What things cost
Pricing and how we quote
One service has published monthly prices. For everything else we explain exactly how the number is built, what moves it up or down, and what sits outside the quote.
Social media management: the prices we publish
This is the one service where the work is standard enough to carry a monthly figure. All three tiers include strategy, an account audit and competitive benchmarking at the start, and one consultation per month after that. The difference between tiers is how many posts are produced and how many networks they go to.
The setup fee of $1,500 CAD is charged once, at the start, and covers the audit, the strategy, the benchmarking and getting the accounts and publishing workflow into a usable state. It is not a deposit against the monthly fee. Monthly fees run from the month publishing starts.
Project, retainer or consulting: three different shapes of engagement
Most confusion about agency pricing comes from mixing these three up. They buy different things and they fail in different ways, so pick the shape before you argue about the number.
A project has a defined start, a defined end and a defined deliverable: a website, a logo and identity, a print run, a redesign. You pay against milestones, and the thing you bought exists when it finishes. The risk in a project is scope: anything not written into the scope is not in the price, and vague scopes are how both sides end up unhappy.
A retainer buys continuous work on something that never finishes, such as social media management, ongoing SEO or monthly content. You pay monthly for an agreed volume of output. The risk in a retainer is drift, where nobody checks after month four whether the output is still worth the fee. We would rather you review it quarterly and cancel than keep paying out of habit.
Consulting buys judgement rather than production. You get analysis, a recommendation and documentation you own, and you or another supplier execute it. The risk here is that advice without execution changes nothing, so consulting is worth buying when you have the capacity to act on it.
Which shape fits
- Project: you need a specific thing built once, such as a website, an identity or a print run
- Retainer: you need continuous output, such as posts published monthly or ongoing optimization work
- Consulting: you need a decision made well, such as what to fix first or which software to buy
- Combination: a project to build, then a small retainer to maintain, which is the most common pattern
How each service is quoted, and what moves the number
Nothing on this list has a hidden price we are withholding. The number genuinely does not exist until we know the scope, and a figure invented before that would either be too high to be fair or too low to be honest. What we can do is tell you exactly which variables move it, so you can predict roughly where you will land and tell us which way to steer.
The table below is the short version. Across every service, four things reliably push a price up: volume (pages, products, posts, units), custom work replacing something standard, how much content we have to create rather than receive, and speed. Two things reliably pull it down: supplying your own copy and photography in usable shape, and accepting a standard approach where a custom one would not earn its cost.
What we need to give you a real quote
- What outcome you are buying, in your words, not a list of features
- Scale: page count, product count, number of locations, number of languages, quantity for print
- What you already have: copy, photos, logo source files, an existing site and who hosts it
- Your deadline, and whether it is a real external date or a preference
- Who approves work on your side, and how many people have to agree
- Whether you want to maintain it yourself afterwards or have us keep it running
Market ranges, for calibration only
Clients ask what normal looks like, and a quote with no reference point is hard to judge. So here are published market ranges for two of the services we offer. These are industry ranges, not Smartise prices. We do not quote from them and we are not implying our numbers sit at any particular point inside them.
For search engine optimization, the market commonly prices consulting at $75 to $200 CAD per hour, monthly retainers at $500 to $5,000 or more per month, and one-off projects at $1,000 to $30,000 depending on site size and competitiveness. For digital and management consulting, rates commonly run $150 to $500 CAD per hour.
Use them for sanity checking in both directions. If an SEO quote comes in at $150 CAD a month, ask what hours that actually buys. If it comes in at $8,000 CAD a month for a local business with 20 pages, ask what the extra is doing. The useful question is never the price alone, it is the price against the hours and the deliverables behind it.
Deposits, payment schedules and what a contract covers
We work from a written quote and a short agreement, both in plain language. Projects start with a deposit, and the remainder is paid against milestones rather than all at the end. We describe the structure here rather than percentages, because the split depends on project size and on how much third-party cost sits inside it.
The structure is: a deposit before work begins, one or more progress payments tied to named milestones such as design approval or build completion, and a final payment at handover before files and account ownership transfer. Retainers are billed monthly in advance, because the month’s output is produced inside that month. Consulting is billed against the agreed scope, usually at the start and on delivery of the written recommendation.
The agreement states the scope, the deliverables, the number of revision rounds included, the payment points, who owns what at the end, and what happens if either side wants to stop. We do not use long lock-ins. Retainers run month to month with notice stated in the agreement, which means if the work is not earning its fee you can stop, and it means we have to keep earning it.
Typical payment structure on a project
- Deposit on acceptance of the written quote, before work is scheduled
- Progress payment at an agreed milestone such as design sign-off or build completion
- Final payment at handover, after which files, accounts and ownership transfer to you
- Any third-party costs such as licences, stock or print materials invoiced at cost as they are incurred
What is billed separately, every time
These items are not hidden fees. They are real costs that belong to you rather than to us, and we keep them out of our fees so you can see what you are paying for and so you keep control of the accounts. Where possible we set them up in your name and on your card, which means you keep them if you ever change supplier.
Advertising budget is the one that causes the most confusion. Our fee covers building and managing campaigns. The money paid to Google, Meta, TikTok or any other platform is yours, it goes to the platform, and it is never included in a management fee. Anyone quoting a single number for management plus ad spend is hiding one inside the other.
Billed separately and paid at cost
- Advertising budget paid to Google, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn or any other platform
- Hosting and domain registration and renewal
- Premium plugins, themes, licences and third-party software subscriptions
- Licensed stock photography, video, illustration and fonts
- Print runs, garments, promotional stock and any specialty finishing
- Shipping and courier charges on printed and promotional orders
- Photography or videography shoots, where a shoot is needed
- Translation and professional copywriting beyond the agreed scope
HST, currency and the cost of a quote
Every figure on this page and in every quote we send is in Canadian dollars and is stated before applicable HST, which is added on the invoice at the rate in force. If your business is registered, that tax is normally recoverable, and your accountant is the right person to confirm that for your situation.
Quotes are free, including the scoping call that makes the quote possible. We do not charge to assess work, we do not charge for a proposal, and there is no obligation after one. If the scoping call shows we are the wrong supplier, we will say so on the call rather than send a quote you should not accept.
Why cheap and expensive quotes both deserve a question
You will get quotes well below ours and well above. Neither is automatically wrong, but both should be interrogated the same way: what hours, by whom, producing what, and what happens when something breaks after launch.
A freelancer at a third of an agency price can be excellent value, particularly for a single well-defined task. What you are accepting is concentration risk: one person’s availability, one person’s skill range, and no cover when they are ill or unavailable. For a 5-page site that is often a sensible trade. For a build with e-commerce, integrations and a launch date tied to a season, it is a larger bet than it looks.
At the other end, a high quote is worth paying when the scope genuinely contains more: more research, more custom work, more people with narrow expertise, or accountability you can enforce. It is not worth paying for a longer document. Ask for the same scope from every supplier you approach, in writing, and compare line by line. We are comfortable being compared that way.
The decision, side by side
What happens, in what order, and what we need from you
What it costs, and what is not in the number
Who this is not for
- Buyers who need a fixed price for everything before any conversation. Most of our services cannot be priced honestly without knowing scale and what you already have.
- Businesses whose total available budget is under a few hundred dollars a month. We would rather tell you that on a free call than sell you an engagement too small to work.
- Anyone looking for the lowest price on the market as the deciding factor. Offshore suppliers and high-volume platforms can undercut us, and for some straightforward jobs that is a rational choice.
- Clients who want advertising management where the fee and the ad budget are quoted as one number. We will not combine them, because it hides what you are actually paying for.