Winn

Offering rails is a great option for clients in todays market, offering rails usually means that you can offer a quick turn around time and a solid product production ready. When explaining how long it will take vs PHP the client will always lean to Rails. The client wants the product and wants it now. They hate waiting or months and months to get a project done. The waiting will also allow more time for your client to back out of the project mid way.

When developing in rails it cuts up to 50% of the time vs building it in PHP with no pre built framework. The client looks at this as saving time and money, and also offering status as it’s now become a status symbol to use Rails. You are still able to charge your hourly rate and plus some for offering the latest and the greatest. Most clients will not even blink when you hand them the bill/quote, as you have met three major needs (saving time, saving money, and status).

But the question comes up. Do i offer rails and get paid more per hour and get done quickly, or do i get paid the same rate and take longer to do so? Well this is how i look at it, if you can fit more projects in and get paid more hourly why not? If it takes me two weeks to finish a project vs one month, that means i can stick two projects in the time of one and that equals more money and happy clients.

So do i offer rails over PHP? If the project is open to it then yes, i will offer Rails over PHP. I would rather have a happy client and be able to move on to a new project after a short time to keep the cash flow coming in.