In the design world, there's an eternal problem — how to quickly and accurately estimate project costs. Every UX designer has faced a situation where a client asks for an estimate "by tomorrow", while quality design estimation requires time for analysis and reflection. This exact pain point led us to create Estimaty — a tool that solves the estimation problem once and for all.
We didn't just create another calculator for designers. Estimaty is the result of years of client work experience, analysis of thousands of projects, and understanding that the industry needs a radically new solution for fast and accurate cost estimation.
The Problem With UX Estimates Today
The current UX project estimation system is broken. Designers spend hours preparing commercial proposals, often work for free during the planning stage, and clients receive inaccurate cost forecasts. This problem affects all process participants and requires a systematic solution.
Clients Want Fast Answers. Teams Need Time.
Clients live in a world of instant solutions. They're accustomed to getting answers to their questions in seconds — from Google searches to food ordering. When it comes to design estimation, they expect the same speed. "How much will our app redesign cost?" — a question they want answered today, not in a week.
On the other hand, quality estimation requires deep analysis. Designers need to study technical specifications, understand business goals, evaluate each screen's complexity, and consider research requirements. This process cannot happen instantly without losing calculation quality.
This exact conflict between speed and quality creates the main industry problem. Designers either give quick inaccurate estimates or lose clients due to lengthy planning processes.
Manual Estimates Are Inconsistent and Painful
The manual estimation process suffers from human factors. The same project can receive radically different UI UX design costs from different specialists. This creates problems for both clients and designers themselves.
An experienced designer can spend 3 to 8 hours preparing a detailed estimate for a complex project. This is unbillable time that eats into business profitability. Many agencies are forced to build these costs into service prices, making them less competitive.
Estimaty subjectivity leads to unpleasant surprises. A project planned for 2 weeks stretches to a month. The cost included in the estimate doesn't cover actual expenses. Clients are dissatisfied, designers work at a loss.
What Estimaty Actually Does
Estimaty revolutionizes project estimation approaches using artificial intelligence power. Instead of hours of calculations, the system analyzes projects in seconds and produces detailed cost estimates. But this isn't just a fast calculator — it's a smart assistant that understands UX project specifics.
AI That Understands UX Project Scopes
Estimaty's artificial intelligence is trained on thousands of real UX projects. The system understands the difference between a simple landing page and complex dashboard, between mobile application and web platform. AI analyzes project descriptions in natural language and automatically determines work scope for accurate estimation.
The system recognizes key factors affecting cost: number of screens, logic complexity, research requirements, responsive design needs. AI considers interconnections between different work stages and adjusts design estimation accounting for synergy.
Machine learning allows the system to constantly improve. Each new project enriches the knowledge base, making subsequent estimates even more accurate and adapted to real market conditions.
Instant Time and Cost Breakdowns
Estimaty doesn't just provide a final cost figure — the system shows detailed breakdown for each work stage. Clients see how much time research, wireframing, UI design, prototyping, and testing will take. Such transparency increases trust and simplifies decision-making.
Automatic detailing includes all UX process aspects. The system understands when user interviews, persona creation, and information architecture are needed. AI automatically adds these stages to estimates and calculates their impact on total cost.
Calculation flexibility allows adapting estimates to specific agency needs. Hourly rates, complexity coefficients, and regional market features can be configured. This makes estimates maximally relevant for each user.
Who It's For
Estimaty is created for everyone who faces the need to quickly and accurately estimate UX projects. The tool adapts to different user type needs, from large agencies to individual freelancers.
- UX/UI Agencies get the ability to standardize the estimation process across the entire team. There will no longer be situations where different managers give radically different UI UX design costs for similar projects. Agencies can respond to client requests instantly without losing potential deals.
- Freelancers save precious time on commercial proposal preparation. Instead of hours of calculations, estimation takes minutes. Freelancers can process more requests and focus on creative work instead of administrative tasks.
- Founders and Product Managers get the ability to quickly assess design budgets without needing agency consultations. They can plan product development understanding real design costs for each stage.
And when you have an accurate estimate and are ready to bring the project to reality, contact Glow Team — an award-winning design agency that specializes in creating outstanding user interfaces for startups and SMB companies in the US and Europe.
Why We Built It
The Estimaty creation story began with our own pain. As an agency, we constantly faced traditional project estimation problems. Clients demanded quick answers, while quality cost estimation required time and resources.
We Got Tired of Losing Leads to "Let Me Get Back to You"
The phrase "give us time to think" became our nightmare. Every time we asked for estimation time, we risked losing a client. In the world of instant solutions, delay equals refusal. We understood we needed to radically change our approach to design estimation.
Lost lead analysis showed sad statistics: more than 40% of potential clients left without waiting for our commercial proposal. They found agencies that could give at least approximate estimates immediately. Quality took second place to response speed.
We realized the industry needed a tool that combines speed with quality. This is how the Estimaty idea was born — a system that can give accurate cost estimates instantly.
We Needed Speed Without Sacrificing Thinking
The main challenge was automating the estimation process while maintaining expert analysis quality. We didn't want to create a primitive calculator that gives inaccurate estimates. We needed a system that thinks like an experienced designer.
We analyzed hundreds of our projects, identified patterns and regularities. It turned out that most estimates follow predictable schemes. Certain project types require similar work stages and time investments.
These insights formed the basis of Estimaty algorithms. The system learned to recognize project types, evaluate their complexity, and calculate UI UX design cost with experienced project manager accuracy.
How It Works (In 3 Simple Steps)
The Estimaty workflow is maximally simplified. We removed everything unnecessary, leaving only essential steps for getting accurate estimates.
- Drop in your project description. Simply describe the project in your own words or upload technical specifications. AI understands natural language and automatically extracts key information for analysis.
- Get an instant breakdown. The system analyzes the description and generates detailed cost estimates in seconds. You get breakdown by stages, timeframes, and cost of each element.
- Edit, export, send. You can edit any positions, add specific requirements, or change parameters. The ready commercial proposal with cost calculation exports with one click.
And remember: after getting an accurate estimate, the most important thing is quality project implementation. If you need a team of professionals who will turn your ideas into an outstanding product, Glow Team will help create designs that users will truly love.
From Internal Tool to Public Beta
We built it for ourselves, then opened it up — Estimaty started as our agency's internal tool. We wanted to solve our own estimation problems and increase work efficiency. The result exceeded expectations — commercial proposal preparation time decreased 10-fold, and estimation accuracy increased by 35%.
Colleagues from other agencies became interested in our solution. We realized the problem is universal and our tool can help the entire industry. This led to the decision for Estimaty's public launch.
Why we're offering a white-label version — we understand branding importance for design agencies. Clients should see their partner's corporate style, not a third-party tool. The white-label version allows complete design estimation integration into existing business processes while maintaining unified client communication.
What's Next for Estimaty
Templates, CRM features, proposal automation — we constantly develop Estimaty functionality. Plans include templates for typical projects, CRM system integration, and commercial proposal creation automation. The goal is to make estimation even simpler and more efficient.
Feedback from early users shows high tool demand. Users note significant time savings on estimate preparation and increased lead conversion thanks to quick responses to UI UX design cost requests.
Try Estimaty Yourself
Estimaty is available for testing today. Try creating your first estimate and see how simple design cost calculation can be. The tool that changed our approach to client work is now available to all industry professionals.
And if you need a team to bring the project to life after accurate estimation, don't forget about Glow Team — we use agile methodologies and modern UX/UI design approaches to create products that truly work for business and users.
