Originally Posted by k0nr4d

I sometimes ask budget as well but only when quoting large projects, and it is to see if we're more or less "on the same page" as the client. A large project takes a long time to quote, and if it's $100k in development work and the client is expecting to spend $1500 and simply doesn't have the budget to realize their project, then there's no sense spending hours figuring out how long something will take to code.

On the other hand, if they have a $100k project but a $50k or $70k budget for i nstance, then we can often talk about features they might not really need and cobble together a deal.

Originally Posted by k0nr4d

There's a difference between a product and a service. A car costs what a car costs, you can check online what car X costs roughly and you can establish an approximate market value. For a service like design, coding, seo, etc since each project in individual, it requires reading through documentation, thinking how long stuff will take etc. This can take even hours on larger projects and then it turns out the guy was expecting to pay like 5% of what it will cost to do it.

I sometimes give a ballpark, and say "if that's within your budget let me know and i'll work out a more exact quote".