimate stay with you, and you are under no obligation to accept the estimate.
One list, both halves, at equal weight. There are only two lines below, and the first is not a refusal but a gate: «work before the estimate is approved» is excluded not because I begrudge it, but because it should not exist.
The second is a redesign: the audit answers «what is wrong with the site», not «how it looks». The repair itself is not in this price either — it is costed separately and after the audit.
That point exists. When the repair estimate approaches the price of a new site, repairing means paying almost the full price so that the old solution survives another year and breaks again.
I say so in the estimate, out loud, and show both sums side by side: what repairing costs and what building costs. You choose. Selling a repair where it does not pay is the simplest way to earn once and lose the client for good.
Depends on you
Access to the site and the hosting. If there is none, that is solvable more often than it seems, and the questions below say how. Part of the checks are done from the outside anyway.
2 working days
Speed, behaviour on a phone, accessibility and security. Every check with a named tool, with numbers rather than a verdict of «bad». The report stays with you either way.
1 working day
Every problem found gets its own line at a fixed price. And separately, a list of what does not need fixing even though it looks alarming.
Here the work stops and waits for your yes.
The timeline is named in the estimate
I fix what you approved and nothing beyond it. Every line is re-checked with the same tool that found the problem — before and after.
If something turns up during the work that was not in the estimate, I stop and ask rather than adding a line to the invoice. An estimate that grew without your agreement is the very story this site is written the way it is because of.
After the repair the site lives somewhere, and that is money again. Counted out loud — with the caveat that the largest line in this table is missing for now: the price of the work only appears after the audit.
The first line is the audit and the estimate, not the repair: the cost of the work is named after the audit and cannot enter this table yet. Hosting is costed for the case where the site moves to me after the repair, on the cheapest of the four plans. If the site stays with your provider, the second line is yours rather than mine and is not in this sum. The domain passes through at the registrar's cost — for .lv today that is 14.52 €/yr, other zones (.eu, .de, .com) at their own price named in the estimate — so the total is written as a sum plus the domain.
Scrolls sideways
| Line | How often | Amount per year |
|---|---|---|
| Audit and estimate | Once | from 290 € |
| Repair per the estimate | Once | named after the audit |
| Hosting, the Hosting only plan | 12 months | 9 € × 12 = 108 € |
| Domain | Once a year | at the registrar's cost — for .lv today 14.52 €/yr |
| Total for the first year, repair excluded | — | from 398 € + domain |
A care plan is not compulsory, and neither is moving to me. You can take the repaired site and host it anywhere — what each plan covers and how to cancel.
No, and that is the most important sentence on this page. The named price is the audit and a fixed estimate based on it. The repair is separate money, and I name that sum after looking at the site, not before. The card also carries a «from»: a five-page site and a two-hundred-page site take different amounts of time to check.
The reason is simple: naming a repair price without opening the site can only be guesswork. A guessed price always turns out lower than the real one, and you learn the difference in the middle of the work — exactly when withdrawing is already expensive. I would rather name a smaller sum honestly than a larger one after the fact.
The timeline on the card is counted from the moment I have the access, not from the moment of payment. While there is no access there is nothing to count, and I do not start the clock to make it look shorter.
The «from» is not there as insurance: a five-page site and a two-hundred-page site take different amounts of time to check, and if yours turns out larger than usual I will say so before the start, not on the day the report was due.
Then that is what I will write, in the estimate, on the first line. It happens: an old system, someone else's undocumented code, a builder you cannot get out of — sometimes a repair costs almost as much as a new site.
In that case the estimate carries both sums side by side: what repairing costs and what rebuilding costs. You decide. There will be no «well, we have started»: the audit is finished work, not a deposit on the next job.
WordPress — yes: there is access to the code, the database and the server, so almost everything the audit finds can be fixed.
Wix, Tilda and other builders — partly, and that has to be said in advance. A builder gives no access to the code: what can be fixed is what the builder allows you to change, and the audit shows that first. If the problem comes down to the platform itself, I will say so plainly rather than sharpen what will not sharpen, at your expense.
This is one of the most common situations, and it is less hopeless than it looks. A domain is usually recovered through the registrar to the company owner, hosting through the provider on the contract and company details. Who the owner is can be seen in public records, and I will point you to where to write.
If access cannot be recovered at all, the audit becomes external: speed, behaviour on a phone, accessibility and security headers can be measured from the outside too. The inside — code, database, server settings — cannot, and the report will say what is missing from it and why.
The report and the estimate. Both are yours, both are written in plain language, and both can be taken to another contractor — I do not count that as a loss. An estimate you can have checked elsewhere is the only estimate worth believing.
And the work is finished: the audit is a product in its own right, not a first instalment. If you are a private individual, the 14-day right of withdrawal applies here as well — how it works and what you would pay for.
A link is enough to start the conversation: part of the checks are done from the outside, and they already show roughly what is going on. In reply you get the published audit price and the date the report will be ready.
VAT not applicable. The named price is the audit; I name the price of the work after it.
