Calculator
What running it yourself already costs you each month
Software plus your own hours, priced against the market floor for a focused retainer. This tool asserts no prices.
Count your website platform, CRM, email and SMS, SEO tooling and ad management as one monthly subtotal. Every figure here is one you enter — the tool ships with none of its own.
Retainer vs DIY stack
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Software you already pay for | $0 | $0 |
| Your hours a month | 0.0 × 52 ÷ 12 | 0.0 |
| What those hours cost | 0.0 × $0 | $0 |
| Total, monthly | $0 + $0 | $0 |
| Against the focused-retainer market floor | $0 − $1,500 | −$1,500 |
This assumes
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will not publish a price for any piece of software, because those figures are not in the sourced appendix this site is built on and a plausible default would be an invented number
will use only figures that are either yours or sourced — the boxes open empty here, and an industry page may open the software box at a published figure for that trade, with its source printed on that page
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will not decide what an hour of your time is worth, or assume you would pay somebody else to take it off you
will cost your hours at exactly the rate you entered, and leave the time column at zero if you would rather not price it at all
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will not compare the total against my own rate card, which would make the tool an advertisement with arithmetic attached
will compare it against the published market floor for a focused agency engagement, so the anchor holds whoever you end up buying from, including nobody
2026 agency pricing survey · per month · verified
How to read this number.
Every marketing cost calculator on the internet arrives with a stack already priced in, and the prices are always chosen by the party doing the comparing. This one arrives empty. Software list prices are not in the sourced appendix this site publishes from, so putting a default here would mean inventing the single number the entire comparison turns on — on a page whose whole argument is that you should check the arithmetic.
The consequence is that the opening state is the least flattering one available. With nothing entered, your stack costs nothing and the market floor costs fifteen hundred dollars a month, and the final row of the arithmetic says so. That is the correct place for a comparison tool to start. It moves as you fill in what you actually pay, and where it ends up is not something this page has any control over.
The hours input is the row that changes most people's answer, and it is the one a software-versus-software comparison always leaves out. The real substitute for a lead-response system is rarely another piece of software — it is a part-time hire, a virtual assistant, or the owner's own evenings. Pricing those evenings at zero is a choice, and it is the choice that makes a self-run stack look cheap right up until the month it stops being run.
The anchor is a published market band rather than my own price, deliberately. A comparison against my rate card would be an advertisement, and it would also be useless to the majority of readers who are here to work out whether to fix this themselves. The band describes what focused agency engagements cost across the market; my own rates are published separately on the retainer page and you can carry the total across yourself.
Questions this raises.
Why does it start at zero?
Because the alternative is asserting what your software costs, and those prices have no source in the appendix this site publishes from. An empty tool that adds up your figures is honest. A pre-filled one that adds up mine is a sales argument wearing a calculator's interface.
Should I really count my own hours?
Count them if you would otherwise be doing something that earns. If the work genuinely happens in time that has no other use, leave the rate at zero and read the software subtotal alone — the tool will not argue with you, and the arithmetic stays visible either way.
Why compare against a market band instead of your prices?
Because most people reading this will not buy anything, and a tool that only works as a step toward one purchase is not a tool. My own rates are on the retainer page, published in full, and comparing against them is one subtraction away once you have your total.
The systems behind the number.
- AI follow-upA written sequence of specific, useful contacts across email, text and call reminders, spaced at intervals your own history supports, personalised from what the person actually asked, and stopped the moment they reply, book or say no.
- AI operationsThe repetitive internal steps between an event and its outcome — data entry, assignment, chasing, reminding, reporting — are moved into systems that run whether or not anyone is at a desk, with a person left on every step that contains a judgement.
- Lead qualificationEvery inbound is scored on what it actually said and where it came from, before anyone reads it. High-intent enquiries route to a person with a deadline; the rest enter a sequence that keeps them warm without spending anybody's morning. The rules are written in plain English and versioned when they change.
- Lead recoveryEvery inbound — form, call, chat, portal — lands in one queue with a timestamp on it, receives an immediate acknowledgement that names what was asked, and is routed to a named person with a deadline attached. Nothing is marked handled until a reply exists.
- Marketing automationThe material a buyer needs in order to decide is published where they are already looking, delivered on request, and the request is recorded against the person. The automation's job is delivery and memory, not pursuit.
The other calculators.
- What does one employee cost you in federal payroll tax?Employer payroll tax floor
- What a business your size typically spends on marketingMarketing budget benchmark
- What the enquiries nobody answered are costing youMissed lead revenue
An estimate built from your own guesses is a starting position, not a baseline. The audit measures the same figures in your business instead of asking you for them.
METHOD
Every figure below carries its source and the date it was verified. Nothing on this page is asserted.
The numbers on this page.
| What | Value | Specific to |
|---|---|---|
| US SMB retainer, focused one-to-two-service engagement | $1,500–$4,000 | This page |
| US SMB full-service retainer | $3,500–$8,000 | This page |
| Meaningful market band | $1,500–$10,000 | Category-wide |
| SMB marketing spend as a share of gross revenue | 3–5% | Category-wide |
2026 agency pricing survey · per month · verified
2026 SMB marketing budget survey · a $1M business ≈ $2,500–$4,200/mo · verified
Start with the measurement.
Reading about a benchmark is not the same as knowing your own number. The audit produces yours, measured rather than estimated.
$497 · delivered in 5 business days · credited against month one