Competitor Prices: Should You Change Yours?

You open a competitor’s website and see a price twice as high as yours. The service name is almost the same. A thought is already stirring inside: “Am I charging too little?” Your hand reaches to rewrite your price list - quickly, before the old figures become embarrassing.

Stop there. The figure in someone else’s price list is not an instruction to raise your price and not proof that you made a mistake. It only suggests this: it is worth working out what the other person is selling, what you are selling, and whether your business can sustain your price.

Because identical names often hide different things. “Website creation”, “photo shoot”, “accounting support” or “ad setup” can mean a completely different level of responsibility. In one case, the client receives only the completed action. In another, they also receive preparation, explanations, several options, help after completion, purchasing and someone who takes care of unpleasant little details. A price list likes to pretend it has explained everything on its own. It typically exaggerates.

Your everyday question here is simple: do you need to change your price after seeing a more expensive or cheaper offer? The answer does not come from one number, but from an honest comparison.

Start not with someone else’s website, but with your own offer. Write down what the client actually gets for your price: the result, materials, preparation, number of revisions, way of communicating, and what happens after you hand over the work. Do not use broad words such as “high quality” or “turnkey”. Write it so an outside person can imagine the order from the first message to the final result.

A service package is a set of specific tasks and terms included in one price. If you say “logo design”, the package may include only the mark and files. Or it may include a conversation about the task, options, revisions, print-ready files and an explanation of how to use them. Both offers can have the same name, but comparing them by price alone is like comparing two boxes with taped-shut lids.

An order scenario is a specific case that you place beside another one: what the client needs, under which terms, and what result they will take away. This is what keeps you from comparing a basic service with a fuller one just because the names are similar.

One name - different scenario

Imagine Olena, who bakes cakes to order. She sees that another pastry chef charges much more for a “celebration cake”. Olena already wants to raise the price of every cake. But when she lays both offers out, it turns out that the competitor’s price includes design development, delivery, complex decoration and agreeing the details, while Olena offers a basic cake for collection.

This does not mean one of them is honest and the other is not. It means they have different order scenarios in front of them. In each case, the client is buying not simply a dessert of a certain weight, but a different set of effort, responsibility and convenience.

Now Olena can make a more useful conclusion. She does not copy someone else’s figure, but decides whether to leave the basic option as it is, add a separate option with delivery and decoration, or show more clearly what her price includes. That choice is based on the work, not on the first sting from someone else’s price list.

A market reference point is an open price or term that helps you understand the range of offers, but does not determine your price. Gather such reference points where the provider has published them: in open price lists, calculators, ads, package descriptions and answers to ordinary enquiries.

A calculator is a form on a website that shows an approximate amount after you choose order parameters. It is useful if you record not only the final number, but also the chosen parameters. Otherwise, you are comparing not offers, but random screens.

Do not call while pretending to be a client, order someone else’s service or invent stories to extract details. That is unethical and does not give you a clean comparison.

It is better to make a simple table. One row is one offer. Next to the price, note the service name, what the amount includes, what is paid separately, which case the price is for, and the terms for communication, revisions and handing over the result. If something is not visible, write exactly that: “not specified”. Do not make up a competitor’s profit, costs or secret stash of gold under the till.

It is also useful to note what remains on the client’s side: whether they need to prepare materials themselves, collect the order, gather access details, agree the details and find someone who will fix a problem after handover. These things often do not fit into a short line in a price list, but they change the meaning of the offer. Compare the same scenario: do not place a portrait shoot beside an event shoot with material selection and a finished gallery, or a one-off consultation beside ongoing support. Otherwise, you may be quoted an amount for a different task, while you spend energy on a small theatrical production about a broken process instead of an honest comparison.

After looking at other reference points, return to your own work. Cost price means all the expenses without which you cannot complete a specific order. It includes not only materials or payment for an assistant. Most of the time, preparation, purchasing, travel, messages, invoices, revisions, file storage, returning to a question after the work is finished and the time when you correct your own mistake live alongside them.

You do not have to turn this into complicated accounting. You need to see the full picture of one typical order. Take the latest job you remember well and go through it from the first message to the final “thank you”. What did you do before the main work? What did you buy? What did you explain? Where did you lose energy? What did you have to redo? Which expenses did not disappear even though the client could not see them?

Look separately at work that appears because the agreement was unclear. If the client did not know how many changes were included in the service, or you did not name the boundary of the task, extra messages and rework can look like “a small thing”. In reality, they take up space in your day. This is not a reason to be cold with the client. It is a reason to name the terms before the start, so you do not turn goodwill into a free addition to every order.

A price rests on invisible work

This is often where the reason for tension around the price becomes clear. A person looks at several hours of visible work and forgets everything that holds it up around the edges. Then they wonder why there seem to be enough orders, but the money does not add up. This is not a personal flaw. Usually, this is what a price looks like when part of the work has simply not been named. If you keep records of enquiries, payments and income, it is useful to check your price list against those records. The page about business data tracking helps you look at these decisions not only through someone else’s price lists, but also through how your business actually works.

Now write down the minimum amount that is healthy for you, not as a “market” amount, but as one at which an order does not make you pay with your own time and money. You do not need to make it look attractive to other people. Its task is to give you a sober lower boundary for a specific service.

Then compare it with what you see outside. If someone else’s price is higher, that is still not a reason to chase it. If it is lower, that is not a call to reduce yours either. First see whether the scope, risk and convenience for the client match.

A difference becomes useful when you can name its reason. Perhaps another provider works at a different level of task: takes on more uncertainty, prepares materials, responds faster, has a more convenient way to agree details or continues helping after handing over the result. Or perhaps their page simply explains the service better, while your price hangs there on its own, like a cloakroom ticket without a coat.

Imagine Andrii, who sets up advertising for small shops. He sees cheaper ads with the same service name and thinks about lowering his price list. But his work includes a conversation about the product, checking the page, preparing materials, explaining results and making changes after the start. In another ad, the lower amount covers only the technical connection of a campaign.

Andrii does not need to justify the difference. It is worth showing the simpler and fuller services clearly, the scope of each and what the client pays for separately.

The same logic works when your price is lower. Perhaps you deliberately offer a simpler option. That is fine if the client can see the boundaries: what they will receive, what they will not receive and what can be added separately. Then the person chooses not between vague “cheap” and “expensive”, but between two understandable ways to solve their task. The problem does not appear because of a lower amount, but when the client expects more than you included in it.

There is another situation too: your scope of work really is broader, but only you can see that. Then do not wait for the client to guess about preparation or ongoing support. Add a short list to the service description of what the amount includes, and an example boundary: what will be a separate task. This does not automatically make your offer better than someone else’s, but it makes it clearer.

Do not try to promise everything to everyone. More often than not, a clear service boundary sells more honestly than a blurry “we will do everything”. It also makes the conversation about extra work easier: you are not inventing a fee in the middle of the process, but returning to what you agreed.

The first decision is to change nothing. It is appropriate if your price covers the real work and the service scope is clear. In that case, someone else’s figures remain reference points, not an alarm siren.

The second is to change the offer itself. For example, move delivery, extra revisions, urgent work or complex materials into separate options. This is appropriate when one price is currently trying to contain several very different types of order. It is easier for the client to choose, and easier for you not to pretend that every complexity was already included.

The third is to review the price list. It is worth doing when your minimum does not cover the full work or when the old amount no longer matches what you actually provide. You do not have to move everything at once. Usually, it is safer to start with one type of order where the difference is most visible, and see whether the explanation has become more honest for the client.

Before changing the price list, check how you communicate it too. Do not put the new amount on a separate line as if it were an order. Name the result, the service scope and the boundary beside it. If you have basic and fuller options, show both. That way, the change will not look like a random reaction to someone else’s figures, but will become a clearer description of how you work.

When you tell someone the price, do not defend it with a long speech. Name the result, briefly say what is included and show the boundary. For example: “This amount includes preparation, completion, agreed revisions and delivery of the finished files. If an additional task is needed, we will agree it separately before the work begins.” This is not pressure. It is an order in which it is easier for both of you to breathe.

First step: open your price list and choose one service people ask about most often. Next to its price, write everything the client receives and everything you actually do. Only then open someone else’s offers.