Pricing a means-tested service without a phone call
A visitor to the Meal Delivery page couldn't get an accurate price, because the real cost depended on which government funding programme applied, and working that out had previously needed a phone call. A single price list could show one number. It couldn't show the different contribution that a Home Care Package, a CHSP place, an NDIS plan, a DHS-funded place or a privately funded client would pay for the same meals. So we built a calculator: a HubDB-backed lookup that takes a visitor's own answers and returns the figure a phone call used to.
Executive Summary
Context
An Australian not-for-profit meal-delivery and community-care organisation priced its service around eligibility for government-funded aged-care and disability programmes, and working out a price previously took a phone call. We embedded that calculation on the Meal Delivery page as a HubDB-backed calculator, so a visitor's own inputs return an indicative price directly.
What We Built
We built a HubDB-backed pricing calculator on the Meal Delivery page. A visitor selects service type, meals per week, number of people, funding programme and postcode. The page looks up a thirteen-row service-rate table, returns an indicative customer contribution alongside the government-funded portion, and routes the visitor straight to the Make a Referral form.
Tech Stack
- HubDB
- HubSpot Content Hub (Meal Delivery page)
- HubSpot Marketing Hub form (Make a Referral)
- HubDB Service ID rate table (13 rows)
Not a fit if a price can't be reduced to a lookup against fixed inputs, for example when a clinical assessment or case-by-case negotiation still decides the figure. The result is labelled indicative, so it assumes a referral step still confirms the number. It also assumes someone on the client side keeps the rate table current when a programme's contribution changes.
The Challenge
Meal-delivery pricing was never one number. The cost to a household depended on which government programme it qualified for: a Home Care Package, the Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP), an NDIS plan, a DHS-funded place, or a privately funded rate. A static page couldn't work out which one applied, so a staff member took a phone call, asked the right questions and quoted a figure back.
A generic price list wouldn't have solved it either. One flat rate would have been wrong for four of the five programmes, and a rate hard-coded into page copy would go stale the moment a programme's contribution changed.
Our Approach
We considered a generic price list, but one flat rate would have been wrong for four of the five programmes. Prices written into the page copy would also have gone stale whenever a programme's contribution changed. So we modelled the pricing logic as a HubDB table instead, with one base-rate row per billable service line.
The Meal Delivery page collects five inputs: service type, meals per week, number of people, funding programme and postcode. It looks up the matching row and returns an indicative customer contribution next to the government-funded portion.
The result then carries straight into the Make a Referral form. A visitor who now knows roughly what the service costs can act on it instead of starting again with a phone call. The trade-off is that the price is only indicative, so the referral step still confirms the figure.
The module shipped with the organisation's new Content Hub site on 21 October 2024, alongside a themed module library, fifteen-plus pages, multi-step forms, a Stripe-backed donate page and a 301 redirect list the client approved before cutover. The website phase finished only sixteen hours over estimate, which the post-mortem credited to early design QA reducing the punch list, and the calculator was the one page element that replaced a staffed process rather than a static one.
The site replaced a WordPress build that only a developer could edit; staff now publish appeals and program updates themselves from the module library.
Impact
Funding-eligibility pricing is a lookup, not a phone call
The calculator checks a visitor's own answers (service type, meals per week, household size and funding programme) against the service-rate table and returns a figure on the page itself. A staff member used to answer that question one caller at a time.
The calculator hands visitors to the referral form
The Arrange Services and Make a Referral form that follows the calculator recorded 1,828 submissions, converting at a peak of 16.69% (period to be added), with 67% of traffic from organic search. The pricing tool sits directly in front of that funnel.
A rate change updates the table, not the page
Because the five funding-programme rates sit in a HubDB table rather than in page copy, a change to a programme's contribution or a new service line updates every calculation the next time a visitor runs it. No developer has to edit the page.
Fewer pricing enquiries reach the support line
Staff reported a drop in pricing-related enquiries after the calculator launched. The tool now answers on the page the question that used to reach the support line.
A thirteen-row HubDB table holds a base price for each billable line: meals, home delivery under and over ten kilometres, gluten-free and diabetic meals, four social-support programmes, allied health, and goods and equipment. The calculator reads a rate from this one place instead of from a price written into the page.
A visitor selects service type, meals per week, number of people, funding programme (Home Care Package, CHSP, NDIS, DHS or privately funded) and postcode. The page looks up the matching table row and returns an indicative customer contribution alongside the government-funded portion.
The calculator labels its output an indicative cost and links directly into the Make a Referral form. That carries the visitor from an estimate into the actual application, so they don't have to find the form themselves.
The calculator combines each service's base rate with the funding programme the visitor selects, not one blended price per service. A Home Care Package household, an NDIS participant and a privately funded client each see the figure that applies to them, not a single blended rate.
The cost of meal delivery depended on which government programme applied, so a visitor used to need a phone call to get a price. One flat price list would have been wrong for four of the five programmes. Now a HubDB table holds one base-rate row per billable service line, and the Meal Delivery page looks up the matching row from the visitor's five inputs. The result carries straight into the Make a Referral form.
FAQ
It looks up the visitor's selected service type and funding programme (Home Care Package, CHSP, NDIS, DHS or privately funded) against the HubDB table, which carries a base price for each combination. It then returns the customer and government contribution for that row.
No, the price is shown as an indicative contribution. The visitor is routed to the Make a Referral form, where the actual figure is confirmed.
