An agency gives you a person. askotter gives you the log.
Good local agencies exist and plenty of businesses should hire one. What follows is the honest split, including the parts where an agency is the better answer.
Should a small business hire a local SEO agency or use askotter?
A local SEO agency gives a business a named strategist, local market knowledge and a relationship, typically for $1,500 to $3,000 a month on a retainer with a minimum term of three to twelve months. askotter gives a business the same category of work for $99/mo self-managed or $600/mo managed, month to month, with the hours published, every change logged with a timestamp, and approval happening by text rather than at a monthly call. The trade is real in both directions.
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An agency is the better buy for a business that needs strategy across channels a service does not cover, wants someone physically local who knows the market, or has complex multi-location requirements. askotter is the better buy for a business that wants the work done at a published price with visible scope and no minimum term. Neither can guarantee rankings, and a provider offering to is a warning sign whichever category it sits in.
- askotter is for
- You want to see the scope and the price before you buy, approve changes the day they are proposed rather than at next month's call, and be able to leave without a termination clause.
- A local SEO agency is for
- You need strategy beyond the website and search: positioning, partnerships, PR, events, or a market a national service will not understand. You have a complex multi-location structure. Or you simply work better with a person you can meet, which is a legitimate reason and not a soft one.
- askotter pricing
- $99/mo self-managed and compute-metered above the base, $600/mo managed, $1,000/mo managed with paid channels. Month to month.
- Ownership
- The business owns its domain, its content and its ad accounts from day one. The website transfers to the client after six months on a managed plan.
- Human involvement
- A person reviews every change before it publishes on managed plans, and nothing publishes on either plan without the owner's approval.
- Not for
- Neither can guarantee a ranking, and any provider in either category who offers to is telling you something about themselves. Neither replaces a sales process: traffic that arrives and is never followed up is wasted the same way regardless of who generated it.
Nine questions, answered for both.
The same nine attributes appear on every comparison on this site, in the same order, so two of these pages can be read side by side. Competitor cells describe the pricing model rather than a current list price, because a stale price on our own site would be worse than no price at all.
| Attribute | askotter | a local SEO agency |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | A business that wants published pricing, visible scope, changes it approves the same day, and no minimum term. | A business that wants a named strategist, local market knowledge, and cross-channel strategy including work no software service covers. |
| What you actually buy | The website, the monthly SEO loop, AI search visibility, landing pages and optional ad management, at a published price with published hours. | A retainer covering an agreed scope, usually with a named account manager and a monthly reporting call. |
| Pricing model | A flat published monthly price. $99/mo self-managed, $600/mo managed, $1,000/mo managed with paid channels. Month to month, cancel without penalty. | A retainer, commonly $1,500 to $3,000 a month for a single location, usually with a three to twelve month minimum term. Website builds are often quoted separately. |
| Setup effort | One URL or one sentence. First full draft the same day, launch typically five to ten working days. | Discovery, kickoff, strategy documents and sign-off. Frequently four to eight weeks before the first change ships. |
| Human involvement | A person reviews every change before it publishes. AI does the first pass on research, audits and drafting, which is why the price is what it is. | People throughout, though how senior is the question worth asking. Most agencies also run AI on the first pass now, without changing the retainer. |
| Who owns the website | Your domain and content from day one. The site transfers to you after six months on a managed plan. | Varies, and it is the question to ask before signing. Some agencies build on a proprietary platform the site cannot leave. |
| Who owns the ad accounts | You do, in your own name, including the history and the audiences. You keep them if you leave. | Varies. Agency-owned ad accounts are common and mean the spend history and audiences stay behind when the relationship ends. Ask explicitly. |
| Ongoing SEO work | Published hours: roughly 12 to 16 a month on the managed plan, broken down by activity. The breakdown. | An agreed scope, rarely expressed in hours. What is delivered in a given month is usually visible only in the report. |
| Visibility into changes | Every change logged with who asked, who approved and when, viewable at any time in a platform included free. | A monthly report. The individual changes made between reports are generally not itemised. |
The honest split.
If the right-hand box describes you, take that option. A service somebody buys and does not want is worse for us than one we talked them out of.
You want to see the scope and the price before you buy, approve changes the day they are proposed rather than at next month's call, and be able to leave without a termination clause.
You need strategy beyond the website and search: positioning, partnerships, PR, events, or a market a national service will not understand. You have a complex multi-location structure. Or you simply work better with a person you can meet, which is a legitimate reason and not a soft one.
Neither can guarantee a ranking, and any provider in either category who offers to is telling you something about themselves. Neither replaces a sales process: traffic that arrives and is never followed up is wasted the same way regardless of who generated it.
Published, and month to month.
No setup fee, no minimum term, and no penalty for cancelling. Ad spend is billed to you directly by Google and Meta rather than passing through us.
You drive the builder and ship the changes Whiskers suggests. The platform does the analysis.
| What is included | Self-managed$99/moWebsite, SEO and the platform. Compute-based after that. |
|---|---|
| Website and SEO | |
| AI web builder, unlimited edits | Included |
| Your site hosted on your own domain | Included |
| SEO: keywords, on-page, schema, rank tracking | Included |
| AI content recommendations, ready to publish | Included |
| Answer engine optimization | Included |
| askotter platform and data lake | Included |
| Paid channels | |
| Google Ads + Meta Ads, connected and tracked | Add per channel |
| AI bidding and budget recommendations | With each channel |
| True ROAS against your real revenue | With each channel |
| How it runs | |
| Who ships each change | You |
| A person reviews every change before it ships | Not included |
| Ad accounts | Yours, you keep them |
| What moves the price | The compute you use |
| Cancel anytime | Included |
| Start free | |
The $99/mo covers your website and SEO on the platform. After that the price is compute-based. Ask Whiskers to run more analysis, or to watch more ad channels for you, and the bill scales with how much you use.
No setup fee. Ad spend is billed to you by Google and Meta.
Want a person to run it for you?
Our team builds and runs it. A person reviews every AI recommendation before it ships.
| What is included | PopularManaged SEO$600/moWe build it and run the SEO. | Managed + Ads$1,000/moEverything in Managed SEO, plus Google Ads and Meta Ads run by our team. |
|---|---|---|
| Website and SEO | ||
| We build and host your website | Included | Included |
| Monthly SEO, done for you | Included | Included |
| Content written, reviewed and published | Included | Included |
| Answer engine optimization, run for you | Included | Included |
| One site refresh per year | Included | Included |
| askotter platform and data lake | Included | Included |
| Paid channels | ||
| Google Ads + Meta Ads management | Not included | Included |
| Monthly performance reviews | Not included | Included |
| Ad budget | Not needed | Under $10K/mo |
| How it runs | ||
| Who ships each change | Our team | Our team |
| A person reviews every change before it ships | Included | Included |
| Email marketing waterfall | Setup | Fully managed |
| Strategy calls | Not included | Monthly |
| Website is yours after six months | Included | Included |
| Get a free audit | Get a free audit | |
No setup fee. Cancel anytime. Ad spend is billed to you by Google and Meta.
Want to talk it through first? Book a 20-minute demo
Prefer to run it yourself?
Weighing something else.
askotter vs Wix
You like building the site, you have the hours, and you want software rather than a monthly service. At roughly $30 a month Wix is genuinely cheaper, and paying for a managed service you would not use is a bad trade.
askotter vs GoDaddy
You need a cheap, simple online presence and you are not buying marketing. GoDaddy at roughly $15 a month for domain, hosting and a basic site is hard to beat on price, and a managed service you will not use is money wasted.
askotter vs Thryv
The phone rings and the chaos is behind it: double-booked appointments, invoices going out late, customer details in three places. That is an operations problem, and a better website does not fix it.
self-managed vs managed
Three hours of your time is worth more than $500 to the business, or you know from experience that the website is the thing that slips when the week gets full. At that point managed is the cheaper plan, not the dearer one.
The services themselves: the website builder, managed small business SEO, AI search visibility, and running the site by text. The evidence behind the numbers is on the methodology page.
Questions about this comparison
Why is askotter so much cheaper than an agency?
Do I get a dedicated account manager?
How do I know what work was actually done?
What should I ask an agency before signing?
Start with the audit.
It reads the site you have now and shows you what is costing you work, whichever way you decide. Yours whether or not you sign up.
Self-managed is $99/mo and scales with the compute you use. Our team runs it from $600/mo.