Buyers ask models what things cost
Cost is among the first questions anyone asks about a category, and assistants answer it using whoever published a number. If your page says “contact us”, you are not in that answer — your competitor’s range is, along with their framing of what is expensive and why.
This is a change in kind rather than degree. Under traditional search, a buyer researching cost saw a page of results and formed their own impression from several. Now one source often supplies the anchor figure, and every subsequent conversation — including the one with you — is negotiated against it.
Hidden pricing doesn’t stay hidden
The traditional argument for withholding price is that it forces a conversation. In practice a model will still answer the question, using review sites, forum posts, procurement threads, and third-party estimates you didn’t write and can’t correct. Silence doesn’t prevent the answer; it just removes you as its source.
Test this on your own business before deciding. Ask three assistants what your category typically costs and what your company charges specifically. Most teams doing this for the first time find a figure being quoted about them that nobody internally recognises, usually derived from an old proposal that leaked into a forum, a directory listing’s starting price, or a competitor’s comparison page.
If you won’t publish a number, the internet publishes one for you — and it’s usually wrong in the direction that costs you deals.
The three objections, and what they’re worth
“Our pricing is bespoke.” Almost all professional pricing is, and almost all of it still has a floor, a typical band, and identifiable drivers. Publishing those is not publishing a price list.
“Competitors will undercut us.” They can already discover your pricing through any lost deal, and buyers routinely share proposals. The information asymmetry you are protecting is usually smaller than you think, and it is worth less than the answers you forfeit.
“It will scare people off.” It will scare off the people who were never going to buy, which is the point. The cost of an unqualified enquiry is a call; the cost of never appearing in a cost question is every buyer who used it to build their shortlist.
What to publish instead of a price list
Four things, each of which is quotable in isolation. A typical band for a typical engagement, expressed as a range. The two or three variables that move a project up or down within it. A floor — the smallest piece of work you will take on. And what the number includes, so a buyer comparing you against a cheaper quote can see what is missing from theirs.
That last one does quiet competitive work. A buyer holding two quotes with a large gap is trying to explain the gap, and whoever explained it first tends to frame the comparison.
Write it so a passage can be lifted
Put the number in the same sentence as what it buys. “Most projects run between X and Y, driven mainly by how many distinct page templates are needed” survives being pulled out of the page. A figure in a table three sections below a heading does not, because the fragment that reaches a model has lost what the number refers to.
State units and periods explicitly — per project, per month, per user, per year — because an ambiguous number is worse than none once it is repeated without its context. The same discipline that makes any fact liftable applies here, and it pairs with schema that disambiguates what you sell.
Say who you’re wrong for
Naming the buyer you don’t serve — too small, too large, wrong sector, wrong stage — is one of the most quotable things you can publish, and it filters your inbound rather than deflating it. It also gives a model something specific to reason with, which is what separates a confident recommendation from a mention.
The phrasing that works is direct: “Below this size, an off-the-shelf product will serve you better, and here is what we would recommend.” Buyers remember that, and a surprising number return two years later when they have grown into you.
Keep it true, or don’t publish it
A published range becomes the anchor for every subsequent conversation, including ones you would rather start higher. That is an argument for setting it carefully, not for avoiding it — and it makes pricing pages a permanent entry on the list of facts that must still be true.
The teams most nervous about this are usually the ones whose pricing is inconsistent between deals. That is worth fixing on its own merits before it becomes a content problem, because the exercise of writing a defensible range tends to expose which past quotes were arbitrary.
How to tell whether it worked
Re-run the same three prompts a month after publishing and record whether your figure now appears and whether it is attributed to you. Then watch the composition of your inbound rather than its volume: the intended outcome is fewer, better-qualified enquiries, and a team reporting that fewer people are wasting their time is the result you were buying.