Both can work. They fail in completely different ways, and the right answer depends on which failure you can least afford.
An agency retainer buys hours of other people's attention. What you get each month depends on who is assigned to you, how busy they are, and whether the person who understood your business is still there.
A subscription buys a system that runs at the same rate in a quiet month and a chaotic one. Ours is £299 a month on a 12-month term, or £399 on a 3-month term, with a one-time setup and build fee from £499. We are not VAT registered, so there is no VAT to add.
The honest comparison is not our number against your retainer. It is: what happens in the month nobody has time? An agency stops when the hours run out. A system does not notice. We wrote up what a UK small business actually spends across a full stack in our breakdown of UK marketing costs.
A good strategist reads a market, kills a bad idea and changes direction. No system does that. If your problem is that you do not know what to do, buy the thinking.
Brand campaigns, art direction and anything that needs taste and argument. We produce volume to a brand kit. That is a different job.
One named person owns the number and you can ring them. A subscription cannot be shouted at.
The follow-up, the reminders, the review requests and the replies happen every day, at the same standard, whether or not anyone remembered.
The CRM, the contacts, the sequences and the history stay yours. When an agency relationship ends, the knowledge usually walks out with it.
Calls, WhatsApp and DMs answered at 9pm on a Sunday. Almost no retainer covers that, and it is where most small-business enquiries are lost.
We run a free audit of what your current marketing spend actually produces. What your retainer covers, what happens between the monthly calls, how fast enquiries get answered, and which of it a system could do instead. If your agency is doing a good job, we will say so.
You get a clear breakdown of what's working, what's leaking, and what it would cost to fix. Takes about 20 minutes on a video call. No obligation, and you keep the findings either way.
If you want us to build it, plans start at £299/month on a 12-month term (£399/month on a 3-month term) plus a one-time setup and build fee from £499. We are not VAT registered, so there is no VAT to add.
When you need strategy rather than execution, when the work is bespoke creative, or when you want one person accountable for a number. If you cannot yet say what should happen, a system will simply do the wrong thing efficiently.
When you broadly know what needs doing and it keeps not getting done. Missed calls, unchased quotes, dormant customers, no reviews. Those are consistency problems, and consistency is what software is actually good at.
Often the best answer. Agencies handle campaigns and creative. We handle intake, follow-up and the system underneath. Several clients run both, and the audit will tell you honestly where they overlap.
Usually, but that is the wrong question and we would rather not lead on it. A cheap system that does the wrong work is not a saving. Compare what actually gets done in a normal month, not the invoice.
You keep your data. The contacts, history and content are exported to you. We think that matters more than any contract term, because it is the thing that usually gets lost when an agency relationship ends.
Less than you would think, and more than nothing. The build is done for you, and the day-to-day runs itself. Someone still needs to answer the leads it produces and make decisions about direction.
Plans start at £299 a month on a 12-month term, or £399 on a 3-month term, plus a one-time setup and build fee from £499. We are not VAT registered, so there is no VAT to add. Full detail is on our pricing page.
Every plan starts with a real build. Specialist work configuring your call handling, diary, reminders and follow-ups before anything goes live. That is what the setup and build fee pays for.
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