--- title: "How we price: a straight figure on the first call" description: "Why Lucent Digital Studio gives you a straight figure on the first call instead of a discovery process, a proposal and a \"from £X\" range." canonical: https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-we-price-in-pounds --- ![A folded sheet of paper and a fountain pen on an otherwise empty oak table, lit from a window on the left.](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/hero/how-we-price-in-pounds.webp) 1. [Home](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/) 2. [Journal](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal) 3. Pricing Pricing # Why we don’t write proposals **David Domingos** · 8 May 2026 · 4 min read **In this article** 1. [What "from £X+" actually means](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-we-price-in-pounds#what-from-x-actually-means) 2. [What fixed pricing forces](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-we-price-in-pounds#what-fixed-pricing-forces) 3. [What's actually in our prices](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-we-price-in-pounds#what-s-actually-in-our-prices) 4. [What we don't price publicly](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-we-price-in-pounds#what-we-don-t-price-publicly) 5. [Why most agencies won't copy this](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-we-price-in-pounds#why-most-agencies-won-t-copy-this) **Share** [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-we-price-in-pounds) **Already a client?** Your reports, invoices and enquiries live in the client portal. [Client login](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/login) In short "From £1,997+" is the most expensive phrase in the agency vocabulary. It costs you the buyer's trust before you ever quote. There is an unwritten rule in UK web design that you are not allowed to put your prices on your website. You can hint. You can put "from £X+". You can promise a "tailored quote". You cannot put a number on the page. We do something simpler. You get a straight figure, in pounds, on the first call: before a proposal, before a discovery process, before anyone has invested anything. It is fixed in writing before work starts. There is no "from", no "+", and no asterisk. This is not radical pricing transparency. It is a refusal to participate in a sales theatre that is bad for everybody involved. ## What "from £X+" actually means "From £X+" means the agency has set the lowest possible number they can imagine charging for the simplest possible version of the work, and is using it as bait to get you on a call. The actual price will be 2–6× higher. You will only find out the real price after the discovery call, the requirements gathering, the proposal, the revisions, and the "scope discussion". Every step in that process is engineered to make it harder for you to walk away. The agency wants the price reveal to happen as late as possible, because by that point you have invested hours of your own time, your team's time, and your goodwill. Walking away feels expensive. This is a sales tactic. It is borrowed from car dealerships and timeshare presentations. It works because most people, once they have invested an evening writing a brief, will accept a higher price rather than start the process over. ## What fixed pricing forces When you put a price on the website, three things happen. **You lose the buyers who were never going to pay it.** This is the point. If someone has £400 to spend and the work costs several times that, both of you save a week by finding out on the first call. **You build the price into the product.** A fixed-price agency cannot ship a custom proposal for every client. So we don't. One product, defined deliverables, in pounds. The product fits the price; the price fits the product. **You let the buyer evaluate you on the merits.** A buyer who sees "a launch fee, then one monthly · 10 working days" can compare it to two other quotes from your competitors and make a real decision in 30 seconds. A buyer who sees "from £X+ · custom quote" has to spend three hours on calls to get the same data. The first buyer becomes a customer. The second buyer becomes someone who quietly drops out of the funnel. **Want this applied to your own site?** Send your site. David records a personal video naming at least seven fixes, in plain English. [Get your free review](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/website-review) ## What's actually in our prices **The membership:** A 5-page WordPress + Bricks site, the core of our [small business website design](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/small-business-website-design), with brand foundation (logo, palette, type system), conversion-focused copy, on-page SEO, Google Business Profile setup, Lighthouse 90+ build, and the hosting, security, backups and content changes that keep it running afterwards. Ships in 10 working days from kickoff. Commit for twelve months and the launch fee is waived entirely. **Extra pages:** Service pages, location pages and campaign landing pages beyond the ones in the build, priced per page at a flat rate that does not move, and quoted in pounds before you commit to any of them. There is no separate maintenance line, and that is deliberate. The updates, the security, the backups and the content changes are inside the monthly rather than sold on top of it, because a site nobody touches after launch is the thing this studio exists to argue against. These are not "from" prices. They are the prices. ## What we don't price publicly We don't price the things that genuinely vary by client: custom integrations, multi-store WooCommerce, large content migrations. For those we quote in pounds, in writing, before any contract is signed. There is still no "from £X+"; there is a real number, agreed before you sign. The principle is the same: price reveal happens before the buyer has invested an hour of their time, not after. ## Why most agencies won't copy this Because the "from £X+" model is more profitable per close. It hides higher prices, defers the conversation, and exploits sunk-cost dynamics in the sales funnel. It is a high-margin tactic that depends on the buyer being a less-experienced negotiator than the seller. If you have ever sat across from an agency salesperson at the end of a "discovery" process and felt like you were being upsold, you know the dynamic. We don't want that conversation. So we removed the part of the process that produces it. Three numbers. On the homepage. In pounds. If you want the full picture behind those numbers, we broke down [what a website actually costs in the UK](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-much-does-a-website-cost-uk) by route, what [affordable website design should still include](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/affordable-small-business-website-design), why [we don't pitch](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/why-we-dont-pitch) at all, and why [the ten-day build constraint](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/the-ten-day-build-constraint) keeps the price honest. [Book a 30-minute audit](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/contact) and we will give you the figure and confirm which route fits. **David Domingos** Founder of Lucent Digital Studio. Runs the design, build, SEO and Google Ads work himself, from Leeds. [About David →](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/about) ## Keep reading. **[How much does website hosting cost in the UK?](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-much-does-website-hosting-cost-uk)**: ![A small server rack with soft status lights in a tidy office cupboard.](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-much-does-website-hosting-cost-uk.webp) Pricing 8 min read 28 Sep 2026 **[Affordable small business website design: what cheap should actually buy you](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/affordable-small-business-website-design)**: ![A kitchen table with a paper quote, a calculator, a pen and a laptop, set up for comparing website costs.](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/affordable-small-business-website-design.webp) Pricing 7 min read 16 Jul 2026 **[How much does a website cost in the UK? An honest 2026 breakdown](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-much-does-a-website-cost-uk)**: ![Pound coins and a folded invoice next to a closed laptop on an oak desk.](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/journal/how-much-does-a-website-cost-uk.webp) Pricing 10 min read 6 Jun 2026 ## Tell David what you need. Ads, a website, search, creators or a whole new brand. Start with a free, written look at where you are now. [Start a project](https://lucentdigital.co.uk/contact) [07511 184265](tel:07511184265)