Internal strategy · prices verified 2026
What the market charges — and what we should ask.
Before we set a number, here is the honest landscape: the real services a business could buy instead of deptmatic, what each actually charges in 2026, and where a done-for-you, bring-your-own-Claude marketing department should sit on that ladder. Every price below is the provider’s own published or widely-reported figure, cited to source.
Question 1
What does the competition charge?
Agencies, self-run platforms, AI tools, done-for-you content, AI agents and freelancers — real 2026 pricing, grouped by tier.
Question 2
What should we charge?
A three-tier monthly model that lands near DIY-tool prices while delivering agency-grade, done-for-you output.
Question 1 · The competitive field
Who else does this — and what it costs
Tools you run yourself sit low; a person or a team doing the work for you sits high. The bars below show the monthly spread across the market. deptmatic’s recommended department (green) is the only done-for-you offer priced down in tool territory.
AI / DIY tools you do the work
$29–$500 / mo
deptmatic done-for-you, BYO-Claude
$190–$990 / mo
Done-for-you content writing only
$599–$2,400 / mo
Marketing agency multi-channel
$3,500–$5,000+ / mo
Fractional CMO strategy, not production
$8,000–$15,000 / mo
| Service ▲▼ |
Category ▲▼ |
What you get ▲▼ |
Price / mo ▲ |
Source |
All figures approximate and as-of 2026 — providers’ own published or widely-reported pricing; ranges reflect starting-to-higher tiers. Where a service publishes per-seat, per-location or per-word rates, the monthly figure notes the assumption. Click a column header to sort; use the chips to filter by tier.
Question 2 · What we should charge
Agency output, tool-shelf price
Two facts let deptmatic price a done-for-you department far below an agency: (a) the AI and our engine do the production, and (b) every customer powers the AI with their own Claude account — so the token cost is theirs, and our marginal cost per customer stays low. That lets us anchor near DIY-tool prices while shipping real, human-approved work. Three tiers, one flat monthly fee, cancel anytime.
Starter
$190 / mo
One channel, done for you. The audit turned into a steady stream of approved work.
- Free site audit as your front door
- One channel — SEO or content
- ~6 deliverables / month
- Human-approval queue — you sign off on every item
- Monthly report
- Bring-your-own-Claude
- Email support
Start with an audit
Recommended · the whole department
Growth
$490 / mo
The full marketing department across three channels — roughly one-eighth of an agency retainer.
- Everything in Starter, plus:
- Three channels — SEO + content + social
- ~16 deliverables / month
- Content calendar & scheduling
- Email newsletter drafts
- Priority approval queue
- Monthly strategy report + review call
- You keep everything — no lock-in
Build my department
Scale
$990 / mo
Every channel plus paid-ad concepts and analytics, across up to three brands.
- Everything in Growth, plus:
- Email campaigns + paid-ad concepts
- Analytics deep-dives
- ~35 deliverables / month
- Up to 3 brands / sites
- Quarterly strategy review
- Priority support
Scale the department
One-time website build
For prospects with no site yet — a launch-ready website before the department starts producing. One-time, not a subscription.
Starter $80
Professional $320
Premium $640
The free audit is the front door
Anyone can drop in a URL and get a real readiness score, scorecard and priority roadmap — value before a card is ever entered. The audit becomes the department’s first month of work the moment they subscribe.
Free · no card required
The ROI line
Replace a $3,500–$5,000/mo agency for a fraction — and keep everything it makes.
~1/8
The $490 Growth department runs about one-eighth the cost of a typical multi-channel agency retainer (~$3,500–$5,000/mo).
$36k+
Roughly $36,000–$54,000 a year saved versus that agency — for comparable cross-channel output.
$0
No onboarding fee (HubSpot Pro alone adds $3,000), no annual lock-in, no per-seat or per-location metering.
You keep everything produced. Posts, pages, schema, calendars, reports — they live on your site and in your account, written with your own Claude. Cancel any month and the work stays yours. That is the opposite of an agency, where the assets, the tooling and the momentum usually walk out the door with the contract.
Why these numbers
Above pure tools, on purpose
A single serious tool already runs $99–$250/mo (Surfer $99, Semrush Guru $250, Ahrefs Standard $249) — and still leaves you doing the work. Starter at $190 is priced like a tool but does the work, so it reads as obvious value, not a splurge.
Below every done-for-you rival
The sharpest anchor is Content Cucumber: $2,400/mo for writing only. Growth at $490 covers SEO, content and social for one-fifth of that — and sits far under the $3,500–$5,000 agency floor, where only ~2% of agencies even charge over $5k.
BYO-Claude changes the math
Because each customer’s own Claude account powers generation, our cost per customer doesn’t scale with their output. We can price on delivered value, not on tokens burned — the reason we can undercut services that must pay for their own model calls.
A ladder, not one flat fee
Three tiers let a solo founder start at $190 and a multi-brand operator land at $990 — capturing the market from the freelancer’s budget ($300–$3,500/mo) up to the low end of an agency, without ever asking agency prices.
Sources
Every cited figure, with its source. Prices verified 2026; providers restructure often, so treat each as approximate and check the live page before quoting externally.
- Marketing agency retainers (avg ~$3,500; $1,500–$10,000)clicksgeek.com/marketing-agency-monthly-retainer-cost
- Agency cost by service (SEO, PPC, social)darkroomagency.com/observatory/marketing-agency-cost-2026
- Content marketing agency pricing ($5k–$15k)columnfivemedia.com/content-marketing-agency-pricing
- Fractional CMO retainers ($8k–$15k common)gofractional.com/blog/fractional-cmo-salary
- Fractional CMO cost (US, 2026)fractionus.com/blog/fractional-cmo-cost-us
- MarketerHire tiers ($5k / $10k / $15k)marketerhire.com
- HubSpot Marketing Hub (Pro $890; Ent $3,600)hubspot.com/pricing/marketing
- Semrush (Pro $139.95 / Guru $249.95 / Business $499.95)demandsage.com/semrush-pricing
- Ahrefs (Lite $129 / Standard $249)clarorank.com/ahrefs-pricing
- Surfer SEO (Essential $99 / Scale $219)surferseo.com/pricing
- Mailchimp (Standard from $20; ~$100 at 5k)mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing
- MarketMuse ($99 / $249 / $499)airops.com/compare/airops-vs-marketmuse (TechRadar-cited)
- Thryv ($646 / $881 / $1,475)thryv.com/pricing
- Birdeye (per-location $299 / $399 / $449)birdeye.com/pricing
- Jasper AI (Creator $49 / Pro $69)jasper.ai/pricing
- Copy.ai (Chat $29; Growth $1,000)copy.ai/prices
- Writesonic ($79 / $199 / $399)writesonic.com/pricing
- AdCreative.ai ($29–$599)adcreative.ai/pricing
- Content Cucumber ($599 / $950 / $2,400)contentcucumber.com/plans/monthly
- BKA Content ($195–$960)bkacontent.com/pricing
- Brafton (~$7,000+/mo)brafton.com
- Verblio (~$950–$2,400; $0.06–$0.16/word)verblio.com/pricing
- Done-for-you AI marketing / AI SEO ($2k–$20k; SMB $500–$5k)thecrunch.io/ai-agents-price
- AI agency pricing models (2026)digitalagencynetwork.com/ai-agency-pricing
- Artisan (Ava) AI SDR (~$600–$7,200)artisan.co/pricing
- 11x AI SDR (~$5,000/mo)11x.ai
- Freelance SEO retainers ($1,500–$3,500)solohourly.com/guides/freelance-seo-consultant-rates
- Freelance social media manager ($300–$1,500)glowsocial.com/blog/freelance-social-media-manager-charge-cost
- Freelance content writer ($15–$175/hr, ~$45 mid)golance.com/hiring/best-freelance-seo-writers-hourly-rate