Every software firm offers a free proposal. What you actually receive is a document written to win the work, not to describe it accurately. Scope is left vague on purpose, because vagueness is what makes the change request profitable later.
We charge for discovery because it changes what the document is for. When you have paid for it, we owe you an honest architecture and a number we will stand behind, not an optimistic one designed to get past your board.
The output is a technical scope, a data model, a clickable prototype and a fixed quote. All of it is yours. If you take it to another firm and build it there, we have still done our job, and roughly one client in six does exactly that.
What this filters out is the client who wants six speculative proposals before deciding anything. What it attracts is the team that already knows they are building something and wants the scoping done properly.
The commercial effect has been the opposite of what people expect. Our close rate went up, not down, because by the time we quote, both sides understand the same system.
