Why we believe in transparent pricing when many agencies hide theirs

"Contact us for a quote" gives you the next step and leaves out the number you came for. Until you've had the call, you can't tell whether the job fits your budget or how that supplier's price sits beside anyone else's.

We believe in transparent pricing, and our regular rates are published on our pricing page for anyone to read. A price page still leaves a lot unsaid. If you run a law office, a paralegal practice, a dental clinic, a doctor's office, an accounting firm or a veterinary hospital, here is what a published price can tell you about a supplier and what it can't, so you know which questions are left when you pick up the phone.

What hidden pricing costs both sides

Hidden pricing costs the buyer time and information, and it costs the supplier sales calls that could never have closed. Start with the buyer. To learn one number, you fill in a form, wait for a reply, find a slot between appointments and describe your practice to someone you have never met. You have handed over your name, your email and a fair picture of your business before you know whether the conversation was worth having.

The supplier pays as well. Someone has to prepare for that call and sit through it, and if your budget was a quarter of their lowest price, neither of you could have known until the end. Two busy people gave up part of a working day to learn what one line on a website could have told them.

The less obvious cost is comparison. Say you want three quotes for the same website. With hidden prices you can't shortlist on cost, because you can't see a cost until each supplier has finished its sales process. So you book the calls, sit through the discovery conversations and wait for the proposals, and each one arrives in its own format with its own definitions. By then you have spent the time you were hoping to save, and the supplier has decided the order in which you learned things.

A supplier can have fair reasons for keeping a number off its site. The cost to you stays the same whatever the reason.

What a published price does before anyone books a call

A published price lets you rule a supplier in or out in private, before anyone knows you looked. You read the number at your desk, hold it against what you had in mind and close the tab if it doesn't suit. You don't have to explain your budget to a stranger, and you don't have to find a polite way out of a second call.

That privacy suits someone in practice. A sole practitioner comparing suppliers between clients, or a clinic owner doing it after the last patient has gone, can get a first answer in the time it takes to read a page.

If you do book, you arrive having seen the number. You can spend the call on whether the work and the people suit you: who builds the thing, what the contract says, what happens when something breaks. The supplier can spend the same call on your job, with no price reveal to manage at the end of it.

You still have to find out whether the people are any good, and a price page won't do that for you. We put together a free guide, Get the most out of your first meeting, that we email to anyone who asks, for the part that happens once you are in the room.

What transparent pricing tells you about a supplier, and what it can't

Transparent pricing shows you how a supplier thinks about its own work. It shows you very little about whether that work is any good. You need answers on both before you sign.

What it tells you

A printed number means the supplier has costed the work well enough to commit to it in public. That is harder than it sounds, because an underpriced package keeps losing money for as long as the page stays up. Someone had to work out what the job takes before they could print it.

It also means the supplier is prepared to stand beside other people's numbers. As of November 2026, our Practice Website is $6,500 plus $25 a month for hosting, in Canadian dollars plus HST. You can put that next to any other figure you find, and we have no say in how you do it. Our pricing page is the current source for that number.

Pricing transparency hands you a regular rate to hold up against a quote. If a supplier publishes one figure and sends a proposal for another, you can ask what accounts for the difference.

What it can't tell you

A price page is silent on most of what decides whether you will be glad you hired someone:

• How good the work is.
• How fast anyone replies once you have paid.
• Whether your particular job fits the listed scope.
• Who does the work, and whether you ever get to speak to them.
• How the supplier behaves when something breaks on a Friday afternoon.

Live work fills part of that gap, so ask for addresses you can click and try them on your phone. The contract fills more of it. The rest comes from asking a straight question on a call and noticing whether you get a straight answer.

Some suppliers also show their work in public. Our SEO journal for October 2026 reports page-one Google rankings for 1,444 search phrases across the sites we monitor. Those are our own figures for the sites we manage, clients' included, and they promise nothing about what would happen on yours. Read a report like that for the same reason you read a price page: it shows you what a supplier is willing to have checked.

"No surprises" goes past the sticker price

A price only counts as transparent if you can work out what you will pay from it. What we are after is "transparent pricing so that there are no surprises", and the sticker is the easy part of that.

Canada's Competition Bureau offers a useful yardstick. Its page on drip pricing describes companies that "offer low prices to attract consumers" and then "add mandatory fees so that the advertised prices are not attainable." The Bureau says this "raises concerns under the Competition Act, unless the additional fixed charges or fees are imposed by the government on purchasers, such as sales tax." We are not grading anyone's website against that, our own included, and this isn't legal advice. As a buyer, though, you can borrow the plain question inside it: can I reach the advertised price?

What you should be able to read before you call

Five things belong where you can read them before you call. Tax is the first. Sales tax is the Bureau's own example of a charge imposed by government, and a page can still say so. Our figures are in Canadian dollars plus HST, and the pricing page prints that beside the price.

Recurring charges come next, and they are what changes a budget. A build price with no monthly figure beside it is half a number. As of November 2026, our hosting is $25 a month or $250 a year, and the page prints the monthly figure next to each build. We have set out what monthly website costs add up to over time, and for where market ranges sit, see how much a website costs in Canada in 2026.

Optional extras should each have their own line, so you can decline them. Our Site Care is one: as of November 2026 it is optional, at an added $95 a month, for up to one hour of small content edits and a monthly plain-English report. Our page states that everything else on it is optional and priced per line.

Ownership terms belong in the open as well. Ours say that ownership transfers on full payment, subject to pre-existing and third-party licences. Clients can obtain a downloadable ZIP of their website code, and hands-on migration assistance and cancellation timing follow the service agreement.

That leaves the agreement itself. Our page tells you that the service agreement confirms deliverables, ownership, cancellation and handover terms before work begins. From any supplier, ask to read that document before you commit, because the page can only summarise it.

What we still quote case by case

Our larger work is quoted per project, because we would rather say so than print a number we couldn't keep to. As of November 2026, Authority / Custom is from $10,000 plus $25 a month for hosting, plus HST, and we quote it per project as a fixed fee. It covers client portals, dashboards, payments, booking systems and custom applications. On the marketing side, specialist research, filming, complex scenes, community replies, ad spend and technical SEO repairs are quoted separately.

A client portal can't honestly sit on a menu, because two portals can share a name and little else. One firm wants clients to log in and download a signed retainer. Another wants separate access for staff and clients, with payments and documents tied to each file. The price depends on how many kinds of user log in, what each may see and what the system connects to, and we can't know any of that until you tell us.

That leaves "from", the least transparent word on a price page, ours included. Our "from $10,000", as of November 2026, gives you a floor and says nothing about the ceiling. When you see the word on anyone's page, ask what the listed amount includes and what pushes it up, then get your own number as a fixed fee in writing before work begins.

The honest downsides of publishing prices

Publishing prices costs the supplier something, and the costs explain why a sensible firm might decide against it.

Some people read the number and leave without calling. We can't tell you how many, because nobody sends a note on the way out. A few of them might have hired us once they heard the reasoning behind the price, and we will never meet them.

Competitors can read the page too. A rival can learn our prices in the time it takes to open a browser tab, and we are poorly placed to object, since the same page prints a comparison table of other vendors' figures.

A printed price doesn't stop anyone asking for less, either. We have written about why we don't negotiate our fees, and that is where the subject can stay.

And a printed price dates. A pricing page can be corrected in a minute, while an article that quotes it can sit in search results for years. That is why the prices in this article are labelled "as of November 2026", and why we name the pricing page as the current source. Prices change, and the page changes when they do. If this article and that page ever disagree, believe the page.

How to read any supplier's pricing page

Read a pricing page the way you would read a contract, looking for what has been left out. The Competition Bureau's 2024 piece, The ambush of hidden fees, gives a fair standard for shoppers: "You shouldn't have to scroll down or read the fine print to find the total price of an item." Agency pricing pages vary a great deal in layout, and these questions work on all of them, whether you are looking at a web developer, a marketing agency or a software vendor.

1. Is tax stated, or do you find out on the invoice?
2. Do recurring charges sit next to the price, or somewhere further down?
3. What does "from" depend on, and does the page say?
4. Who owns the work once you have paid in full, and are any licences excluded?
5. How do you leave, and what happens to your files when you do?
6. What is in the contract that isn't on the page, and can you read it before you commit?
7. Is there a date, or some other sign that someone keeps the page current?
8. Are optional items priced per line, or folded into a bundle you can't take apart?

Write down the answers the page doesn't give you. Those are your questions for the call, and they will tell you more than the sales presentation. Once you have proposals in hand, our article on comparing website design quotes with one scope worksheet lines them up for you.

Should you put prices on your website?

If you can define a service well enough to price it, and your regulator's rules allow it, there is a good case for yes. Your visitors get the same things a buyer gets from our page: a private first answer, and a first meeting that can start on the work itself. A simple will, a tax return or a new-patient exam can be described clearly enough for a reader to know what the figure buys.

The case against is plain from your side of the desk too. A contested family file or a sick animal doesn't arrive with a known scope, and a printed figure can lead a reader to assume theirs is the simple version. You will lose some people who would have stayed for the explanation, and your colleagues down the street will know your rates by lunchtime.

Check your regulator's rules first

Do this before you print anything. Frank Alfano spent 33 years as a courtroom paralegal in Ontario (1990 to 2024), and Jana Smith, his partner in the business, is a paralegal, so we know to send you to the source. This article gives no legal advice on your regulator's rules.

In Ontario, the Law Society of Ontario's Rules of Professional Conduct, rule 4.2-2, lets a lawyer advertise fees on three conditions. The advertising must be reasonably precise about the services offered for each fee quoted. It must state whether other amounts, such as disbursements, third-party charges and taxes, will be charged in addition to the fee. And the lawyer must strictly adhere to the advertised fee in every applicable case. Paralegal Rules of Conduct, rule 8.03(3), sets the same three conditions for paralegals. Read both yourself before you publish a fee, and ask the Law Society if you aren't sure.

Dentists, doctors, accountants and vets should go to their own college or professional body with the same question, wherever they practise. We make no claim about those rules, because they aren't ours to summarise.

Read the page, then ask what it left out

A published price gets you to the useful questions sooner. Read our rates, or anyone's, and write down what the page didn't say. When you want to go through that list with us, book a consult.

Frequently asked questions

What is transparent pricing?

Transparent pricing means a supplier shows what its work costs before you have to ask, along with the charges that go with the headline figure, such as tax, recurring fees and optional extras. You can read the numbers, see what each one covers and decide whether to call. Some work still has to be scoped and quoted, and a transparent supplier says which work that is.

Why do agencies hide their pricing?

The fairest reason we can see for agencies to keep prices off their sites is that scope varies, and one figure can mislead when two clients want very different work. Some may also prefer to explain their value on a call before a buyer sees a number. Either way, you can ask for a typical range and what moves it, which is what a page on agency pricing would otherwise have shown you.

What does a published price not tell you?

A published price doesn't tell you how good the work is, how quickly the supplier replies, who does the work or how the supplier behaves when something breaks. It also can't confirm that your job fits the listed scope. To fill those gaps, look at live work you can click, read the contract and ask direct questions on a call.

What should I look for in marketing agency pricing?

Look for what each price covers, whether tax is stated and whether recurring charges sit next to the headline figure. Check what "from" depends on, whether optional items are priced per line and who owns the work once you have paid. Then ask how you can leave and what happens to your files, and read the contract for anything the page doesn't say.

Should you put prices on your website?

Publishing prices is worth considering for any service you can define well enough to price, as long as your regulator's rules allow it. Visitors can rule themselves in or out privately, and the people who book have already seen the number. Work that varies a lot is harder to price in advance. Lawyers, paralegals, doctors, dentists, accountants and vets should check their own regulator's rules first.

Can lawyers and paralegals advertise their fees?

Ontario lawyers and paralegals may advertise fees if three conditions are met. The advertising must be reasonably precise about the services for each fee quoted, and must state whether other amounts, such as disbursements, third-party charges and taxes, are added. The lawyer or paralegal must also strictly adhere to the advertised fee in every applicable case. See Law Society of Ontario rule 4.2-2 and rule 8.03(3). This article gives no legal advice. Other professions should check their own regulator.

Does Exhibit A Media publish its prices?

Yes. Exhibit A Media's regular rates are published on its pricing page. As of November 2026, a Practice Website is $6,500 plus $25 a month for hosting, in Canadian dollars plus HST. Authority / Custom work is from $10,000 plus hosting and is quoted per project. Prices change, and the page changes when they do, so check it for current figures.