The short answer
Yes. Publish the standard consultation fee, the out of hours consultation fee and your health plan pricing. Owners want those three numbers before they register, and a practice that will not give them looks either expensive or evasive.
For everything that genuinely varies, publish the structure instead of a figure. That is not a compromise, it is the honest version.
Why practices resist, and why the reasons do not hold
We do not want to compete on price. You already are. The owner comparing three practices is comparing whatever they can find, and if your fee is missing they assume the worst rather than ringing to ask.
Cases vary too much. The consultation does not. That is the number people want, because it is the cost of finding out what is wrong. What follows varies and everyone understands that.
It will attract the wrong clients. In practice the opposite happens. Publishing removes the price call from your desk and leaves the enquiries that are about care rather than cost.
Our fees are higher than the practice down the road. Then the page has to earn the difference in the same screen: your equipment, your out of hours arrangement, your named vets and their registrations, your consultation length. A higher fee with a reason attached converts better than a hidden one.
What to publish as a firm number
The standard consultation. The extended consultation. The out of hours consultation, separately and clearly, because that is the one that causes complaints when it is discovered late. Whether registration costs anything, which for most practices is nothing. And your health plan prices, per plan, per month.
Put those near the top of the fees page, not at the bottom.
What to publish as a structure
Neutering by species and weight band. Vaccination courses by species, with the primary course and the annual separated. Dentals as a procedure price plus an honest sentence saying that extractions cannot be priced until the animal is under anaesthetic and that you ring with a revised estimate before proceeding.
Structure with a clear rule reads as transparency. A single averaged figure that turns out to be wrong reads as a bait.
Prescription medicines are the exception. Advertising prescription only veterinary medicines to the public is restricted in a number of countries, so do not build a public drug price list without checking what applies where you practise. Treat that as orientation, not legal advice.
The three sentences that matter more than the numbers
What an estimate is, and that you contact the owner before exceeding an agreed figure.
Whether you handle insurance claims directly or the owner pays and claims back.
What payment options exist at the time of treatment.
Those decide whether a worried owner sets off. Repeat them on your emergency page, where they matter most and where nobody has the patience to go looking.
Keep the numbers in one place
Publish fees once, on a fees page, and link to that page from every service page, the plan page, the booking area and the emergency page. Prices repeated across nine pages will disagree with each other within a year, and a confirmation email that contradicts the site costs more goodwill than a missing figure.
Build the fees as editable records so a rate rise takes ten minutes and does not need a developer. Date the page, review it when your fees change, and state whether figures include tax as your country requires.
The health plan is the real prize
An owner reading your consult fee is deciding on one visit. An owner reading your health plan page is deciding on years. Publish what each plan costs monthly, list exactly what is in it, say what is not, and state clearly that a plan is a preventative care scheme rather than pet insurance.
Practices that publish fees and hide the plan have it exactly the wrong way round.
Where this sits
Published consult fees, structured pricing for the procedures that vary and a plan page that states its exclusions are part of every veterinary clinic website we build, and the same approach runs through our other pet business websites. Our own packages are on pricing. Publish the number, then earn it on the same screen.