I will write my response both as a system provider and also a customer.
As a customer first, nothing ticks me off more than going to a website to find out information on a product or service only to find "Call now" for pricing. So what do I do? I close that tab and I look at the competitors. After a few website I usually find someone that is honest enough to list pricing. Most customers understand that depending on the needs the prices may change as long as it is clearly spelled out on the website. Even if the provider has a complicated pricing structure due to the nature of their product offering being diverse, there is no reason it cannot be explained on the website using a simple pricing calculator (EX:, "How many users?", "How many lots?", "How many vehicles per lot?", "Do you need X?", "Do you need Y?", etc).
Giving the perspective totally from the customer, if there is no pricing then the provider is hiding something from me. I know that I am not alone in this and I know that by not listing prices businesses loose customers.
Using the example of Salesforce. I spent about 30 mins late one night trying to figure out the pricing structure and gave up, I never called them, never sent in an inquiry, etc. So they lost out on the possibility of a sale because I was confused as to what product I wanted & what the price was. It is like purchasing insurance, too many overlapping packages. With each package taking away something critical you wanted from the previous package. If they would have had a simple pricing calculator that was easy to find that asked me "How many employees ?", "Do you want to handle tech support requests","Do you want surveys for your customers", etc, "Okay, Steven your price is $1,500 per month". If it would've been that simple I would have slapped down my American Express and signed up at 3am. Instead what did I do? I went to the programmers the next morning and said "I need A,B,C added to our internal CRM, can you do that?", after a few minutes they said yes. Moral of the story? Don't confuse customers with too many packages & do not hide prices, because if you do a large percentage will go elsewhere.
From a system provider's perspective. It can be difficult to list prices, especially when (even when justified) the prices are higher than some of the competition. This could be because your service offers more functionally and value behind the scenes that is not immediately evident during a 30 second glance of the website. In some cases listing "Only $2,000 per month" will scare some customers away that are currently paying $250 a month for their website. What they do not know is maybe that $2,000 replaces $5,000 a month in other costs they are currently paying and signing up with XYZ Provider for $2k is a bargain. For this there is no easy "one-size-fits-all" method. The best I can advise is to clearly lay out your prices so that customers understand what they are getting and for how much.
This is why at AutoCorner we are not afraid to list our prices on our website, our brochures, ads, etc. Of course we do have a few "add-ons" that will take your price up a bit (extra domain names, email boxes, etc), but those are clearly laid out and are never a surprise.
As a customer first, nothing ticks me off more than going to a website to find out information on a product or service only to find "Call now" for pricing. So what do I do? I close that tab and I look at the competitors. After a few website I usually find someone that is honest enough to list pricing. Most customers understand that depending on the needs the prices may change as long as it is clearly spelled out on the website. Even if the provider has a complicated pricing structure due to the nature of their product offering being diverse, there is no reason it cannot be explained on the website using a simple pricing calculator (EX:, "How many users?", "How many lots?", "How many vehicles per lot?", "Do you need X?", "Do you need Y?", etc).
Giving the perspective totally from the customer, if there is no pricing then the provider is hiding something from me. I know that I am not alone in this and I know that by not listing prices businesses loose customers.
Using the example of Salesforce. I spent about 30 mins late one night trying to figure out the pricing structure and gave up, I never called them, never sent in an inquiry, etc. So they lost out on the possibility of a sale because I was confused as to what product I wanted & what the price was. It is like purchasing insurance, too many overlapping packages. With each package taking away something critical you wanted from the previous package. If they would have had a simple pricing calculator that was easy to find that asked me "How many employees ?", "Do you want to handle tech support requests","Do you want surveys for your customers", etc, "Okay, Steven your price is $1,500 per month". If it would've been that simple I would have slapped down my American Express and signed up at 3am. Instead what did I do? I went to the programmers the next morning and said "I need A,B,C added to our internal CRM, can you do that?", after a few minutes they said yes. Moral of the story? Don't confuse customers with too many packages & do not hide prices, because if you do a large percentage will go elsewhere.
From a system provider's perspective. It can be difficult to list prices, especially when (even when justified) the prices are higher than some of the competition. This could be because your service offers more functionally and value behind the scenes that is not immediately evident during a 30 second glance of the website. In some cases listing "Only $2,000 per month" will scare some customers away that are currently paying $250 a month for their website. What they do not know is maybe that $2,000 replaces $5,000 a month in other costs they are currently paying and signing up with XYZ Provider for $2k is a bargain. For this there is no easy "one-size-fits-all" method. The best I can advise is to clearly lay out your prices so that customers understand what they are getting and for how much.
This is why at AutoCorner we are not afraid to list our prices on our website, our brochures, ads, etc. Of course we do have a few "add-ons" that will take your price up a bit (extra domain names, email boxes, etc), but those are clearly laid out and are never a surprise.
