Most landscape contractors are undercharging by 15–30%. Here's how to raise prices, keep your best clients, and stop working harder for less margin.
You finished the job, sent the invoice, and felt good about the work. Then you ran the numbers and realized you made $18 an hour. Less than your lead. You bid the job the same way you did three years ago, but your material costs are up 22%, fuel is up, and your guys expect more pay. The price never moved.
This is where most landscape contractors get stuck. They know they need to charge more. They're scared to lose clients. So they stay cheap, stay busy, and stay broke. The clients who would pay more don't even know you're open to it.
Here's the truth: raising prices is not a negotiation. It's a positioning decision. And the contractors who do it right don't lose their best clients. They lose the ones they didn't want anyway.
Know Your Actual Number Before You Do Anything
Before you raise a single price, you need to know what it actually costs you to operate for one day. Most contractors guess. That guess is always low.
Pull your last 90 days of expenses. Divide everything — fuel, insurance, truck payments, equipment maintenance, labor burden, admin time — by the number of billable days you worked. If you ran 60 billable days and spent $42,000 in overhead, your daily burn rate is $700. Add labor. Add materials markup. Now you have a real floor, not a gut feeling.
Ryan, a hardscape contractor in San Antonio, did this exercise in 2024 and found he was billing $4,800 for jobs that cost him $4,200 to complete. An 11% margin. After accounting for the two hours of unpaid estimate and admin time per job, he was effectively paying himself $8/hr to run a business. He raised his minimum job size to $6,500 and increased his average ticket by 31% inside six months. He lost two price-shoppers. He didn't lose a single repeat client.
Segment Your Client List Before You Send Anything
Not every client gets the same conversation. Segment your list into three buckets before you write a single email:
Tier 1 — High-value repeat clients: These are the people who refer you, pay fast, and never fight the invoice. Give them the most personal notice, the longest runway (45–60 days), and a brief explanation. They will stay.
Tier 2 — Decent clients, price-sensitive: Give them 30 days notice. Frame it around your commitment to quality. Some will leave. Most won't.
Tier 3 — Slow payers, constant negotiators, low-margin work: Raise the price aggressively. If they leave, that's the point. You were subsidizing them already.
The mistake contractors make is treating everyone the same. A client who has spent $18,000 with you over three years deserves a phone call. A client who has beaten you down on price twice deserves a new proposal with no apology attached.
How to Write the Price Increase Notice
Keep it short. Don't apologize. Don't over-explain. Here's a template that works:
"Hi [Name], starting [Date], our service pricing will increase by [X]%. This reflects increases in material, fuel, and labor costs we've absorbed over the past year. We appreciate your continued trust and look forward to another great season. If you have questions, call me directly at [number]."
That's it. No paragraph about the economy. No list of reasons. Confident and direct. If they ask why, you answer honestly. Most won't ask. Most will accept it and move on.
Send it via email and text for existing clients. For new quotes, the new price is just the price. No announcement needed.
Time the Increase to Reduce Friction
The best time to raise prices is before the season starts, not in the middle of active work. For most of the country, that means January or February notices for spring start. You're not disrupting anything in progress, and clients expect seasonal communication around scheduling.
The second-best time is at contract renewal. If you have annual maintenance agreements, the renewal letter is the natural place to present new pricing. No drama. It's just the new rate for this year's contract.
The worst time: mid-project, after a dispute, or right after a problem. Even if your price hike is completely fair, the timing makes it look retaliatory. Wait for clean air.
What to Say When a Client Pushes Back
Some clients will push back. That's fine. Most of the time they're testing you, not genuinely threatening to leave.
The wrong response: "Let me see what I can do." That tells them the price was arbitrary and negotiable. You've just trained them to push back every time.
The right response: "I understand it's an adjustment. This is what our work costs us to deliver at the level you expect. I want to keep working with you, but I can't go back to the old rate." Then stop talking. Let them decide.
About 80% of the time, a client who says "I need to think about it" comes back within a week. They were hoping you'd fold. When you didn't, they respected it.
"The clients who push hardest on price are rarely your best clients. Raising prices is how you find out who actually values your work."
Track the Results — Not Just Revenue
After a price increase, most contractors watch one number: revenue. That's the wrong number. Watch margin per job and jobs per month.
A contractor who goes from 22 jobs/month at $4,500 average to 17 jobs/month at $6,200 average did not lose business. They gained $10,300 in revenue and got five fewer jobs to manage, schedule, and drive to. Their team is less burned out. Their profit per job went from roughly $500 to roughly $1,100.
Use job costing software to track this. Ledge customers who track margin per job report finding an average of $1,200–$1,800 in recovered margin per month just by seeing where their prices were too low.
See exactly where your margin is going
Ledge gives landscape contractors job costing, proposal tracking, and invoicing in one place. Know your actual margin before you set the price.
FAQ
How much should I raise my prices?
Start with your actual cost increase since your last price change. If materials are up 18% and labor is up 12%, you should be up at least 12–15%. Most contractors who haven't raised prices in two or more years are undercharging by 20–30%. Don't try to close that gap all at once. A 10–15% increase per year is defensible and rarely loses good clients.
What if I lose clients after raising prices?
Expect to lose 5–15% of your client base after a meaningful price increase. This is normal and usually healthy. The clients who leave tend to be the most price-sensitive and least profitable. Use the margin you recover to market for better-fit clients. Within one season, most contractors who raise prices end up with similar or higher revenue and significantly better margins.
Should I grandfather existing clients at old rates?
Only for your very best Tier 1 relationships, and only for one season. A one-year grandfather period is a loyalty gesture that most good clients will appreciate and remember. Beyond that, it creates a two-tiered pricing structure that is painful to manage and usually results in resentment from both sides. Set a clear end date up front.
How do I raise prices on maintenance contracts mid-year?
You can, but it's harder. The cleaner path is to honor the current contract term and present new pricing at renewal. If material or fuel costs have spiked dramatically, you can add a fuel/material surcharge as a line item with documentation. Most clients will accept a documented surcharge more readily than a mid-contract rate change that feels arbitrary.
Does raising prices hurt my ability to win new business?
Only with price-shoppers. Clients who make decisions based on quality, referrals, and reputation are not primarily buying on price. Contractors with higher prices often close more of those leads because higher pricing signals competence. If your close rate on new quotes drops significantly, look at your proposal and follow-up process before blaming the price.
Edgar Galindo
Co-founder, Ledge
Edgar built Ledge while running a landscape construction company in Central Texas. He writes about estimating, job costing, and building a business that runs without you on every site.