<i>The bottom line is that companies who provide price upfront end up competing on price. And history has shown us that that&#x27;s a race to the bottom.</i><p>As a counterpoint to this, my cofounder and I have been very successful with our own security consulting firm with the opposite philosophy. We have not found transparent pricing to be an obstacle in landing lucrative clients. I also haven&#x27;t seen any race to the bottom of &quot;commiditization&quot; in our industry. One of our closest competitors also publicly lists weekly rates.<p>I don&#x27;t know that they care one way or another. It&#x27;s not as though we champion transparent pricing in our sales pitch - it&#x27;s simply one more available piece of information on our website. Potential clients still need to contact us, they just know what to expect. We haven&#x27;t found that we have pressure to reduce our prices or compete on price as a result. Granted, we cater to more YC companies than we do Fortune 500s, but we still serve both, and the firm does very well.<p>The vast majority of our work comes in through referrals, which probably changes things a bit. I think there is merit in either approach, enough that it&#x27;s not fair to say one definitively causes this or that as a result.