Why fixed pricing beats hourly for home services

## The hourly rate trap

An hourly rate looks fair on paper. In practice it rewards the slowest pro on the crew and punishes the fastest. The pro who finishes a bathroom clean in 45 minutes gets paid less than the pro who takes two hours doing the same job — even though the customer clearly prefers the 45-minute clean. Everyone in the equation is misaligned.

Fixed pricing fixes it. The customer knows the number before they pay. The pro is paid for the outcome, not the effort. The platform doesn't need to litigate who was on the clock and who wasn't. Everyone gets exactly what they signed up for.

What breaks with hourly pricing

Hourly pricing sounds simple until you look at what actually happens:

• Estimate creep. "Two hours minimum" becomes three hours because there was traffic, because the pro had to go buy a part, because they had to eat lunch, because the last job ran long.
• Adversarial customers. Customers watch the clock. They rush the pro. They dispute the invoice.
• Slow pros win. The pro who bills five hours for a two-hour job earns more than the pro who does it right in two.
• No SEO surface. "Handyman near me" isn't a shoppable listing when your price is "call for a quote." Google promotes pages with real prices, real reviews, and real availability.

Fixed pricing solves all four in one move.

What Fixly's fixed pricing actually covers

Every SKU on the Fixly services page lists a single price for a defined scope of work. Some examples:

• Rekey Locks (up to 4) — $49, ~60 min
• TV Mount — $59, ~60 min
• Drywall Patch (up to 3 holes) — $69, ~90 min
• Ceiling Fan Install — $89, ~90 min
• Interior Room Painting (1 room, walls) — $249, ~4 hrs
• Move-In Condition Report — $99, ~60 min

The scope is written into the SKU. "Up to 4 locks." "Up to 3 drywall holes." "One accent wall." If the job is bigger than the SKU, the pro quotes an add-on before starting. If it's smaller, the customer still pays the SKU — because the pro still made the trip, still brought the tools, still gave up the two-hour block on their calendar.

How the numbers are set

Two constraints:

• The price must undercut the low end of Angi's published range for the same SKU in the same market.
• The pro must earn at least $40/hour after platform take-rate (20%) and typical drive time.

Where those constraints collide — usually on very small jobs — we set the price at the pro's floor and let Angi be $30 more expensive. Where they don't, we set the price ~20% below Angi's low quote.

Why the pro gets paid the same regardless

The pro's payout is fixed the moment they claim the job. It doesn't matter if they finish in 40 minutes or 90. Two things follow from that:

• Fast pros get to do more jobs per day. A pro who does five one-hour jobs earns five times the base. Speed is directly rewarded.
• No one is punished for being competent. Being good at your job doesn't reduce your take.

What happens when the scope is bigger than the SKU

Every SKU has an "add-on" surface. If the pro arrives and finds five drywall holes instead of three, they use the in-job add-on flow to quote the extra work at a per-unit rate. The customer approves in the app. If they decline, the pro completes the original three-hole SKU and leaves the other two — no dispute, no drama.

We only bill work the customer explicitly approves. That's the whole promise of fixed pricing.

What we won't do fixed-price

A few categories are genuinely un-fixable:

• Deep plumbing diagnostics — a mystery leak inside a wall is quote-only after the pro sees it
• Electrical panel work — code-restricted and scope-variable
• Multi-day remodels — projects with real design decisions belong to a general contractor, not an on-demand pro

For everything else — cleans, condition reports, common handyman fixes, smart-home installs, painting — a fixed price is the honest way to sell it.

Why this matters for you

If you're a customer: you'll never get surprised at the invoice. What you paid at checkout is what the job costs.

If you're a pro: you get paid for outcomes, not for hours logged. Being good at your job actually pays.

Browse fixed-price services or start the pro onboarding wizard.