Budget Or No Budget

In the web design game client regularly are in two minds as you whether to provide their tendering agencies with any indications of their budget. The logic falls into two camps:

Do not supply a budget:

• I don’t know what budget we are willing to allocate
• I want the pitching digital agencies to put a case for projects within each price range and I will see which my stakeholder prefer
• If I supply a budget the firms will trim functionality and we might miss out on something we really need
• We might be pigeon holed as an inappropriate or low value client
• The agency may chose not to submit and we will miss out on hearing their ideas
  
  

Do supply a budget:

• We want to see the best each agency can provide within our price range we trust that the agency will be mature enough to suggest that more can be done and to communicate what that is.
• We want to be able to compare apples will apples
• If the price differences are too large we may have challenges comparing agencies simply because one suggested more than another

Neither answer is right or wrong. If you consider the pros and cons of each you can make an informed choice.