Why We Publish Our Prices (and Why Most Agencies Won't)
For years we quoted every project from scratch, like most agencies. Here is why we stopped, what three published plans changed for our clients, and what it tells you about any agency that still makes you ask.
Go to almost any web design agency’s website and look for a price. You will find a “Request a Quote” button, a contact form, maybe a line about “custom solutions for your unique needs.” What you will not find is a number.
We were that agency for a long time. Every project got its own quote, built from scratch, after a discovery call. It felt professional. It was also, we eventually admitted, mostly a way of avoiding a conversation we should have been having up front.
Today our prices are on the homepage. Three plans, one flat monthly price each, and a setup fee that we will waive if you commit to a year. This is the story of why we changed, and what it means for you when an agency will not tell you what things cost.
Why agencies hide their prices
There are three honest reasons, and one less honest one.
The first honest reason is that custom work is genuinely hard to price in advance. If every project is different, every quote is different, and a published number would either scare off small clients or underprice big ones.
The second is that agencies want the conversation. A discovery call is a sales call, and a prospect who has already invested twenty minutes talking to you is far more likely to sign than one who bounced off a price they did not like.
The third is fear of comparison. A published price can be compared with a competitor’s. A quote cannot, at least not easily.
The less honest reason is that hidden pricing lets an agency charge what it thinks each client will pay. Two businesses with the same needs can get very different quotes depending on how their budget sounded on the call. Most agencies would not describe it that way. But that is what “custom pricing” often means in practice.
What changed for us
Two things.
First, we stopped building every site as a one-off. Over hundreds of projects we had refined a process and a technology stack that worked, and we realized the “custom” part that clients actually valued, the design, the copy, the fit to their business, did not require reinventing the engineering every time. Once the foundation was standard, the cost became predictable. And once the cost was predictable, hiding it was just a habit.
Second, we listened to what prospects were actually asking. The first question was never “what is your design philosophy?” It was “what does this cost?” Making people book a call to find out was not serving them. It was serving us, and not even well, because the people who did book were often surprised by the number and the people who did not book never got to hear the answer.
What three plans changed
We now offer three plans that differ in exactly one way: the size of your site. Everything else, the custom design, the enterprise hosting, unlimited edits, SEO, forms, publishing, reporting, and support, is identical across all three. A business with a dozen pages pays $149 a month. A business with twenty-five pays $299. Larger and more complex sites start at $599.
The effect on our clients was immediate. Conversations start with the fit instead of the budget. Nobody wonders whether they got a worse deal than the business down the street, because there is no deal to get. The plan is the plan. And because the price is monthly rather than a large one-time number, the decision to start is a small one.
The effect on us was almost as good. We spend our time designing and building instead of writing proposals. We say no faster to projects that are not a fit. And we have to be good every month, because a client on a monthly plan can leave, which keeps us honest in a way that a paid-up-front project never did.
About the setup fee
We do charge a one-time setup fee, $499, $999, or $1,999 depending on plan size, because building a site is real work and we want clients who are serious. But we waive it entirely for anyone who commits to twelve months, and either way it is not due until you have seen and approved your design. If you do not love the mockup, you owe nothing.
We put that on the pricing page too, in plain language, because the alternative is a surprise, and surprises are what hidden pricing produces.
What to make of an agency that won’t tell you
We are not saying every agency with a “Request a Quote” button is hiding something. Some do genuinely custom work that cannot be priced without a conversation.
But if you are a small or medium-sized business looking for a website that works, and an agency cannot give you even a starting price, it is fair to ask why. The likeliest answer is that the price depends on you, and not in the way you would hope.
Ours does not. It is on the homepage. If it fits, the next step is a free mockup within 24 hours. If it does not, at least you found out without booking a call.
