At 10:40 on a weeknight, a family has three funeral home websites open on one phone. Their dad is in hospice, and the nurse said it could be days. Two of the sites list a number and a contact form, nothing more. The third shows what a direct cremation costs, what a funeral with burial costs, and what each one includes. In the morning, the third home gets the first call.
That scene is the whole case for putting your general price list on your website. No rule makes you do it yet, and most homes still don't. Below: where the rule stands, what families expect, and how to post a price list that serves the family reading it and the director who answers the phone.
Where the Funeral Rule stands today
The FTC's Funeral Rule asks two things about prices. Anyone who asks in person about arrangements gets your General Price List to keep. Anyone who calls and asks about prices gets accurate answers from that list over the phone.
It does not ask you to put the list on your website. The FTC opened a review of the Rule in 2022 and asked for comments on online prices, but as of this writing no change has been made final. Posting your prices online is your choice today.
It's a choice worth making on its own merits. And a home that already shows its prices has nothing to scramble over if the Rule ever changes.
What families say they want
The NFDA's consumer study, as summarized by Johnson Consulting Group, gives three numbers worth knowing. 82.4% of families say they are more likely to pick a home that posts its General Price List online. 66.4% visit a home's website before they call. And cost is now the reason families give most often for the home they chose.
Put those together and the website is where the first comparison happens. Often it's late at night, on a phone, by a son or daughter who lives two states away. A family that can't find a price has two options: call and ask, or move on to a home that shows one.
The cremation rate makes this sharper. The NFDA projected that 63.4% of families would choose cremation in 2025, and cremation families compare prices more than anyone before they pick up the phone.
How few homes post theirs
When the Consumer Federation of America checked 1,046 funeral homes across 35 cities, only 18% had a price list on their website. That's 191 homes out of more than a thousand.
So in most towns, the home that posts its prices is the only one that does. A family comparing three websites sees one home that answers the question they came with, and two that ask them to call first. The cheapest home in town doesn't automatically win that comparison. The home that shows its numbers does.
What to post: the whole list, dated
Post your actual General Price List, the same one you hand families across the arrangement table. A trimmed web version invites trouble when the printed copy says something different.
That means every itemized price for the goods and services you offer, the disclosures the Rule requires, and the date the prices took effect. If caskets and outer burial containers sit on their own price lists, post those as well, or show the price ranges the way your General Price List does.
Leave the Rule's own wording intact. The lines telling families that embalming isn't required by law in most cases, and that they can choose only the items they want, do quiet work. A family reading them at midnight learns that your home itemizes and doesn't push.
Post it as a PDF that opens cleanly on a phone. Name the file so it reads well in a downloads folder: your home's name, the words price list, and the year.
Put a plain summary above the PDF
A General Price List is a legal document, and it reads like one. Most families need a gentler way in.
Above the PDF, show the three or four choices families ask about most: direct cremation, cremation with a memorial service, a traditional funeral with burial, and perhaps a graveside service. For each, write one or two lines on what's included and the starting price from your list. Then a clear link to the full list, with a call button beneath.
This summary is where most of the reading happens, so write it in the words families use on the phone. "Direct cremation: transfer from the place of death, the cremation, and a temporary urn" tells a family more than a line number does.
Before you call it done, scroll the page on a phone. If you have to pinch and zoom to read a price, the page fails the very people most likely to open it. On the funeral home websites we build, the price page follows this shape: the summary up top, the dated list underneath, and a call button that stays in reach as you scroll.
Will posting prices bring more price shoppers?
Some, yes. That's mostly good news.
Price shoppers were already calling, and the Funeral Rule already says you answer them by phone. A posted list turns a guarded first call into a better one. The family has seen the range, knows what each choice includes, and calls to ask about the service rather than to pry loose a number.
You will lose a few calls to a cheaper home. You were losing those families anyway, only later, after a director spent twenty minutes on the phone with them. And you'll gain the families who picked your home because it answered their question first.
Price is rarely the only thing a family weighs. They read your reviews, scroll your obituaries and look for the faces of your directors. A clear price list puts you on the shortlist; your reviews and your people carry it from there. Our post on asking families for Google reviews covers that second half.
Keep it current and easy to find
A price list online only helps if it's right. Update the web copy on the same day you change the printed list, and refresh the effective date printed above the prices. A family who spots last year's date starts to wonder what else is stale.
Then make it easy to reach. Put Prices in your site's main menu, not three clicks deep. Link it from your cremation and burial pages and from your listing on Google Maps. When a caller asks about prices, give the numbers on the phone, then text the link so the family has them in writing.
Share the price page the way you'd share an obituary: post the link to the page itself, not a retyped copy, so every visit lands on your site. Our post on posting obituaries on Facebook explains why the link matters.
Posting your prices takes an afternoon. It answers the first question most families have, before anyone at your home picks up the phone.
Rachel Lindqvist
Rachel Lindqvist leads website builds at MemorialBooked. Rachel plans each home's move off its old provider, from the obituary archive to the price list, and writes here about the pages families open first.
