This is what we charge, published rather than quoted behind a meeting: fixed terms, no retainers. Two offers are decided and carried below word for word — Spotly host commission for venues, and the demurrage claim desk for chartering and shipping desks — including the exact numbers, the floors, and what you pay when nothing is recovered.
Two offers, priced in public
Studios in Kuwait and the wider GCC usually quote in private and bill monthly. We publish fixed terms and no retainers instead, because the two questions a buyer actually has — what does it cost, and when does it stop — should not take three meetings to answer. Below are the two offers we have decided, carried word for word, side by side. Anything outside them is scoped and quoted once, up front; the ranges we work from are in design and development pricing in Kuwait.
Spotly host terms: 12% host-side, KWD 0.500 minimum, first 3 bookings free
Spotly is our booking product for venues. The host terms are fixed and identical for everyone:
- 12% commission, host-side. Taken from the venue on a completed booking. The guest pays the listed price with nothing added on top.
- Minimum KWD 0.500 per booking. On very small bookings the percentage does not cover payment processing and support, so a floor applies.
- First 3 bookings free. No commission at all on your first three completed bookings — the channel has to prove it sends paying guests before it costs you anything.
There is no listing fee, no monthly fee and no setup fee. A venue that takes no bookings pays nothing, and there is no line item to cancel. In practice: a KWD 25 party-room booking carries KWD 3.000 commission; a KWD 4 soft-play entry carries the KWD 0.500 floor rather than KWD 0.480. If you run a kids venue, the step-by-step version of listing is in Spotly listing for Kuwait kids venues.
Demurrage claim desk: 15% of recovery, nothing recovered nothing owed, first fixture free
Demurrage is the daily amount owed when a vessel is held beyond agreed laytime. Claims go unfiled more often than owners admit, because assembling the statement of facts, the notice of readiness and the laytime calculation takes more sustained attention than a busy chartering desk has spare. Our claim desk files them on these terms:
- 15% of recovery. Charged on money actually received, never on the amount claimed.
- Nothing recovered, nothing owed. A claim that fails costs you nothing at all.
- First fixture free. The first fixture we work carries no fee, whatever it recovers.
Worked example, on a single fixture:
- Cargo: 12,000 t
- Demurrage rate: USD 9,500 per day
- Recovered: USD 28,500 — three days on demurrage
- Our fee: USD 4,275 — 15% of USD 28,500
On a first fixture that same recovery would carry a fee of zero. This is a contingent fee structure, and we use it deliberately: we are paid out of money that was not going to arrive otherwise, so your incentive and ours point in the same direction from the first email.
Why no retainers
A retainer prices access, not outcome. It bills the same whether the month produced a shipped feature or a status call, which is precisely the condition under which AI and automation work quietly stalls — the pattern we keep running into is set out in why AI projects fail. Fixed terms force the opposite discipline on us: we earn when a booking completes or a claim lands, and not before. They also remove the negotiation that normally eats the first two weeks of an engagement. We took the same position when we built instant quoting into PrintIt, where a print job is priced on the spot from live inputs instead of by a quote that arrives two days later — the mechanics of doing that in your own business are in AI quotation automation.
What fixed terms do not cover
Custom build work is not sold this way, and we will not pretend otherwise. An Arabic AI assistant, an internal agent wired into your ERP, a bilingual mobile app — those are scoped, quoted as one number against a stated deliverable, and invoiced on milestones. There is no monthly tail after handover unless you ask for hosting and support, which is priced separately and cancellable in writing. If that is the conversation you need, start at our AI services page and send the scope. You get a number and a date back, not a subscription.