Why we don't list packaged prices

Somewhere on the site, you’re looking for a pricing table: “Starter — €X, Pro — €Y, Enterprise — let’s talk.” You don’t find one. That isn’t an oversight, and it deserves an explanation — both for partners coming through, and for studios thinking about the same approach.

The local price anchor

In Baku, the word “site” is mentally bound to a number. Two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand — depending on who you’ve talked to. Nobody clarifies what these numbers actually buy, because “site” alone says nothing. To one person it’s a five-page business card. To another, a thirty-page editorial property. To a third, a reservation system inside an e-commerce build. Three different jobs, all hiding under the same word.

Fixed packages make this worse. As soon as you publish a package:

The buyer picks “Pro” and assumes the problem is now solved.
The studio takes the fastest path to staying inside the package.
The package ends, the problem is partially solved, but “what you paid for” is delivered.

That mechanic is the economic shape of “good enough.” Both sides nominally agree, but neither side is looking at the outcome — they’re looking at the package boundary. When the boundary closes, the work is “done,” even if the problem isn’t.

Across the studios I audited, pricing is either fully hidden (“get in touch”) or packaged. The first option pulls the buyer into a real conversation — that’s fine. The second tries to put the buyer into a wrong box.

Two “five-page sites” are not the same job

Take a concrete example. Two partners arrive with the same words:

“We need a five-page site. Home, about, services, blog, contact.”

Partner A:

Logo and brand book exist.
Content is written, just needs editing.
Hosting and domain already chosen.
Single language.
Blog: one post a month, simple structure.

Partner B:

Brand identity needs to be built from zero.
Content needs to be drafted from interviews.
Three languages.
Blog needs SEO scaffolding, hreflang, JSON-LD.
Performance budget (Lighthouse 95+).
First six months of monthly technical review included.

Both ordered “a five-page site.” The actual work is two to three times apart. A fixed package would either overcharge Partner A or underdeliver to Partner B. Both outcomes are dishonest.

The boundary isn’t “page count.” It’s decision weight. Partner B’s job involves design direction, brand system, three-language editorial workflow, hreflang, JSON-LD — each one is its own decision with its own hours. Partner A has most of those decisions already made. The same words, “five pages,” cover one week of work in one case and six weeks in the other.

What we do instead

The first conversation is always free and concrete — usually 30 to 45 minutes. Pricing is not the topic. Scope is.

What’s the actual problem — not “we need a site,” but “why does this site need to exist now?”
What does success look like — what numbers matter at the deadline?
Current state — brand, content, technical setup.
Risks — what could delay this (legal, content, decision-makers)?

After that conversation, I write a scoped proposal that looks like:

Phase 1 — discovery and structure (1–2 weeks, fixed price)
Phase 2 — design direction and prototype (2–3 weeks, fixed price)
Phase 3 — execution and launch (3–5 weeks, fixed price)

Every phase has an exit clause. Phase 1 ends, the partner doesn’t want to continue — payment is for that phase only. Documents, discovery output, prototype — yours to keep. That isn’t industry standard. It’s our choice.

The exit clause exists for two reasons. The obvious one: honesty. The less obvious one: project health. When the partner knows they can leave at any phase, the tension drops. The studio also has to prove its work at each phase rather than coast on already-collected money.

Why phased pricing isn’t the same as a fixed package

A fixed package is priced with hidden assumptions. The studio quotes for the “average case,” then quietly cuts quality or scope when the real case is harder. The buyer can’t see what got cut.

A phased proposal makes each phase’s input and output explicit. What’s in Phase 2, what isn’t — written down. If the work turns out larger than scoped, that becomes a visible scope-change conversation, not a quiet trim.

The ethical edge of not publishing packages

Said directly: fixed packages either undercharge or overcharge.

A real problem doesn’t fit “Pro.” The studio either pads with hidden hours, or the solution stays half-built.
A simple job hears “Pro is the right tier” — but the work doesn’t approach the boundary of Pro.

Both are dishonest to the partner. The industry tolerates them because packages produce comparable numbers and make sales easy. But “easy to sell” is in the studio’s interest, not the partner’s.

At Qaynaq, the call I made: by the end of the first conversation, the partner knows exactly what they’re buying. No surprise invoice, no half-finished delivery.

”But what’s a rough number?”

Asked often enough that I should answer it: brand identity runs €2,000–4,000, a marketing site runs €3,000–8,000, product design depends on complexity and I won’t quote without a conversation. These aren’t packages — they’re market ranges. Where your project sits inside them comes out of the discovery call.

There’s a real downside to this approach: a buyer scrolling for a number doesn’t see one and may not reach out. We accept that. Fewer enquiries, better-fit enquiries — that’s the trade we want.

The discovery call isn’t a sales call

This term gets misused, so a note. The discovery call is not where I sell you on the project. The opposite: I ask more than I pitch. If the call opens with “what’s the price?”, the answer I give is a question: “why does this project need to exist now?” If the answer is “our competitor just shipped one,” the conversation goes one direction. If it’s “our marketing materials froze in 2018” — different direction. I work in specifics.

By the end, two things are clear:

Is Qaynaq the right studio for this work? Sometimes the answer is no. If the project is a complex SaaS app and I can only put a single engineer on it, I redirect you to a studio better suited.
What’s the scope? When we’re a fit, you get phases, duration, and pricing in writing.

First step

The first conversation is free, including the scope draft. By the end you either have a scoped proposal in your inbox, or a “Qaynaq isn’t the right fit — look at X or Y.” The second outcome is rare, but it happens, and I rank it above closing a wrong-fit project. Wrong-fit work is a loss for both sides.

To book the call: salam@qaynaq.com.