Somebody is on your website at 9pm comparing you with two other electricians. Yours says "call for a free estimate". The second says "service calls from $89". The third has a page of typical job prices. Guess which two get the call in the morning, and guess which one of those gets a call from a person who already knows roughly what they are going to spend.
Publishing prices is not a yes or no question. It is a question of which prices, in which format, and which jobs you keep off the page entirely.
Four formats, four jobs
| Format | Example | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed price | Water heater flush $149 | Repeatable jobs with no surprises |
| From-price | Panel upgrade from $2,400 | Jobs with a known floor and a variable top |
| Range | Tankless install $3,500 to $5,500 | Jobs where the variables are known but wide |
| Service-call fee | $89 diagnostic, applied to the repair | Everything that starts with a look |
Each line on your services list should carry one of those, or nothing at all, on purpose.
The service-call fee is the price that matters most
If you publish one number, publish this one. A stated diagnostic or trip fee does three things. It filters out the person who wants a free opinion and no job. It tells the serious customer that you will show up and what showing up costs. And it takes you out of the "free estimate" arms race, where everyone drives for nothing and prices the lost time into the jobs they do win.
Say what it covers and what happens to it: "$89 to come out and diagnose, credited against the repair if you go ahead." That sentence does more for your close rate than any photo.
From-prices are honest if the floor is real
A from-price works when the number really is the bottom and you can say in one line what moves it. "Panel upgrade from $2,400, depending on amperage, meter location and whether the utility needs to disconnect" is useful. "From $99" on a job that has never once cost $99 is a complaint waiting to happen.
Test every from-price against your last ten invoices for that job. If none of them came in at the floor, the floor is wrong.
The jobs you never price on a web page
Some work cannot be priced from a browser, and pretending otherwise costs you either the job or the margin:
- Anything you have to open up to see. Remodels, repipes, rewires, roof replacements where the deck condition is unknown.
- Anything with a permit path you do not control yet. Additions, structural work, service upgrades where the utility sets the schedule.
- Anything where the customer's choices set the price. Tile, fixtures, cabinets. The labor might be quotable; the job is not.
For these, the page should say so plainly and tell the customer how pricing works instead: "Kitchen remodels are quoted after a visit. Most of ours fall between $X and $Y, and we will tell you where yours sits before you commit to anything." That is a price page too. It prices the process rather than the job.
A web price is not a contract
Whatever you publish, say that it is a guide and that the written quote is the price. This is not only sensible; in some states a written contract is the law for anything but small work. California's licensing board states that there must be a written contract for all home improvement projects over $500, combined labor and materials. Your website is where the customer finds out roughly what things cost. The contract is where they find out exactly.
A second reason to keep the page a guide: your rate is not the trade's wage. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median electrician at $30.38 an hour, and a homeowner who has seen that figure next to your $150 an hour needs the page to explain the truck, the insurance, the license and the licensed person who turned up, not to hide the number.
How this looks on the site
Your services list is where this lives, one line per service, each with a fixed price, a from-price or no price at all. In Webkio that is how a service line is built, and the no-price services can point at the quote request form instead, so the customer who needs a visit asks for one with the job details attached. If you want the whole page structure, how to make a trade business website has it.
FAQ
Will publishing prices lose me jobs to cheaper competitors?
It loses you the customers who were only ever going to buy on price, and it does that before they cost you a drive. The customers who stay are the ones comparing what the price includes, which is a comparison you can win.
Should I publish my hourly rate?
Usually not as a bare number. Publish the service-call fee and typical job prices instead; an hourly rate invites a comparison with wages rather than with finished work, and the customer is buying finished work.
Can I show prices for some services and not others?
Yes, and you should. Fixed prices on the repeatable jobs, from-prices where the floor is real, a service-call fee for diagnostics, and a plain sentence on the big jobs explaining that they are quoted after a visit.