Pricing Transparency: Why We Publish Our Price Ranges on Our Website

When we put "brand websites from NT$150,000, e-commerce from NT$400,000" directly on our website, the first reaction from peers is usually: "Won't that scare clients away?" Our answer: yes — and that's exactly the point.

The industry norm is price secrecy — "Contact us for a custom quote." The rationale sounds professional: every project is different; we need to understand your requirements first. Half of that is true. The other half, frankly, is about keeping room to maneuver: sizing up the client's budget before naming a number, or getting them into a meeting room first and negotiating from there. We used to do this too — until we honestly ran the numbers.

The hidden cost of secret pricing is higher than you think

Without published prices, inquiries do increase — but what are the extra ones? Clients with a NT$30,000 budget asking about NT$400,000 work. Every such inquiry carries a full cost: email back-and-forth, a requirements interview, a proposal deck, and then a mutually awkward ending at the moment the quote lands. The client wasted their time and feels affronted; the hours we burned eventually become cost, passed through into the quotes of the clients who do sign.

In other words, the cost of opaque pricing is subsidized by your real clients. Once that clicks, publishing prices stops being a question of courage and becomes a question of arithmetic.

Published prices scare away the people who were never going to sign; every inquiry that remains is serious.

What happened after we published the prices

Our old website was a template site with secret pricing, and the result was years of zero inquiries — no one even got the chance to be scared off; we've owned up to that history in another article. After the redesign put pricing on the page, the changes were concrete:

• Fewer inquiries, but every one counts. People who reach out already know roughly what it costs, so the conversation starts at "what do you need" instead of mutual budget-probing. The quality of the first meeting is completely different.
• Trust starts earlier. Before ever meeting us, the client has confirmed one thing: this company doesn't price by sizing you up. For a relationship that will run for months, that first impression is worth real money.
• It forced us to standardize our services. Daring to write "from NT$150,000" means you must be able to say clearly what NT$150,000 includes and what pushes the price up. Transparent pricing requires transparent scope, which in turn keeps sharpening our service definitions. A service whose price you can't write down is usually a service you haven't figured out you're selling.

"From" isn't a sales trick — it's an honest floor

Finally, a word about "from," because it's often treated as a synonym for trap. Our usage: it's the minimum cost of doing this work at a quality we're willing to put our name on. Below that number, we'd have to cut things we refuse to cut — end-to-end tests, the mobile experience, the full pre-launch checklist. Those aren't add-ons; they're the floor. That's why the price starts there.

What if your budget doesn't reach it? We'll say so directly — and often advise you not to build yet, or to solve it more cheaply. We've done that many times, and written about it. Transparent pricing and honest refusal are two faces of the same belief: lay the information out so the client can actually decide. A business lasts not because every deal closes, but because everyone who came through the door leaves feeling they weren't played.