Fixed-price products vs a dev agency
Agencies sell hours and change requests. We sell named deliverables with fixed EUR price: an investor demo, a revenue-ready SaaS core, or owned AI on Bedrock. You get a deployable asset in your AWS account, not estimate drift.
How Stantons Dev House differs from agencies
A typical agency scopes from a blank page every time and bills hourly or time-and-materials. Stantons Dev House maps your stage to one of three products with published tiers. Scope and price are fixed before we write code. You own the React source, data, and AWS infrastructure. Upgrade paths connect fundraising demos to revenue platforms without rebuilding from scratch.
What agencies optimize for
Most dev agencies win work with flexible statements of work and billable hours. That model works when you have an internal product owner, stable requirements, and budget for change requests. Pre-revenue founders rarely have all three.
Hourly billing rewards scope expansion. Discovery phases, design iterations, and integration surprises become line items. You may receive code, but ownership of AWS accounts, IaC, and handoff docs varies by agency and is often unclear until the end.
What fixed-price products optimize for
We optimize for a named outcome: a fundraising demo, a revenue-ready SaaS core, or owned Bedrock RAG. Scope is defined around workflows and tiers before kickoff. Price is fixed in EUR. You deploy to your AWS account and hold repo access from day one.
The upgrade path matters. The Investor Demo is built to connect to The Core Engine after you raise. The Core Engine accepts The AI Cortex without a platform rewrite. Smart Trady shows both engines on one live B2B product.
How to evaluate your next quote
Ask three questions on any proposal: What exact asset do I own at handoff? Which AWS account holds production? What is the fixed price if scope stays within the published tier?
If the answer is hourly estimates and TBD infrastructure, compare that total cost to a fixed product tier on our compare page. Book a demo when you want a guaranteed quote tied to deliverables, not velocity.
Red flags in agency statements of work
Watch for unlimited revision clauses, vague acceptance criteria, and hosting billed through the agency's cloud. Those patterns delay ownership and inflate total cost.
Fixed-price products name workflows, tiers, and handoff artifacts up front. You should know what ships before kickoff, not after sprint three.
A founder-friendly path off hourly billing
Map your next milestone to one product: Investor Demo for the pitch, Core Engine for revenue, AI Cortex for owned intelligence. That replaces discovery phases with a tier choice.
See our fixed price versus hourly agency resource for a longer breakdown. Book a demo when you want a EUR quote you can take to your board.